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Should I care about mixing for MONO?
I watched the Fabfilter video on mixing so people listening in mono will have a good experience. In Auria, I switched the master to mono and, yeah, it sounds much worse. I like double-tracking a lead instrument and panning each of the two tracks to the extreme left and right to create a strong centered signal. In mono, these parts tend to sound the worst.
It seems like a pretty big sacrifice for an audience that may not actually exist. Aren't most mobile devices providing stereo speakers at this point?
Thoughts?
Comments
Really depends on the intended target audience and format. In a lot of circumstances it doesn’t matter and others (like club music) it definitely matters.
My output will be heard on youtube, facebook, instagram etc., but not Spotify or any streaming service of that type.
In general, if you’re mostly working with virtual instruments then it’s not as important. If you’re recording bands/instruments with multiple mics, it’s very important.
Just curious...when double tracking your guitars are you actually playing the part and recording it twice? Or, are you just duplicating the track and panning it?
I take multiple takes and mix them together, so recording it twice. I'm not working with any virtual instruments, all mic'd acoustic instruments or direct input electric instruments (think guitars, not keyboards). So far, I'm only using one mic at a time.
In your case I’d say it’s important to check in mono from time to time to detect potential phase issues. Although, I guess that could be said for anyone.
I’m less concerned with the average consumer listening on mono systems (it’s rare these days) and more concerned with phase cancellation. The exception is club sound systems as someone mentioned above. There are still a lot of venues with mono sound systems.
Are you recording in mono? That seems to be more important
Yes, I'm only recording to mono tracks.
I would say mono is increasingly common these days. My understanding is that most portable wifi (edit... i mean bluetooth) speakers are mono.
This article is a few years old now. I don't know if any new developments have made it less relevant.
https://medium.com/@larskjensen/the-return-to-mono-9468ae3e97ac#:~:text=Sound bars, iPods, AirPlay,,monophonic, not stereo sound sources.
Good points in that article (and Steve Guttenberg as a bonus!).
I just remembered that I'm using mono Yamaha Musiccast wifi speakers in a couple of rooms of my home. I guess I need to learn to mix for mono.........
I have found for me that writing / mixing in mono (virtual instruments) has definitely resulted in some of my best mixes. Creatively though I find the results less inspired but that could just be the learning curve phase of readjusting my brain to actually enjoy mono with headphones (no speakers
).
Audio engineering (as far as I’m concerned) is really the art of carving out clear spaces in your mix so you don’t have frequencies overlapping or hiding other elements in the recording. Mixing in mono is a very good way to determine this before mixing for stereo.
+1
I’ve been finding my best results when I mix in mono for a while and then listening to it in stereo and at that point I usually only need to make a few minor adjustments. It seems like you’re taking out the middle by hard panning, have you tried using a subtle chorus or delay effect to widen the sound instead?
Arranging is a better way to accomplish that. Sounds should fit together without “carving.”
An audio engineer I was listening to said something to the effect that it was no coincidence that his best mixed albums featured people who knew how to play together and weren't stepping all over each others toes. He said that in many ways the best sounding bands just intuitively 'engineered' their sound long before he even showed up.
That’s an excellent point also.
A passionate argument by Kush, who definitely cares about mixing in mono first:
As a professional mixing and mastering engineer, I have never once mixed in mono. You can pay attention to how things will translate for mono just by listening to the stereo imaging. If the center of the mix is hollow and lacking any instrumentation, then yes it will sound weak in mono. That’s one reason I always discourage people from overdoing things like stereo widening plug ins.
To be clear, I’m not saying that mixing in mono has no benefit. Just that it’s not something you NEED to do in order to have mixes that translate just fine to mono. I still firmly believe that earbuds, headphones, laptop speakers, and car stereos are the main ways people listen to music these days, and those are all stereo.
(I’ve also done live sound for quite a few festivals, I think people would be surprised how much stereo information is still present at FOH)
Just my 0.02 though, people should definitely use whatever method they think works best for them.
I always mix (EQ, compression, etc.) in mono.
Then switch to stereo and adjust panning.
Check the mix in mono again and back to stereo.
Maybe I’m just addicted to the awesome feeling of the stereo sound after my ears get used to the mono.
Imo it can be very important to check your mix in mono, especially if recording audio that can be out of phase. I spent months recording tracks a few years back and recorded a ton of guitar tracks thru a digitech multi effects pedal using the stereo output, which I didn’t know were out of phase. Later down the line I listened to the songs in mono and the guitar tracks literally disappeared lol. Everything out of phase was cancelled out in mono. To make things worse is the hard drive with the master recording got damaged so I can’t go back and fix or record just the guitar over, I have to record all the songs again 🤦🏽♂️
Is there a tool that makes it easier to "carve" with maybe a visual representation of each instrument/track color coded on a single spectrum so as to see what space is occupied already? I know it's about using ears, but visual reinforcement can help the learning process.
FabFilter ProQ3 should do the trick.
Changing the listening perspective can be helpful. Mono might be helpful for some things. Maybe you just want to mix it for a stereo space and not care...that's always a possibility. I do find changing the perspective to be helpful.
@Sabicas the closest thing to what you're proposing that I can think of in iOS land is one of the visual EQs like FabFilter Q3 or Toneboosters Equaliser 4 on the master buss and then solo your tracks so you can see where each track is sitting. This should give you a pretty decent idea of what is where. And maybe do some high and low filter cuts to the soloed track to see and hear where they are sitting in the frequency spectrum.
As far as I can tell, I don't have any phase issues when switching to mono. I played around with switching the phase on any double-tracked instrument that became weaker in mono and it made no difference. I did expose a lot of lower midrange mud to my ears, however.
I purchased the TB Equalizer and started analyzing. This app is way more complex than the PSP EQ that comes with Auria. Gonna have to read the manual on this one.