?Mono? what does it tell us, and how much should it matter?

[Ryan Silva]

As much as it pains me I make sure to always check mixes in mono before printing, as I?m sure many of us also do as a form of habit.

My question is what?s worth worrying about?

Obviously, if your vocals have disappeared or your kick drum all of a sudden sounds thin as hell you would want to make some adjustments; but what of things like hard panned guitars? Sometimes when I have hard panned guitars and engage the ?mono? switch I can still hear the guitars but they have lost much of there depth. Do I freak out and completely remix the whole song? No, I may pull the guitars in from 100L 100R to 90L 90R, but I?m not really that concerned

Am I crazy?

I understand that many folks still listen too music in mono, cell phones, clock radios, and lets face it most peoples home stereo setup may as well be mono with how close or far they set up the speaker pair.

How much does a mono reference affect your mix choices?

[JohnDavisNYC]

I don't have a mono button on the master section of our console, so we never check in mono... I know out of phase when I hear it, so I just make a good mix and don't worry about it.

The only mono check things ever get at the bunker is if I listen through the audition speaker on the studer 2 track... but I do that more for mix and frequency response than for mono. I guess my mixes are mostly made up of mono elements panned in the stereo field, so it collapses to mono just fine, no matter how wacky the panning.

john

[The Scum]

I do about the same. I make sure nothing important disappears entirely.

You think it's basic, but it still happens sometimes...I mixed a project where they used a synth plugin for the bass. The plugin had stereo output, so they tracked it in stereo. However, it was only "fake stereo" - one output was a polarity flipped copy of the other. Wide as hell in stereo, completely lost in mono.

If stereo things lose some clarity in mono, I usually just accept that. Whatever stereo image I've got in the studio is probably clearest/widest it's ever going to get. Most listeners won't be set up as carefully as my studio is...but if they are, I'll gladly leave a little extra reward in my mix for them (on second thought, in today's delivery formats, maybe they are listening in good stereo - lots of channel separation on earbuds!). To me, it doesn't make sense to hurt the stereo mix for it.

If you're working in a field where mono compatibility is really important (destined for TV, maybe?), you could always print a good mono mix.

One thing to keep in mind is that our mono switches are just one way of making a mono mix. How it will happen in the wild might follow a different recipe - get up from the mix position, and listen from the next room - it's a different mono mix. Have a TV engineer patch only the right channel to the broadcast feed...different again.

I've also worked backwards sometimes - I'll get the mix happening listening in mono, then switch to stereo and see how it blooms. Probably an outcropping of playing in a garage rock band, where everything we did was in mono anyways.

[losthighway]

I have two opinions on this:

1. Having proper phase relationships is always a good thing to maintain (for many reasons).

2. People listen to things in mono almost never.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

2. People listen to things in mono almost never.

I would argue that people listening to music on those small ipod docking speaker things, small boom boxes, computer speaker, tivoli radios, clock radios etc etc are basically hearing your mix in mono. Can you really say it's in stereo when the speakers are less than 5 inches apart? Now that the days of the hi-fi are gone more and more people are listening to their music on really tiny, really crappy systems.

A good mix should sound good (or as good as it can) on any playback system. I check everything in mono on my auratones. if it sounds good there I know it'll be good pretty much everywhere. I also find it's easier to get a mix roughed in quickly in mono. It really makes you focus on how the instruments are working together and it's easier to know if one sound is taking up too much sonic space. It also makes you focus on the front to back of the sound field. I'll take a deep sounding mono mix over a flat sounding stereo mix any day.

[snoopy23]

I tried listening to things with mono but my throat hurt so bad I couldn't concentrate... I got it from kissing a girl, I think. Damn mono...

Seriously, I do pretty much the same, mix in stereo and give a quick listen in mono to make sure the bass doesn't collapse or the guitars don't fall apart. Maybe I'll try mixing a track in mono just to see if it really makes a difference other than the panning options.

[JGriffin]

2. People listen to things in mono almost never.

yeah...that's almost completely wrong.

[acjetnut]

For one, YouTube currently puts all audio in mono. Things may be shifting with their "HD" watch option.

Secondly, this seems to be a bit off topic, but don't underestimate the potential of doing a mono (or close to mono) mix of a song. Sometimes it just brings through the energy more!

[farview]

If you are listening to an FM station and the signal is getting weak, it will revert to mono.

[sears]

A mix should sound good in mono.

I listen to music in the grocery store all the time and that's not just one channel. (Sometimes at Ledo's I can tell that I'm just getting L or R; Aqualung is quite an experience like that.)

Maybe there are people who don't hear in stereo. I can't *see* in stereo so it's not so ridiculous a concept.

[JohnDavisNYC]

i actually think that it is hard to make a mix that doesn't collapse well.

i mean... you would have to do all sort of silly stuff like stereo synthesizer plugins on the bass, stereo kick drum, but with one side out of phase, everything stereo but with one side fucked with somehow, and everything panned 'super mono' (all stereo sources panned with their L and R hard L and R... )... and at that point, you'd have to be pretty deaf to not have the slightest suspicion that your mix was fucked... when the bass feels like it's trying to spin your head around and the kick sounds like a basketball located somewhere in the base of your neck, it probably won't collapse to mono very well.

i think that stuff that doesn't collapse well to mono is generally stuff that doesn't sound good.

but, listening in mono can, i suppose, help you to learn those things which collapse poorly, and thus avoid bad sounds.

john

[vvv]

"Mono? what does it tell us, and how much should it matter?"

You been kissing the wrong people.

Again.

[newfuturevintage]

I use mono as a generic reality check, and often as a test for how much delay to put on a split signal. I'll ususally reduce the delay time after listening in mono.

[losthighway]

2. People listen to things in mono almost never.

yeah...that's almost completely wrong.

I suppose I was projecting a bit, maybe a hasty generalization. Perhaps I should have said I listen to things in mono almost never.

On the other hand if you are motivated to correct someone you should at least hazard some details to support your refutation.

[JGriffin]

2. People listen to things in mono almost never.

yeah...that's almost completely wrong.

I suppose I was projecting a bit, maybe a hasty generalization. Perhaps I should have said I listen to things in mono almost never.

On the other hand if you are motivated to correct someone you should at least hazard some details to support your refutation.

This has been covered before on numerous mono-compatibility threads here, which is why I didn't offer any details before. Of course, the existence of this thread should have tipped me off that those previous threads had not been read by everyone. Here you go: I have 6 devices in my apartment for listening to music; 3 of them are mono. One clock radio, one shower radio, one small television in the bedroom. My celphone plays an mp3 ringtone; that's four. So: over half of the devices I use to listen to music collapse the signal into mono--not "the speakers are so close together it may as well be mono" mono, but actual one-speaker-shit's-gonna-cancel mono. And of the remaining 3 devices, one is the monitoring setup in my studio, so if we take that one out of the list and assume I am in any way representative of the average consumer of music (I don't think clock radios are sufficiently esoteric that only a recording engineer would own one), and only two out of seven devices actually play music in stereo...I think one could say people listening in mono "almost never" is a bit off.