mixing in mono with 2 speakers.

[fendertelemusik]

Hey, so reaper has the mono switch I tend to find I have a better ear for doing levels when in mono as its all grouped together... however if I take mono off when im done it sounds off due to some tracks being panned in the stereo mix.

I came to ask this really.

If I pan where I want the instruments first, then hit the mono switch and set the levels will this counter the problem and when I come off the mono back to stereo levels will be maintained... I saw someone post this somewhere else and just wondered if it actually worked.

Thanks.

 

[miroslav]

There is most likely the "Pan Law" setting (look it up) being applied...so the levels sound different in mono than when panned L/R.
You may have your DAW Pan Law set to something other than 0dB...and that's OK...-3dB is a norm, which means tracks get louder by 3dB when panned, and softer by 3dB when at center (mono). If you use 0dB...the levels stay the same when panning or in mono.

Mono is OK for checking some things...like frequency and levels balance to get a sense of how it folds to mono, since some people may be listening in mono...but you are not going to find a perfect setting for both mono and stereo, so in the end, you need to mix for your final delivery format.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I'll second the point about pan law.

The difference between stereo and summed sound in stereo speakers will vary according to the system used to listen, so you have to accept some degree of compromise. Generally speaking, I find the -3dB pan law to work best for that. And I do work with the mix summed for some of the mixing process, with the understanding that it will change a bit when I revert to stereo. If it changes too much then I need to look into certain things, like if I've got a polarity or phase mismatch between channels.

Another thing to consider is that LF (below about 300Hz) will sum acoustically better than the rest of the audio spectrum. If there's a lot of panned information you might hear a noticeable drop above that frequency when summing (or a slight rise below it, depending on how the summing is done).

 

[grimtraveller]

I have never gotten the "mix in mono" bit. Over the years so many people have explained it to me at HR and I concluded long ago {and this is still my current position} that it's pointless {for me, not as a general thing or for those who specifically swear by it} to mix in mono to get my levels if as soon as I pan things, the relationships change. I always remember Massive Master saying something like he wouldn't even consider getting to the stereo part until everything was sitting nicely in mono. I have never understood that but he knows what he's doing and why and therefore it's one of the ways of going. One of the things I always liked about the art and craft of recording and mixing is that there are a variety of ways of getting to the same point and it would get pretty tiresome back in the day when people, be it here, in books or on videos would advocate only one way as being the way ~ and it would usually be their way. Mind you, I've found that in life, to be honest, not just music.
When I mix, there may be songs that involve instruments or vocals moving from one part of the stereo spectrum to the other or other things that keep the relationships of all the elements fluid in one way or another.
Having said all that though, I may well have parts of a song that turn out to be mono in that everything at that moment gravitate to the centre. And something that all the "mix/check in mono" discussions definitely did for me was to breed a certain curiosity. So whenever I do a mix, I'll listen to it on a variety of systems, a couple of stereos in different rooms, a small boom box, the computer speakers, the car, the ipod and through headphones, one of which has a mono setting. Over the last 14 months I've done about 87 mixes and only on a couple did they sound a bit ropey in parts when I listened to them in mono.
I actually do really like mono recordings from the 50s and 60s though. During the summer, I converted many songs from my Beatle collection {well, up until "Abbey Road" & "Let it be} to mono as I found they just sound better than the stereo ones. Same with the Pretty Things' "SF Sorrow." That was quite a turnaround for me. But for my own stuff, I am and always have been a stereohound.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

If your mix changes a lot between mono and stereo it suggests something going on with pan law or your room acoustics or both.

There's a difference between panning it all center and summing left and right. If your pan law is set to something that doesn't work with your room then simply using the pan controls to check the balance in mono will throw the balance off when panned back to stereo. If you're using a global summing control and it changes, that suggests an acoustic problem, possibly the geometry of your speakers and listening position. The too close and too wide situation skews the balance between panned and centered tracks. One will tend to mix the centered tracks too hot.

If you dynamically pan something across the stereo field it should not change much in level in your control room and in most other spaces. If it changes noticeably in either then, again, I suspect issues with your room acoustics and/or your pan law setting.

For a static mix, with no dynamic panning across the stereo field, you can mix just fine with any pan law setting.

 

[Massive Master]

I'm one of those "mix in mono" types until everything sits pretty well. Just makes it easier (IMO/E) to get the "deep and spacious" down earlier. Make everything sit well in mono, it's going to sit well in stereo 100% of the time. The opposite is (soooooo) not necessarily true.

 

[miroslav]

The problem I have with "mix in mono" is that it still requires you to build the mix. So you have to spend time on level balance, frequencies, FX and processing...etc....and you get your nice mono mix.
Then...you flip to stereo, and you pretty much have to readjust and tweak all those things all over again.

I'm not sure that first mixing in mono actually makes it any easier and/or faster to then switch to stereo...than if you just mix in stereo.
It might be good to have that mono perspective if you are concerned about how your mix will sound in mono...and that's a valid thing...but I don't feel that it really makes things better when you then switch to stereo to finish your mix.
Granted...if you never check in mono, you can have a terrific stereo mix that sucks in mono...but again, that depends if you are concerned about having a decent mono mix.
Bottom line...there is no way you will ever have a mono mix and stereo mix that sound the same...so to me, they are in fact two separate mixes, and if I needed both, I would mix for both, individually.

That said...I've never bothered to spend a lot of time on all my mixes getting them to first sound good in mono, and then switching to stereo.
I've found that any time I made some adjustments in mono...as soon as I switched to stereo, I didn't like them...so it became too much of a tug of war, and so I just prefer to mix in stereo, which is how I want to hear my mixes, not in mono.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I find that if I have to mix on headphones for a stereo feed, like a broadcast mix, I'm best off setting levels in mono and checking pan settings occasionally in stereo.

 

[keith.rogers]

It's just a lot easier to A/B if you actually have a single speaker, i.e., that outputs only the summed/mono, and you can set its level independently.

 

[grimtraveller]

Bottom line...there is no way you will ever have a mono mix and stereo mix that sound the same...so to me, they are in fact two separate mixes, and if I needed both, I would mix for both, individually.

That used to be the case in the 60s. They actually did separate mixes for the two formats. It was quite annoying because on some albums, there are clear differences between the stereo and mono versions, but understandable as stereo was becoming the go-to format.

 

[rob aylestone]

Isn't that because stereo was an effect, rather than an attempt at realism. My dad had a stereo and one speaker went in the kitchen and the other in the living room. All the old stuff sounded fine, but his system failed with stereo big band where the saxes were in the kitchen and the brass in the other room. Do-wop, do-wop sounded weird, as they were using hard panning and reverb, so in one room there was just the stereo reverb, and none at all of the source. Bit by bit we crept to a realistic image. The Beatles had this hard panning too. I find that I'm very keen now on very mild panning, I never seem to go to the extreme ends of the l-r range. I also can't tell if an instrument suddenly becoming louder is real loudness or just suddenly occupying a space that was empty.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

In the earliest stereo consoles the only pan control was a switch: left, center or right. It wasn't an artistic decision to hard pan things, the pan knob just hadn't been invented.

 

[grimtraveller]

The Beatles had this hard panning too

Perhaps it was because I was listening so much on phones {although for 40 + years it hasn't bothered me} but I found myself this summer getting really irritated by many of the Beatles' stereo mixes. It's not that I'm against, for example, hard panning of drums per se, because I have a lot of music that hard pans bass and drums and I like them. But there was just something about the way the vocals and drums, for example, would occupy one channel and the guitar and bass the other {or whatever the combination was} that I found irritating. In the end, I made a list of all the ones I was going to change and spent a while doing it. In Audacity there is an option to convert to mono so I did that. Some of the songs in stereo, even on albums like "Help !" that have irritating mixes, are great. Other not. I was amazed at how much I got picky about "Revolver," "Pepper" and "MMT" while the stereo version of "Rubber Soul" should be deported in my view ! So now, all my Beatle albums are a mixture of stereo and mono mixes depending on the song. I also found the same thing with the Pretty Thing' "SF Sorrow." Actually, it had been annoying me for a while. A few of the stereo mixes were OK but I had to alter most of them. And they sound much better. The percussion interlude of "Baron Saturday" sounds totally different in mono thabn stereo ~ in stereo it just slurs, slows and breaks down. All that disappears in mono. I could have just bought the alternative versions but I've already paid and I'm not into having several copies of the same piece of music. I like music ~ I'm not a collector.

I find that I'm very keen now on very mild panning, I never seem to go to the extreme ends of the l-r range

For me it really depends on the song, what's in it and how I feel it can best be represented in a coherent way. But I do sometimes pan to the extremes. In saying that though, I pan everywhere and in the course of a song, almost every pan position might be used. Although I've never specifically thought about it, no two songs I've mixed have the same pan structure.