What's Mono Foldown For: and how do I set it up?

[verticalplunge]

Hi folks:

It's been 24 hours, give or take a few, since I posted on the software/hardware mixing thread and I'm already a proud owner of a Soundcraft M12 console. Patience? What's that?

Anyhow, I'm trying to get a feel for working with a real board and I was thinking about mono folddown. I know that people check their mixes in mono, but don't understand exactly why.

Also, in Digital Performer it's really easy to do a mono folddown, but I am not sure how to do it on my M12. There isn't a "mono folddown" button on the mixer like there is in DP, but there is a mono sum jack.... How can this be hooked up to my monitors?

P.S. If anyone out there is using an M12 with a computer set-up, I'd appreciate any feedabck you can give on your experience with the board.

THNX!

-DC

[sjoko2]

Originally posted by verticalplunge
Anyhow, I'm trying to get a feel for working with a real board and I was thinking about mono folddown. I know that people check their mixes in mono, but don't understand exactly why.
-DC

As mono is no longer a viable format, the key reasons to fold-down a mix to mono is to check for any potential phasing problems.
If anything is marginally out-of-phase from left-to-righ channel, you will hear the phasing occur clearly when a mix is folded down. In extreme cases a signal will disappear entirely - if it is 100% out of phase.

[jake-owa]

Originally posted by sjoko2


As mono is no longer a viable format, the key reasons to fold-down a mix to mono is to check for any potential phasing problems.

Tell that to my clock raido. Also any post-production guy will tell you that mono is still the brodcast standard. You better check mono if you care about translation.

[sjoko2]

I'll tell my clock raido, and will also consider it the next time I mix something for a brodcast