hello, once again. I know this must have been asked long b4, but still.
I tried a method by some YT channel

are there any other ways, safer or clearer to make your bass mono? thanks for the tips

 

Turn the knob besides the volume control on the mixer of that particular channel to the right. That way the whole channel is mono. If you want only some of the frequencies mono, you should do it like you did in maximus where yo can split frequencies.

(knob underneath the two opposite triangles,beside the actual slider)

 

find a mid/side eq and and insert a highpass on the side channels

 

Why? According to the vid this seems to work pretty well.
If you want a separate plugin for this you need to look for a multiband m/s processor.
For instance this one
https://www.meldaproduction.com/MStereoExpander

 

Cutting the low freqs on the sides and narrowing them results in a different sound.

 

correct me if I'm wrong, but most stereo processing (widening and narrowing) works with nulling the left and right by phase flipping either one of them, right there is the side channel. Subtract that from left-right mono'd, without a phase flip and you got the mid-channel.

that slider that goes up from 0% up to 200% is a gain slider on that mid and side channel (aside from a dot of delay in a more sophisticated widening plugin).

Back too your statement, if cutting does not do It for you. Maybe a low-shelf on the side should do the trick?

 

Use SideMinder ME and set the frequency you want to be Mono and he will do all the Calculations for you. Cheers.

 

I don't know how it's achieved technically, I always thought I could hear a difference. So, that was psychoacoustic?

 

Does making the bass mono give more presence to the bass ?
Or is it just to avoid phase issues ?

 

Both.

 

I cut the low-end of the sides to cleanup the phase issues and to focus the bass/lows. It's the same thing as "mono-ing the low-end". When you sum the L+R you only get the Mid/mono, and thus throw out the Sides.

For the longest time I used freeware like Alex Hilton A1StereoControl and GVST MonoBass. Now I use the mono-maker in Brainworx bx_digital V3 if I need a "one-knob-monomaker".

 

Record it from a mono source to start with...& don't apply any stereo processing to it...

Why is ur bass stereo in the first place is probably the 1st question u shud be asking.

 

There can be several reasons.
1) Synthbasses that have unison
2) mic-bleed in live-tracked room/session. This goes for all low-end sources, like bass, kicks, toms, organs, amps, standing waves, etc.
3) layered basses, in different octaves and with different width
4) reverberant room (or algo/convo reverb) in stereo that has a lot of lows
5) ???
6) PROFIT!!1!

Cutting the low-end on the sides can have very positive results, depending on the material that is being mixed. If you are open to learning (instead of having a fixed mindset) you might learn something new that could improve your mixes.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2019

It depends on the source material. Sometimes narrowing the image works without many issues, sometimes highpassing the lows in the side works better. Just see what of these two techniques works best for the source material you have (and don't cause cancelation). Usually I just highpass the lows in the side channels on the master bus and call it a day, because I narrow lows of the whole mix anyway. There's never a correct answer, just what works best with what you're dealing with.