Putting the Low End in Mono During Mastering.

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JG96

JG96

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So a while ago I was mastering a stereo live recording. The subwoofer was to the side of the stage and because of this I essentially made a high pass and low pass of the mix and put the low end into mono. I am wondering if this is a good idea during mastering in general. For example toms and guitars are generally panned but contain low end that is omnidirectional in real life. Would it make sense to make the low end mono on a master bus? Or would it introduce some crazy phase issues?
 
I pull low end from the side info pretty frequently...
 
Cool. So I suppose I am not doing anything too out there then. What is your process for doing this?
 
Listening to see if I need to pull some low end out of the side info and then doing it...? Same as anything else.
 
That is an essential part of mastering for vinyl, because having a lot if low frequencies on one side and not the other would make the needle jump out of the groove.

John, I think he is asking how you accomplish puttint the low end in mono, not how you decide whether to do it or not.
 
Farview said:
John, I think he is asking how you accomplish puttint the low end in mono, not how you decide whether to do it or not.
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With a M/S EQ or running the entire chain in M/S -- I think the OP is looking for if that would cause goofiness though --- Taking something off to the side and "moving" it to the middle. And it certainly could - Up to the source. And it could potentially be "corrected" to some extent by inserting time into the equation.
 
I picked up a bunch of nice plugs from Plugin Alliance (Brainworx, Elysia, SPL, Maag) during this year's holiday sales....and several of them, both comps and EQs, give that M/S processing option, which I wanted to explore a little more during the final stages of my mixes.

I've not ever tried before specifically "moving" the LF or whatever within the final stereo mix....I would just mix and adjust the overall EQ, so if I had tracks panned hard, and they were pushing too hard on the LF or HF, etc....I would make adjustments to them individually before getting to the final stereo mix.
Of course, when you only have the final stereo mix to work with, or where you just want to do some touching up and not go back to the mix stage, then the I can see how the M/S processing would come in handy.
 
For "music" I usually do this by arrangement, panning, and eq. Some noisier things will occasionally need or want a more drastic approach though. There are "bass management" plugins out there which work well enough. I use BassLane because I have it and it doesn't seem to mess things up too much.
 
JG96 said:
Would it make sense to make the low end mono on a master bus? Or would it introduce some crazy phase issues?
Click to expand...

Phase is not the problem, and "mono-izing" low frequencies is a good idea. This plug-in does exactly that and it's free (though for only a short time I believe):

Mono Bass | Boz Digital Labs

--Ethan
 
If you wanna understand how it works: copy Stereo track to double mono. Copy the Left track with Phase Inversion on (opposite sign to track). (R+L)*-6dB -> Center Information Track; (R-L)*-6dB -> side Information Track.
Now do your EQing, and blablabla...
Then copy Center Information track with negative sign (Phase Switch on).
Center + side -> R
Center - Side -> L

If you have a way to work with flexible busses, you might be able to do it without copying...

The advantage: you should be able to understand what you do, and try it. No unknown algorithms...

P.S.: it's late here and I'm damn tired, but I assume you'd be better off when using -3dB on both transformations...
 
So, for the dummies, where exactly does one place one's Basslane/Sanford Bass Tightener etc. in the mastering chain? :confused:
 
Thanks Ethan. I've sent you my address via PM as I was unable to connect to your server for some reason.
 
Armistice said:
So, for the dummies, where exactly does one place one's Basslane/Sanford Bass Tightener etc. in the mastering chain? :confused:
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it matters all that much, other than before the final limiter and maybe after any other mid-side processing. I would move it around and listen.
 
rayc said:
Thanks Ethan. I've sent you my address via PM as I was unable to connect to your server for some reason.
Click to expand...

I got your email address from your PM and sent you the plug-in. Is Telstra your ISP? Apparently people who use them are not able to get to my web site due to a bug in their DNS or some such. Someone else told me this will fix that for you:

Hi Ethan, It turns out the Telstra DNS servers did not have an entry for your domain at all, so when it came to resolving and routing through to your server it came back with nothing at all, even pinging the IP directly wouldn't work because Telstra did not know where to route it.

Adding Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8 to the alternate DNS server on my network settings the problem was resolved (pun intended), and full access to both your websites was restored.​

--Ethan
 
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