Perhaps there is an obvious answer to this but I'm curious as to why a lot of instruments seem to be sampled and made into stereo tracks in most sample libraries instead of made into mono samples? This question just came to mind as I was recoding a sample library and thought that at least the Close Mic would be mono as then probably the room, stage, far mics would be in stereo and the tree mic would come as a center mono and a stereo for the left and right.

What would be the difference in using a mono sample of an instrument in a mix panned 50% to the left compared to a stereosample? Would it effect the overall volume?

I mean using stereo tracks when mono would suffice is more taxing on your CPU (even if it might be miniscule on a modern system) but the size of every file would take up twice the space unnecessarily and that doubles the space taken up on your HDD.

Am I missing something essential to how mono and stereo samples are processed in a mix?

 

What "mono" instruments?
The only mono instruments are hardware synths with a single (mono) output. Every acoustic instrument features a complex resonator that sounds differently from all sides, essentially.
Stereo is an approximation of their true sound.

 

It makes no audible difference if there's no stereo material, and it makes no difference to the CPU really, the only way it stresses the system is memory and perhaps disk usage. Unless you have a _lot_ of samples loaded or a lot of audio tracks this will not be a problem.

However, most processing would be stereo anyway, so the CPU hit would be the same. I'd imagine all DAWs treat the tracks the same way, e.g. mono signal is "expanded" to stereo/multichannel anyway, it has to be after even panning it slightly.

 

I will say more. There are tons of stuff saved from 16 bit or mp3 into 24 bit wavs

 

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough in the topic but I was thinking about recording a single instrument with a single mono microphone. Say for example you record an acoustic guitar with only one close mic, why would you make a stereo sample file out of that recording? It's a mono microphone recording a single instrument, which was what I meant by "mono instrument". But I guess I should have refered to the microphone instead of the instrument as being "mono. The reason I wrote the question in the topic was because I was thinking of recording one instrument with one microphone instead of say an orchestra, but if you only use a mono mic to record a whole orchestra the question would be the same. Why make a stereo file out of a mono recording?

 

They sample how the instrument sounds inside the room. That's why they chose famous rooms to record in. To capture a room, a stereo recording is needed

 

So if an instrument in a Kontakt library was recorded with one microphone, why would they make the samples stereo?

 

I get why they would make a stereo sample file out of two mono microphones to capture the room in stereo from two different locations in the room, but why make a stereo file out of a close mono mic that is only supposed to record the instrument?

 

Most of what I see in my Kontakt file are mono file, at least for what is suppose to be mono, so maybe the answer is just laziness, cause it's easier to export everything in stereo instead of checking what is mono and what is not

 

You wouldn't. I do think if that happens it's only because stereo was a default file format to save in and someone was too lazy to do a couple clicks to save some hard drive space. Speaking of which, there's an answer- it makes your library appear to be larger and then people feel like they're getting more for their money. So that could actually be a practical reason: marketing.

 

It's not really "lazyness". It's for consistency.

 

This is a good question, my guess would be that whatever they're recording into (most probably a wave editor like Sound Forge or Wavelab) creates stereo files by default, so recording one channel would duplicate the channels. Depends on the settings really.

I don't know how Kontakt compresses the files into .ncw samples. It probably cuts down the file size to roughly half if we're lucky.

So laziness perhaps? Or they're in a rush and they told the recordist that they want 24bit 44,1kHz stereo wavs.

 

Oh. Didn't get what you're talking about at first, sorry.
In that case, I think it might be a leftover from the old days of DSP, when a mono sample necessitated a mono output, or inattentive sampling. Cause there's no benefit and one drawback in a form of more HDD and RAM used.

 

For a brief moment, I thought I had read "conspiracy".
The audio-industrial complex and the pc-hardware-industrial complex conspire against music creators to increase sales of storage media.

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2024

It's because of phase and mono compatibility. I close mic in stereo using the X/Y technique, which alleviates any phase issues. It's best to read up on it, and look into mid/side processing, etc., because not everyone listens in stereo.

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2024

How would you have phase issues with a mono mic?

 

You wouldn't.

 

You're not missing anything in your thinking, your're actually right it's a bit wasteful to represent mono signals as stereo tracks in a mix, but for the most part nobody cares or thinks twice about it.

 

It makes a difference with acoustic guitar, depending on how you want it to sound in the mix. If I have a lot of instruments I record with a single mic, and when the acoustic guitar is a main instrument I use X/Y stereo. You can also double track your left & right parts, but that is used for effect.

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2024

What's an example of a "stereo" instrument if a guitar is a "mono" instrument? It would be like an instrument that had sounds coming from two distinct spaces right? Is there such thing? Like guitar sound comes out the middle, trumpet comes out the end, etc. Bagpipes? Organ and Leslie? A drum kit yes but the individual pieces no, same as an orchestra. I can't really think of any instrument where the sound comes out two distinct ends.