When I mix in mono, it sounds ok. Every instrument sounds balanced. However, when I switch it in stereo, the balance's gone.
I used the double guitar for the stereo image and used the vocal(mono) in the center. In stereo, the guitar sound is too loud and you can barely hear the vocal. But if you turn the volume down the guitar sound, you barely can hear the guitar sound in mono. So, I need to give up a mono or stereo. Or I should fix it.
How do I fix this issue?

 

Maybe some tips for you here:

 

forgive te dumb question but how did you switch ?

 

If you like your mix in mono, but certain elements seem to be too loud in stereo, you could try to bring down the side-signal (difference) in volume by using something like Voxengo's MSED (free plugin) or Waves' S1 Imager. Try it on the masterbus or just on certain tracks that are bothering you. Good luck ;-)

 

I suppose several DAWs have a switch for this in the main out (not only Reaper) and there are probably some pluggies that can do this.

 

Have you tried subtractive EQ? also if you have guitars panned left/right did you offset the right 1/4?

 

theres afew soloutions to this, the easiest is reducing to the amount of panning on the two guitar parts, or take a mid /side approach to this , have one guitar part completely mono and have the second part purely side, this will give you width in stereo and a guitar that doesnt dissappear in mono....adjust relative volumes to taste

 

I would say mix in stereo and f**k mono and anyone who tries to listen on a device that's mono but that's just me.

 

It sounds like a significant part of your wide guitar sounds are cancelling themselves out when summed to mono, and so when you listen in stereo the balance seems off. You can fix this by looking at the wide guitar sound itself, why is it so ultra-wide that there is major self-cancellation in mono? it's possibly because of some delay-based effect you're using, which introduces a lot of antiphase.

You can always use the "lossless mono sum trick" to get your guitar back in mono if desired (without cancellation). To do so, use a utility to encode your signal into M/S representation. Then route it into 2 channels like so:

New stereo Left channel: Mid + Side
New stereo Right channel: Mid + Side

-OR-

New stereo Left channel: Mid - Side
New stereo Right channel: Mid - Side

(Pick whichever sounds more useable to you)

Here "+" represents simply mixing the two signals, and "-" represents that the Side is being mixed after being phase-flipped.

Whichever one you use, it's the same as only keeping the Left or only keeping the R, and throwing away the opposite channel, overwriting it with a copy of the original L, or R.

Here's a free AIrWIndows plugin which does exactly this for you:
https://www.airwindows.com/tomono/

This causes the stereo image to collapse, yet without the loss of volume and without the loss of possibly interesting "Side" info from the guitar. Then you might want to take this "mono-ized" guitar, and stereo spread it using something more sophisticated than just delay, use a stereorizer of some kind on it. That will give stereo flavour to it, but should not be so unbalanced-sounding when switching between mono-stereo now.

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2019

yes I my self wanted to ask that

 

for example , the lurrsen mastering console vst has a mono stereo switch . helps alot

 

any other easy one?

 

DAW may have a switch on master...

but when i have only mono tracks in center ...what brings the switch?

 

It makes the mono image ultra mono!

 

Mono straight through the mix? Why not switch back and forth?

Half the fun of mixing is experiencing the depth of stereo

 

I'm using Studio One and it has the switch button between mono and stereo.

 

I have no idea what subtractive EQ is. I set the panning the guitars 100% wide. Should I set it only 25%?

 

sounds like you are having phase cancellation problems when you sum to mono.
what stereo processing/effects/techniques did you use?
something there can be changed so the mono sum works better.

the way you worded things sounds like you mixed the track in mono, then tested it in stereo. if this is the case then you should probably mix in stereo (at least) and test in mono every now and then while mixing. the only exception is if your track is primarily for mono playback.