A simple, clear mixing question

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microchip

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Since my post in another catagory went into a tangent-land, I am going to make a clear-cut attempt here.

Everyone is saying that when you mix down, you should mix everything into a left and a right track.

I use Cakewalk and I set my pan settings on each track BEFORE I do a mix down. So, since I already have the pan for each track already set, I can go ahead and bounce (mix down) everything to one track and it would be the same as doing it to a left and right track wouldn't it?

And since I am doing this on a computer, is there any sound quality lost by mixing everything into one track?
 
I read a little of the other thread and it seems that you are a little confused about the term 'Track'. In the old analog days tape machines had a fixed number of 'tracks', 2, 8, 16, or 24 etc. each of these was MONO, there was no such thing as a stereo track, If you wanted to record in stereo you had to use 2 tracks, one for left channel and one for right.
Since the advent of DAWs some software manufacturers decided that to make it easier to keep left and right tracks together that they should just create Stereo tracks, which are basically 2 tracks stuck together.
99% of the time you hear someone mention a track they will mean a mono track, if they mean a stereo track they will usually say 2 tracks.
 
Well, that makes sence and I appreciate the answer on that. One thing I would like to note though is that when I first started playing my synth directly into my headphones, it would sound wonderful. Then when I took the mono output of the synth and put it into the soundcard and recorded a single track, it didn't sound as good as it did in my headphones. But, when I used both the left and right outs from the synth and separately hooked them into the soundcard and recorded a track, it sounded so much better and I call it stereo because within just a single track I do have basically a left and right input from the synth, and the left and right channels in each track are NOT identical. And of course on Cakewalk, it actually shows two separate pictures for the left and right part of the track. So that is why I call it a stereo track I guess.

I understand that if you have a vocal part recording on one microphone into a track, then I do consider that a mono track. But let's say you had 2 microphones going into the left and right inputs that you are recording with onto one track...wouldn't that be a stereo track?

It's not that I don't understand stereo is basically left/right and that you take mono tracks and put them together into left/right tracks. But, let's now say that I have 5 mono tracks recorded. The first 3 I pan to the left and the last 2 I pan to the right and bounce the, into one track, that is what everyone means by bouncing to a left and right track?
 
microchip said:
But let's say you had 2 microphones going into the left and right inputs that you are recording with onto one track...wouldn't that be a stereo track?

No. Stereo only exists with two tracks. If you record the left and right inputs to one track, then you are simply blending the two together to one mono track. If its the exact same source, then you are doubling the signal (which was halved in the first place when it was split to left and right inputs).

Cy
 
If you bounce everything down to one track it will end up Mono since you will have no seperate left/right information. If you bounce everything down to one STEREO track it will stay stereo since you will actually have bounced down to 2 TRACKS.
 
Cyrokk,

What you said is exactly what I had been thinking about at first, but the thing is, the 2 inputs from the same source are NOT identical or halved. In fact, when I play my synth, if I play on the upper end of the keyboard the sounds are more to the right, and vice versa if I play on the lower end. So, the left and right inputs do change depending on where I play at on the keyboard.

And another example, there are times I have recorded a track from my synth that incorporated a rotary effect in which a pad sound alternates from left to right. Unless I have both the left and right input from my synth, this effect would never be heard on a mono track. If I am playing a pad sound and have a rotary setting on my synth, both the left and right sections of one single track WILL show the left and right alteration. After recording this track, if I were to play back the track without any mixdow or panning, the sound will still alternate from left to right on playback.
 
Now you're getting the whole idea behind the concept of "stereo."

The answer to your question is that when you record a "stereo track" you are actually recording TWO TRACKS. It's misleading to call it A stereo track. The stereo trackS you are refering to are actually two tracks, consisting of Left speaker / Right speaker.

What comes out of the Left speaker is one track, and what comes out of the Right speaker is another.

What is confusing you is the fact that they are grouped together, so one might assume it is one track, but it isn't.
 
If you pan this one track you're referring to, and the sound is the same when swept right or left....sorry, but you're mono dude! Regardless of what source material you started with.....

Overly simple response to a question that has already been answered....but hey, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in anyway.
 
"No. Stereo only exists with two tracks."

Unless it is converted to an interleaved stereo track....



...which links them and makes them ....uhhhh....mono I recon. :D
 
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