Hi, folks. It's been a while.
I'm recently working on a new song and found the chorus part turns quiet in mono. It sounds ok in stereo.
I've done everything what I could do. Aligned the wave forms and used polarity inversion, but none of them helped.
What I did are:

1) Recroded 5 voices with the same tone with the same tune. No harmony.
2) Put the first one in the center and set the fader as 0.
3) Set rest 4 of them left 100, right 100, left 50 and right 50 for the widening.
4) Reduced the fader of the 4 voices as -2.5 ish.

I thought it's because of the harmony, so I tuned the rest 4 of them with melodyne. However, they still disappear in mono. I have no clue why it happens as it hasn't happned before.

 

Last edited: Oct 5, 2021

It's not very clear what you mean. Do you mean an instrument part processed by a chorus effect?

Can you get clear sound, without processing? If yes, have you tried to change a chorus plugin? Why don't you get rid of a plugin that destroys stereo sound? It's a bad plugin. Try another one.

If you cannot get unprocessed sound, may be, try this:

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/arx-one-by-zone-sk
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/evo-in-by-flux

If your problems are related to phase it should help.

 

He means the chorus. That part of the song after the verse.

Make it 3 voices and -6 dB on side ones and see if it makes a difference. Also harmony phase-cancels less than unison, so it isn't the problem.
Make sure you don't stereo widen the central voice anywhere accidentally.
Post the bloody example here, resident psychics are on a vacation.

 

Thanks for the advice. I figured it out somehow like this:

1) Created 2 more voices.
2) Set them in the center.
3) Down the faders to -3 for each.
4) Up the faders of the 4 voices to 0db.

After that, the chorus part sounds in mono.

 

most chorus effects and/or chorus effect presets will bring you exactly that, and where it does that, it is part of the effect.

if you want a track to remain mono compatible you should try using a "mono chorus" effect from the beginning on.

 

Sounds you have too many instances of too similar(ly tuned/timed) audio tracks playing in unison. This will eventually lead to phase cancellation even though you would flip some of the phases. I would recommend tuning the center stage tight, but leaving the vocal harmonies on the sides natural or finetuned some cents up or down. Also, many times the less vocal tracks you use, the better the parts play out together.

 

try moving them randomly 50-100 ms or so each, also usually you just use 1 left 1 right and 1 center or just 1 left and 1 right