why are we still mixing in mono?

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fenix

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I hear on these boards that 5.1 is the shit and 5.1 is the next big thing and some people are even mixing in 5.1 here. So my question is, why are some people hesitant to make their stereo mix huge and wide...in other words, "if it sounds good in mono, it will sound good stereo" kind of philosophy? With this logic, why even bother with 5.1?
 
Even when something is played in stereo it can still end up being 'mostly mono' by the time it gets to the listener. If you are playing music on a boombox where the speakers are only 12" apart and you are 10' away then you are essentially listening to a summed mono signal.

You don't HAVE to mix for the lowest common denominator but it just depends on your goals for the production. If you are doing popular music than it's important. If you are doing audiophile quality recordings for a smaller market that will have good systems than screw mono compatability.

In the same way that we check for mono compatability you should also check for surround compatability if that is a concern to you. The surround decoding can do weird things to mixes that weren't encoded for true surround.
 
mono is also good to check for phase issues. Personally I hate 5.1 I'd rather see increased sample rates and bit-depth. People don't even set up stereo decently in their homes, how in the hell is the tiny pea-brain of the consumer going to even comprehend 5.1? Shit, I'd like to see the compact disc/dvd dissappear and see the re-emergence of home reel to reel players. 1/2" would be nice.
 
Plus if your mix is mono compatible you should have less issues streaming low-bandwidth audio.
 
5.1 sucks. I have no interest in 5.1 mixing.
 
Everyone remember quadrophonic and 8-tracks... yeah, we've been here before... but, the thing with 5.1 is that every peabrain wants it now, because they want dvd home entertainment systems.

most peabrains will not buy two systems with two receivers and two sets of speakers...

so I say... if it's there, why not use it?

I agree, we don't take full advantage of stereo and we could mix bigger, but the same is true for surround. we could create some fantastic mixes taking advantage of home bass management systems, center channels and the lot.

or... maybe 5.1 will go the way of quadrophonic... and in twenty years nobody will no what the heck we were talking about.
 
fenix said:
So my question is, why are some people hesitant to make their stereo mix huge and wide...
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I love making huge wide sterio mixes. The problem is the band that I record doesn't.... I made (what I beleved to be) a fantastic mix, and the front man comes up to me the next day and asks if all the instruments and vocals could be put centered in the mix and just leave the drum ambience and general sound effects off-center. He said he didn't want someone sitting on the left hand side of the car to miss out on any instruments that might be panned right (or something).

Now, if you ask me, putting every main instrument dead center like he requested is going too far... But I think people just like boaring mono-ish mixes.
 
Wide is good

I like wide as well. I was mixing a cd for a band I was in and had stuff panned moderately hard. The engineer didn't like it and said that no one has done that since the Beatles. He said that people didn't like to be 'challenged' by the mixes. That band is no more, maybe he was right.
 
5.1 is really just surround sound right? with 5 speakers (center, 2 left (back front) 2 right (back front)?

i think that rules for movies....feels like you're really there.

but, for music on a cd? kinda rediculous. headphones don't have 5 speakers too.

a music video? that would be cool...
 
There's definitely a place for surround in music. Especially with competing formats on 'next generation' stuff, like dvd-a and all of the sony nazi stuff they're coming up with (SACD)

the idea of moving to dvd discs for audio means that we can have a hi-fi stereo mix AND a surround mix on the same album. More work for us to do 2 different audio stream mixes, but it lets you play with the sonic possibilities AND still have headphone friendly mixes available, without alienating anybody.

hell, I even see the benefits to 3.1 mixing, just 2 stereo speakers and a center channel... think about it, when we center things in the mix... we're trying to make believe like there is something right in front of the listener. with a center channel... we don't have to do that anymore, because there IS something right in front of the listener.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm currently retracking a drumset composition group for surround for a dvd release... probably won't be done with the preliminaries until early - mid July, with other commitments, but I'll try to post some AC3's or something when I get them.
 
jazzrich9 said:
hell, I even see the benefits to 3.1 mixing, just 2 stereo speakers and a center channel... think about it, when we center things in the mix... we're trying to make believe like there is something right in front of the listener. with a center channel... we don't have to do that anymore, because there IS something right in front of the listener.
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I personally think the center speaker is a huge waste. I can see the benefits of "behind" speakers, but not a center speaker. L and R speakers can emulate that perfectly anyway. It is just one more speaker to waste money on and one more thing that can go wrong with speaker match/phase cancellation etc etc....
 
I can't argue with that... more speakers will always mean more stress. I guess the whole point about emulation is just what I'm saying, ideally, we wouldn't have to emulate, which means more room for our mixes.

That being said, right now home entertainment systems are anything but unified.

The big problem is there's no way of knowing whether somebody has a dts type system where all 5 speakers are identical (a happier time) or if they're running a system with huge fronts, a goofy looking center (and or their tv speaker ... bleck) and then tiny rears.

Really there's no way to account for this, and the possibility of overmixing for a center channel, when it can be guessed what that will be, usually pushes me to your camp of deaccentuating it, but... in a predictable environment (my studio ; )) it always sounds fantastic.

really the best part about surround is the existence of a dedicated sub. that's where the money is. (unless of course it's a passive sub, in which case it's twice as useless)

cheers
 
sweetnubs said:
Personally I hate 5.1 I'd rather see increased sample rates and bit-depth.
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eehhhhh .......... I think you'll need to update yourself a little ;)
the whole thing with surround / the new formats is increased sample rate and bit-depth. Most the 5.1 stuff we record / mix here is done at 24/96, and that is where it stays
 
sjoko2 said:
eehhhhh .......... I think you'll need to update yourself a little ;)
the whole thing with surround / the new formats is increased sample rate and bit-depth. Most the 5.1 stuff we record / mix here is done at 24/96, and that is where it stays
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Absolutely. DVD-A and SACD are capable of higher than CD quality on all 6 channels.

And this " more things that can go wrong with speaker match/phase cancellation etc etc...." argument is off base as well. The more channels you have the less you actually need to worry about phase issues and such. Imagine a 360.1 system. In this case you could simply assign each track to a single channel corresponding to where you would like it positioned in the horizontal plane. There'd be no need for positional emulation like you have in stereo, or even 5.1. And since no identical signals are coming out of more than one channel, comb filtering isn't an issue. Walking around the room would be akin to walking around a stage of live musicians.

Hey, why does the saxophonist sound louder? Because you're sitting right in front of his bell! :D

Thomas
 
Chibi Nappa said:
I personally think the center speaker is a huge waste. I can see the benefits of "behind" speakers, but not a center speaker. L and R speakers can emulate that perfectly anyway. It is just one more speaker to waste money on and one more thing that can go wrong with speaker match/phase cancellation etc etc....
Click to expand...

Actually true stereo imaging does benefit from a center speaker. That is why the very first stereo systems had 3 channels. That is also the basis of M/S micing.
 
Actually there was an interesting discussion over at the Yahoo-Acoustics forum about 5.1...

Someone in there mentioned there's no good/accurate room designs for 5.1 monitoring yet, another one said the center channel was a waste of channels, it should've been used as overhead channel, the reason being a) you can simulate a ghost center channel with L/R information and b) overhead sound gives a high amount of sound directivity info to the brain.


(note: I'm not an expert here, just telling you what I've absorbed from reading)

Personally: I think I'll try to learn how to mix mono first.. Adding a spaced effect on a crappy sound to make it sound better is easy, making a mono mix have space/depth/warmth/[insert favorite hype-word here] is much more difficult.


Herwig
edit: and then there's 7.1, 7.2, ...
 
hi, just trying to clear something up... I don't ever remember saying that mixing in surround for dvd, or dvd-a or using sacd ISN'T capable of higher than cd quality sound. I just about always use 24/96 on those mixes. dvd-a can do 2 channels at 24/192... I personally haven't screwed around with dvd-a all that much though.

As far as the 2 major types of home 5.1 setups... they do exist, and they do sound different. that's not about phase problems or cancellation, it's just about sound... obviously a system with 2 great fronts, a horizontally mounted center of an altogether different build than the fronts, small satellites for surround and say, a passive sub... is going to sound different than a system with an active sub, and 5 speakers that are all identical.

If you think that's off base, and those two kinds of setups sound identical, than we're really just not communicating, and I apologize if I'm not making my point clearly...

as far as phase, I 100% agree with what you're saying with a 360.1 config... since the listener is in fact 'surrounded' by speakers, only the direct sound coming to his ear is important, which lessens his reliance on room sound, and reflected sound from the fronts.

I'm really not sure where I'm not 'updated' it really sounds like we're on the same page on everything except my belief that a setup with different size/strength/quality of speakers will sound different than one with matched speakers.

Hope this helps.
 
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