Mixing advice

[Imhotepiii]

I’m recording some rock music through a cheap little usb mixer into cool edit pro and then transfer everything into Fruity Loops where the drums are constructed and then after adding some reverb etc, I export each track individually and mix them in Cool Edit. I was doing it this way because I knew my way around Fruity Loops better. Currently I have only the small built in computer speakers on my laptop and head phones for playback. I was just looking for some advice and presets for guitar, bass etc.

Should the vocal tracks or any others be mono? I’m using all stereo tracks at this point.
Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[gecko zzed]

You are not likely to get satisfying mixes using built-in speakers or headphones, so you need to think about getting decent speakers.

Where the sound source is effectively coming from a single point (e.g. a mouth, an instrument through a DI or a mike on an amp cabinet) there is nothing to be gained by having stereo tracks. Make them mono. Use stereo tracks where the source is wide (e.g. a drum kit, a piano, a choir, or a stereo synth).

 

[Imhotepiii]

Ok cool, thanks thought I was doing something that was helping the sound using stereo tracks, here is a sample, any advice is appreciated.