Its very interesting to read this. Seems like everyone has his own style how to mix in mono...I think thats great ....how about a short tutorial )from someone whos mixing in mono for a long time ( with drums & Bass only )...maybe someone like to share his mixing skillz...its easy to read about it....but this make more easy to see and to listen to it, not for me only. . Thanx

Lao

 

I do not know what is better. I just know what works for me.
I use as little stereo tracks as possible. And everything dry without FX

All my drums are mono, my bass, my vocals and synths.
My Fx are sometimes in stereo. But only if i like the width or depth.

I am always amazed at how much wider my mix sounds when using mono tracks.
Plus i make a style of music in which panning plays a major part.
So placing a gitar to the right and the keys to the left becomes very easy, and gives me instant width.

In short, i use the method from that guy who made Steinbergs internal mixing DVD's, Friedman Tischmeijer.
Sending FX to the dry mono tracks instead of the mixing bus and so on.

I find the results to be fantastic compared to my old way of mixing (with all stereo tracks, sometimes even wet ones)

I use al lot of old samples for my beats, stereo samples from vinyl.
They have a lot of room acoustics. I make em all mono unless i like the vibe it's giving me.
But i find that mixing them the way i want em is much easier when in mono.

So again, i do not know which is better. I do know what i like though

 

Everybody should be using mono tracks when possible since 99% of sound sources are mono and you can't fully pan stereo tracks. The question the OP asked was whether the master track should be in mono.

Even if you use all mono tracks then apply panning, your master track will be stereo.

 

http://therecordingrevolution.com/2011/05/23/5-minutes-to-a-better-mix-mixing-in-mono-part-23-of-31/ Well presented, easy to understand, 5 minutes. I still learn a lot from this series.

Zappa avatar!

 

Hi Lao,

I use Logic Pro and I just use the native gain plug in on the master channel to switch between mono and stereo. I'm sure there are other plug ins available which do the same. Alternatively some audio interfaces have a mono switch so you can flip between the two.

I also use the native Multimeter plug in on the master channel. The goniometer within the plug in shows you the stereo spread of your track. There is also a phase correlation meter which gives you an indication of whether the elements are in phase with each other which I find very useful.

 

What's phasing?

LOL, I know i'm going to get laughed at for this question.

 

Hey ak49fanelli - Whenever there's sth I wanna check out I usually google it together with Sound On Sound.
They have a lot of good articles explaining music tech stuff.

So I get this if searching with: Phasing Sound On Sound
LINK 1
LINK 2

and of course you also get a ton of links about the subject on other sites.

 

Imagine you have a sine wave panned left and sine wave panned right that has been flipped in amplitude (or "phase shifted" horizontally by half a period). When you fold the left and right into mono, you're adding the two tracks together - in this example for every value of the sign wave on the left channel there is an equal but opposite value in the right channel therefore once added together they cancel out and you're left with zero. This is an extreme case but in audio parts of the left and right may be slightly out of "phase" therefore cancelling each other partially out.

Ever wondered how those crappy DIY acapellas on youtube were made? they take the original, add an instrumental with an inverted phase and the two cancel out leaving the difference which is the vocals (and artefacts because the two instrumentals are not exactly the same).

 

Ok so it's like when you have an 808, and a kick; when they share the same frequencies they end up sounding muddy

Is that like phasing?

and to clean up your phasing you would be using EQ, and side chain compressions, along with panning when it came to say hi hat and cap, or a synth that was very high frequency fighting with a hi-hat.

It's an frequency thing then? or am I still off the mark. Also I noticed on the sound-on-sound it was talking about how say you have a C note on a piano, and another C note on a piano, they would be sharing the same phase, so either have one be a higher/lower octave, or a different note.

Also I like sound on sound, but sometimes their explanations are really long, and I have adhd which makes it tough for me to focus if I read something to long. That's why I try to break things down as short as possible. But I will read it again.

hopefully golden ears test has something on this lol, i'm going through it right now, got my basic and workin on my bronze now.

 

808 and kick is an example,
pretty much any time you have two sounds at once occupying the same frequency range you can have phasing issues.

But we're really talking about here are tracks that sound awesome in stereo, but when you fold it into mono phasing disrupts the mix balance.

Talk a pro song load it into one of your projects, fold the master into mono and compare it to your track, most likely you will notice how nothing disappears in the pro but just moves to the center

I'm not clear as to what you're talking about with the piano.

 

Yeah ignore my piano question lol, thank you i think i got the good gist of it !

 

you can't ever mix all your tracks only in MONO. that's silly. But switch to MONO every now and then to check some THINGZzz such as: vocal sounding clear in center. as some friends mentioned: your widened sounds not missing their presence in center. BASS not cluttering anything in center (BTW, always MONO your bass and kicks)
and...
oh yeah, some folks rather get two mono tracks, pan one left, pan the other right in order to make that track stereo. they believe it's a cleaner process and saves some space for other sounds. sounds logical but never liked it

 

mono has more power as the audio field is virtually a thin line, guitars : def mono. keyboards : stereo!