The secret benefits of mixing in mono

[TekMonki]

people find informative and helpful to always be appreciated innerstatejt.

and as for the panning hard left or right to get that "center" speaker. same thing basically, right?

[Emissary]

yep i think i am definitely going to be mixing like this from now on. Compose in stereo and master in mono till the very last bit. It somehow creates a disconnect from the piece also so you can view/hear it with new ears. I was using the one speaker approach but I'll try using utility to see if that does the job.

Thanks jason,

[paradiddle]

Great thread! Never tried this technique but I sure will!

[innerstatejt]

Just to be clear.. I am recommending one speaker AND a mono utility plugin. you need to get things to mono whether you plan to use 1 speaker (which I recommend) or 2. just drop it into your master track, set it to zero and you should be good.

I'm glad people are already finding this useful.

Jason

[bodhi71]

Coooooool

[nuperspective]

i have seen write ups in the past where all your drums and bass are mixed as mono tracks - as these are usually set dead centre anyway. however, there are some people who see this as a mistake - i can see the logic of it. this would leave all your other sounds far more space for panning etc.

does anybody have any views on this process?

[Superchibisan]

mixing in mono is very useful. unfortunately, i don't make music to be played in mono.

bad idea on my part, but i can't get those effects in mono.

[mlangsman]

Thanks for this post Ive read a little about this before but never got around to really trying it out and didnt realise it was advantageous to use just one speaker.

What's the best solution to effects and sounds that cancel out when going to mono ? Is it best to invert the phase of one side of these ?

cheers,
Marc

[ethios4]

For me, this is a great case of having no idea why this technique works but my ears definitely tell me it's working.

[corbinjohn]

This makes nooooooo sense

So record all your tracks to mono.

Pan and EQ your tracks as needed.

Apply Audio Effects (Chorus, Reverb, Etc.)

Then export everything through Master (stereo) Out

?????????????????

soooooo frustrating when you have such an amazing track but
you can't do anything with it cause you can't play it in a club

[capo-wear-i]

^^^

No. Read it again.

What the article is saying is that you should continue to use stereo tracks, stereo reverb etc.. but to make crtical mixing descisions (ie balance & EQ) in mono first before you start thinking in stereo. Your final mix will still be stereo, but will be highly mono compatable.

If you've ever made a track that sounds fantastic and 'big' at home through your £800 studio monitors but sounds weak in a club (narrow, unbalanced) , you'll know why mixing with mono in mind is a good idea.

[tw1nstates]

...But 118 tracks!? That just seems unorganized and amateurish to me...

In what way does a "large" number of tracks indicate an unorganized project?

First of all, I'm not talking like 30 to 60 tracks. With different Mic set ups for the drums, doubling guitars, etc. I can understand 60. But I would call it "large" because in the conventional Rock band there are 4 parts (Drum, Bass, Lead guitar, and Vocals). Surely, 60 tracks would be excessive for a band like this, right? Let's say this song also has a standard 3 piece horn section, 3 back up singers and a keyboard and we'll give them each 2 tracks. I'm still not getting all the way to 60 (and when I'm trying to add this up in my head I'm giving the drum section alone 15 - 20 tracks).

So when you tell me that an R&B song, which may have the same number of separate instruments, has 118 tracks, it strikes me as completely excessive. It seems like the producer/engineer is hitting cmnd+T every time he has an idea instead of thinking about how that new idea would fit into the framework of the tracks already there. It seems lazy to just be constantly piling on.

When I'm adding new parts to my tunes I need to be able to see, or at least, know what is going on in every track. Or else how would new parts be cohesive to the overall idea of the song? There is no possible way that that producer knew what was going on in his song at all times. It's just impossible that as he was adding a new piano part on Track 115 that he was thinking about how it worked with the congos on track 27 and the Sax on track 82. In fact, I'm REALLY interested in hearing said R&B song now.

most commercial (Kiss 10 playlist stuff) I hear these days is gonna have loads of tracks.

Bv's, harmonies different verses and edits are gonna tke a load.

Anyway, who cares, you don't work like that they do. . .

[sporkles]

I've been doing this ever since I learnt of "phase cancellation" some years ago, when it was pointed out to me that sounds
can actually disappear altogether when summed to mono. I simply have a Utility on my master channel, which I can turn on and
off with a simple key press.

[JoshR]

I'm confused. Can you just add Live's Utility effect to the master channel, then select either left or right, or does listening in mono involve changing signal routing? Or do you need a 3rd party plug-in?

[simonlb]

I'm confused. Can you just add Live's Utility effect to the master channel, then select either left or right, or does listening in mono involve changing signal routing? Or do you need a 3rd party plug-in?

If you're doing what the OP suggests then surely you'd just add the utility to your master channel, set width to zero and turn off one of your speakers?