Mono Mix

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ecktronic

ecktronic

Mixing and Mastering.
Does anyone know how the pros get such a wide stereo image in their mastering but at the same time still keeping a reasonable quality when listening to it in mono?

Do pro mixers mix down checking the mix in mono aswell as in stereo?
Say if you have the same guitar part tracked twice and panned to a certain degree, do pro mixers also add a third of the same guitar part track at low level bang in the centre of the mix?
 
Pro mixers almost always will check in mono, from what I have seen and heard.

One way to help doubled guitars sound a little better in mono is to switch up the tones a bit. Change pickups, or amp settings, or guitars, or all three and re-track it. This way there is not quite as much cancellation when summed to mono. Your idea sounds interesting, but I think you would be better off in the long run just making sure that your panned guitar tracks sum to mono well. Mixing in mono is a good idea because it helps you hear if everything is in phase, which is a good thing even if you are mixing in stereo for the long run.

Personally if I had a good stereo mix, I wouldn't rack my brain making it sound great in mono if I was having trouble. But this is because I know no one is going to listen to my mixes in mono, and if they are, say on an old TV or a low powered FM signal, then I know the quality isn't going to shine through too much anyways. That being said, I will try to make my mixes sound good in mono in general.

But yes, mixing in mono can be very good.

A pro will probably chime in here.
 
I mix and record in mono.

I will make sure to check that I'm getting a good stereo image on the mics and then throw everything back to mono while tracking.

One of the last things I do when mixing is set the stereo panning. That way I know I am achieving true seperation of the elements.

I rarely pan things much past 70% either way.

I never hard pan things.

I believe in having a strong center with an ample, yet realistic, stereo image. I can't stand the sound of the "20 foot wide drum kit" or hard panning guitar tracks.

I believe the "glue" that holds a recording together comes from an interaction of stereo sides.
 
I'm with Cloneboy on a lot of that -

If you can get a mix to work in mono - That is, get all the instrumentation to be heard clearly so they're not "stepping on each other" and such - When you pan it out, you're almost guaranteed a decent sounding mix.

It might not be EQ'd the way you would have imagined, but the technical aspect - the "space" between the instruments sonically - works itself out wonderfully in mono, and puts a quick stop to "mixing yourself into a hole."

It passively forces you to get the mix the way IT wants to be, instead of chasing your tail trying to get it to be something it doesn't.
 
Cheers all for the info. Sounds like a good idea about having two different guitar tones for double tracking, but that could put the balance off a bit. Maybe not though because my mixes have two different guitar tones, panned quite a bit. The two guitars are just cloned and then staggered. I pan one guitar at the choruses 100 left and 40 right and the other guitar 100 right and 40 left. In mono the guitars just get lost and what you do hear of the guitars is phasing because i cloned the tracks. Just didnt have time to track them twice.
 
IMHO cloning a track is a bad idea. It's smarter to achieve thickness in other ways like compression, eq, tube saturation plugin or reverb.
 
ecktronic said:
The two guitars are just cloned and then staggered. I pan one guitar at the choruses 100 left and 40 right and the other guitar 100 right and 40 left.
Click to expand...
Cloning and panning the guitars, like you have described is a lot of trouble for nothing. If you just take one track and pan it 60 to one side it would be the same as panning the track 100 one way and a clone 40 the other. Remember if you pan one track 100 left and a clone 100 right, you get the same thing as panning the first track in the center.
 
Farview said:
Remember if you pan one track 100 left and a clone 100 right, you get the same thing as panning the first track in the center.
Click to expand...

It will just be louder.

And take up more hard drive space and processing power to play.
 
I clone so as to create a stereo image rather than a mono image. The cloned track is delayed by a few miliseconds and then panned. I wasnt trying to thicken up the guitars. A stereo guitar image sounds 100 times better than a mono guitar.
If i tracked the guitar twice rather than cloning the track i would have no reason to put a delay on the second track as the two tracks wouldnt be exactly identical, so then i could pan them and create a stereo guitar image.
 
ecktronic said:
I clone so as to create a stereo image rather than a mono image. The cloned track is delayed by a few miliseconds and then panned.
Click to expand...
This creates phase problems and never sounds as good as double tracked guitars.
 
Thats what i was thinking. Would still like to try it out to see if i can get a good sound.
 
Try putting a mic up close, and two mics distant from the amp, each one about 6' away and 6' to the left or right of the guitar. Record all 3 tracks seperately.

Now do a second take of guitar.

Now pan them something like this:

Take A:

Mic 1 - 15% L
Mic 2 - 50% L
Mic 3 - 30% R

Take B:

Mic 1 - 15% R
Mic 2 - 50% R
Mic 3 - 30% L

Big, big stereo guitars await. :)
 
Wohh, confusing. Trying to get my head round the panning settings. Just a bit confused of what mic is what. The close mic i would have thought would be panned 50 L 50R, the left mic i would have thought would be panned 15L and 30L, and the right mic 15R and 30R.
Am i wrong?
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
I mix and record in mono.

I will make sure to check that I'm getting a good stereo image on the mics and then throw everything back to mono while tracking.

One of the last things I do when mixing is set the stereo panning. That way I know I am achieving true seperation of the elements.

I rarely pan things much past 70% either way.

I never hard pan things.

I believe in having a strong center with an ample, yet realistic, stereo image. I can't stand the sound of the "20 foot wide drum kit" or hard panning guitar tracks.

I believe the "glue" that holds a recording together comes from an interaction of stereo sides.
Click to expand...

hi, do you do this with one speaker turned off , and turn yourself to the one speaker to listen?
Or can I just click the -mono/stereo- button on Sonar and use both speakers?
thanks
 
At home when tracking I turn my mixer main buss to MONO. When mixing at home on my PC I center pan everything. When recording and mixing at the studio I set everything to center pan in ProTools.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
I mix and record in mono.

I will make sure to check that I'm getting a good stereo image on the mics and then throw everything back to mono while tracking.

One of the last things I do when mixing is set the stereo panning. That way I know I am achieving true seperation of the elements.

I rarely pan things much past 70% either way.

I never hard pan things.

I believe in having a strong center with an ample, yet realistic, stereo image. I can't stand the sound of the "20 foot wide drum kit" or hard panning guitar tracks.

I believe the "glue" that holds a recording together comes from an interaction of stereo sides.
Click to expand...


That's interesting, Cloneboy.

I was really after that wide drumkit sound, so I went and bought lots of recording gear so I could multitrack my drums and hard pan my OHs so I would have that "ride ping in my right ear, HH on my left ear" thing. All very "kewl". But after living with it for a while, and going back to listen to my recordings done with just an overhead and a BD mic, I find it sounds better and more "glued", and that I'm heading in the more center direction also.
 
Exactly!!! The only way you would ever truly hear a kit that wide is if you were the drummer. But even then your not going to here the ride with just one ear. I record all drums in mono, and I generally pan my drums like so:

Right Kick-4R
Left Kick-4L
Snare-2L
Tom 1-8L
Tom 2-3L
Tom 3-3R
Tom 4-8R
Floor Tom 1-10R
Floor Tom 2-12R
HiHat-7L
Ride-15R
Splash-Center
Crash 1-15L
Crash 2-5R
China-10R
Overheads-varies but never more than 30R+30L

Guitars: usually set about 20L and 20R. Almost always tracked in stereo (Seperately of course).
 
You know it's funny, cause alot of times reverb gives the illusion of super wide mixes. It's really about tricking the ear.

But from what I've seen and worked with, there's alot of good stereo "expander" plug-ins out there that do what you're asking. Yet alot of times, they sound like pure ass if you have no experience with one. I save it for the mastering engineer.

However, different engineers have different beliefs on that.
 
I dont really beleive in centre mixes. I love the wide spacial sound especially on guitars.
 
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