Various questions

[Monkey Allen]

Hey..some questions. Could you help me out?

1. If I record a track in mono and then send that track to a stereo bus...what does that mean? I've never heard of a mono bus. does it convert the mono to stereo or something? Do I lose whatever panning I have applied to that mono track?

2. Do the instruments (kick, snare, hihat etc) in ezdrummer need any compression? Or are they even already? I know you could apply eq, reverb orwhatever as per taste...but what about compression?

3. What is microphone impedence and its relationship to microphone sensitivity?

thanks

[Erockrazor]

1. A mono track to stereo bus should maintain your pan adjustments. You can also go to a mono bus but I don't know if you would maintain your pan adjustments.

2. You say reverb and eq to taste but compression should be the same. Does it need compression to your taste? EZdrummer shouldn't need to compress in terms of performance. If the drum sounds good, don't compress it. If the drum doesn't sound good, it's probably not compression that is in order.

3. We'll have to wait for another response.

Hope you're doing good monkey. Get your acoustic sounding any better to your ears? Good luck, Eric.

[Monkey Allen]

Thanks rock...a little better maybe. We'll see...

[mjbphotos]

How can you pan a mono track? Panning is left-to-right, can only be achieved with a stereo output. IE. pan to the left, pan to the right, pan somewhere in between. You can pan a mono track to a stereo bus, but a mono track is just that -one channel, no left/right.

Impedance has nothing to do with mic sensitivity. There is high impedance and low impedance, impedance is a measure of electrical resistance.

[Erockrazor]

Originally Posted by mjbphotos

How can you pan a mono track? Panning is left-to-right, can only be achieved with a stereo output. IE. pan to the left, pan to the right, pan somewhere in between. You can pan a mono track to a stereo bus, but a mono track is just that -one channel, no left/right.

I think we have the assumption that our output is a stereo master bus. So inside a DAW, the mono track can, as you said, be panned left or right. Hope that clears it up.

[Monkey Allen]

Hmmm I read that mic impedance has a lot to do with mic sensitivity. I'll have to look that one up.

So I record a mono track...I listen back and it comes out dead centre...but then I can use the pan to send it anywhere in a stereo field. If I send it 15% left does the complete mono track go there? Or does 15% of it go there and the other 85% stays middle/ centre?

[gecko zzed]

Somewhere else I posted a response to a similar question, but I can't find it quickly.

When a mono track is panned dead centre on a stereo buss, half the signal is sent right, the other half is sent left, and so the overall signal sounds like it is dead centre.

When panning halfway to the right, say, you will get 75% signal in the right channel, and 25% in the left (roughly). You can test this by turning one or other of your monitors off and having a listen to what happens with just one speaker going as you pan.

In the end, it doesn't matter what happens electronically. You can safely imagine your mono signal to be a single point source of sound (like a lighthouse on the horizon), and as you pan, this point moves across the horizon, seeming still to come from one point.

Mono busses take a mono signal and send it somewhere for further processing. In live mixing, the foldback sends are often mono busses, and they grab hold of the signal before panning. Similarly, in a DAW, a mono buss grabs the signal before panning so that you can use this for effects (e.g. reverb). The effects can also be mono, but can also take a mono signal and generate a stereo effect.

[mjbphotos]

I think we have the assumption that our output is a stereo master bus. So inside a DAW, the mono track can, as you said, be panned left or right. Hope that clears it up.

Well, he asked if he would lose the pan of his mono track, which doesn't make any sense unless it is, in fact, a stereo signal already.

[justadrummer]

Originally Posted by mjbphotos

Well, he asked if he would lose the pan of his mono track, which doesn't make any sense unless it is, in fact, a stereo signal already.

In my language "newbie" say we have a singe guiter track, recorded in
mono, since there is only one mic, or di with internal plugs, when we listen
to that track we hear it evenly out of the left and right , unless we pan it
"more" towards the left or right bus of the stereo mix we are listening to.

[Erockrazor]

Originally Posted by mjbphotos

Well, he asked if he would lose the pan of his mono track, which doesn't make any sense unless it is, in fact, a stereo signal already.

You're restating what I said.

You can pan a mono track with a stereo output. You cannot pan a mono track with mono output.

In a daw you often run into a MONO track (simply an instrument miked with one microphone) that is bussed to a stereo output. That is traditionally what happens in my sessions, as I don't only deal with stereo miked tracks.

[justadrummer]

Sorry for restating

Just trying to put it into different words that
Monkey Allen
Might understand better.

Newbie terms.

Didn't mean to offend or upset anyone.

[357mag]

The drums in EZ Drummer are already slightly compressed. Basically they sound pretty good already. But I'm in the mixing stage in my song and I added a little additional compression to the drum track and the drums responded very well.

Now the drum track sounds killer.

[Monkey Allen]

Oh yeah well if the ezdrummer drums are all ready nicely levelled then if you add compression really all you're doing is squashing the dynamic range and then maybe boosting it all up to be louder again right?

I haven't really listened to the ez hits for kick, snare alone before. Now that I have started to listen, the kick, for one, sounds pretty weak on some of the kits, if not all the ones I have anyway.