OverHead Tracking - 1 Stereo track vs. 2 Mono tracks

  • Thread starter Thread starter raybbj
  • Start date Start date
raybbj

raybbj

Member
To be clear, I'm not asking for solutioning here. It's just a question out of curiosity and for my own learning.

In my drum template in my DAW, I had my Drum overheads on separate mono tracks panned left and right. I then sent them to an AUX bus for easier mixing (OH Sub).
A while ago when I was refurbishing my drum template, I decided to simply record my overheads to a single stereo track rather than 2 mono tracks for simplicity sake. A few recordings in I noted that my cymbals weren't as loud or present than before. The overheads now had a more balanced sound between drums and cymbals (I actually prefer more cymbals in my OH's rather than a balanced sound). After much troubleshooting, I decided to go back to 2 mono tracks panned left and right and voila, there was more separation in volume between drums and cymbals.

Is this normal? By that I mean a different overall sound between 2 monos panned left and right vs. a single stereo track? Theroretcially I would thought there would be no difference, but there certainly is. Why is this?

To be clear, I never moved the location of the Overheads.

Any insights?

Regards,
Ray
 
I've had my drums miked up for many years. One mic per drum, plus a few pencil mikes roughly pointing
at the cymbals from above. It all goes through a 32ch Behringer Eurodesk mixer.
Am still experimenting, and have just switched the reverb sends to individual mono aux sends rather than
main bus stereo sends.
Next thing will be to mix the drums to a mono track.
It is a whole can of worms.
 
raybbj said:
To be clear, I'm not asking for solutioning here. It's just a question out of curiosity and for my own learning.

In my drum template in my DAW, I had my Drum overheads on separate mono tracks panned left and right. I then sent them to an AUX bus for easier mixing (OH Sub).
A while ago when I was refurbishing my drum template, I decided to simply record my overheads to a single stereo track rather than 2 mono tracks for simplicity sake. A few recordings in I noted that my cymbals weren't as loud or present than before. The overheads now had a more balanced sound between drums and cymbals (I actually prefer more cymbals in my OH's rather than a balanced sound). After much troubleshooting, I decided to go back to 2 mono tracks panned left and right and voila, there was more separation in volume between drums and cymbals.

Is this normal? By that I mean a different overall sound between 2 monos panned left and right vs. a single stereo track? Theroretcially I would thought there would be no difference, but there certainly is. Why is this?

To be clear, I never moved the location of the Overheads.

Any insights?
Click to expand...
You have better separation with the two mono tracks - and can spread the sound more with panning - easily hitting the sweet spot - with a single stereo track you have to very exact in your placement - in order to get the stereo sounding right- but you also can't alter it after the fact - at least not a very natural way.
 
In theory, your stereo track should be exactly the same as the two hard-panned mono tracks. But theory may not reflect reality.
Assuming that your interface or DAW isn't doing something silly like adding cross-talk between the two signals to fill in the center (I've never heard of that, but hey anything is possible) some potential candidates might be:

Does anything in your FX chain introduce cross-talk between the two channels?
Does your DAW use the same pan law when hard-panning mono vs. a stereo track?
 
VomitHatSteve said:
In theory, your stereo track should be exactly the same as the two hard-panned mono tracks. But theory may not reflect reality.
Assuming that your interface or DAW isn't doing something silly like adding cross-talk between the two signals to fill in the center (I've never heard of that, but hey anything is possible) some potential candidates might be:

Does anything in your FX chain introduce cross-talk between the two channels?
Does your DAW use the same pan law when hard-panning mono vs. a stereo track?
Click to expand...
I think you are on the right track. I do believe there is some sort of cross talk or summing going on in a single stereo track. I had a similar problem many years ago when I had 2 tracks from a mixing board panned left and right going into my Audio Interface and the signals were summed. I don't recall the exact signal chain, but I have seen something similar.
 
Split the stereo track into two mono tracks and pan them to the sides Does it have the same separation as when you record to two mono tracks to start with? If not then you aren't getting 100% separation in your feed.
 
I have not experienced a situation where there was an audible difference between recording separate tracks and recording a single stereo track. The main difference is in how you process them after recording. A single stereo track saves having to create a bus to apply effects to both at once, but it makes it harder to apply different effects to one channel.
 
I'm with BSG. Assuming the daw (which daw?) allows the same degree of panning in both setups, there shouldn't be a difference.

You could prove it by making a wav file with two sine waves, one pitch in the left and another in the right,
Import that to dual mono tracks, hard panned, then again to a stereo track hard panned.
Make sure both copies are lined up to 00:00:00 starting point, then reverse polarity of your stereo track and hit play.

You should hear nothing.

If I had to guess I'd say you have some stereo plugin or process that sounds different to whatever equivalent you'd been using in your dual mono setup.
 
All of my processing in both scenerios remained the same. Either I processed (EQ and comp) the OH Sub bus, or I applied the EXACT same processing to a stereo track. The only thing that changed was 2 x monos vs. 1 stereo.
A learning experience nonetheless. Something to be aware of in the future.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top