is there any way to get something to 'appear' in mono?

[FNM]

I assume not, but I thought someone may know a trick. I thought it would be cool to have it so that you can't hear something in a song unless you're listening in mono.

I'm guessing if you could, a lot more people would be trying it.

[ubertar]

Pan the track you want to "appear" all the way to the right, then unplug the right speaker.

[trashy]

I assume not, but I thought someone may know a trick. I thought it would be cool to have it so that you can't hear something in a song unless you're listening in mono.

I'm guessing if you could, a lot more people would be trying it.

Theoretically, I guess you could. I'm not sure how practical it would be, though; it would be basically introducing desired phase. You could create a melody with overtones from two notes, preferably notes that were out of the hearing range. Pan one left and one right... I dunno. Maybe? I'm gonna think this over...

[Knights Who Say Neve]

Excellent! A new way to include satanic messages!

[Moon Unit]

I suppose you could bury the hidden track . . . using some other sounds to "mask" it so as to make it indestinguishable.

Pan the "masking" tracks hard left and right and out of phase.

In mono, the other tracks would disappear, revealing your previously masked/buried track.

[trashy]

I suppose you could bury the hidden track . . . using some other sounds to "mask" it so as to make it indestinguishable.

Pan the "masking" tracks hard left and right and out of phase.

In mono, the other tracks would disappear, revealing your previously masked/buried track.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. What's cool about that is that the masking would sometimes "come off" in stereo depending on the listener's position in the stereo field. So, you'd sort of "hear" this thing, but you couldn't quite hear it. y'know what I mean?

[bobbydj]

No.

[apropos of nothing]

Huh. It seems like there ought to be a plug-in specifically designed to induce this type of phase-cancelling stereo spread.

...Like every reverb plug ever invented.


BWAHAHAHAHAHA

oh i slay me.

[digdug]

I appear in mono.

[superluminalmagus]

I'm going to test this when I get home tonight.

[ryanlikestorock]

I'm not sure if this would work. If I understand correctly, you're suggesting to place the signal (+) in the centre, then the signal (-) panned both left and right, hoping this would cancel out in mono? If there were 3 channels, this might work, but mono is just synched up stereo, really. So, the "mono" track would cancel out the two stereo tracks right away, in "mono" or not.

Or, if you're suggesting to create a lot of distracting noise in out of phase stereo, which would cancel out in mono, leaving only the mono signals... that might work, but the song would sound out of phase in stereo-- that really wide, weak effect.

[NewAndImprov]

I assume not, but I thought someone may know a trick. I thought it would be cool to have it so that you can't hear something in a song unless you're listening in mono.

I'm guessing if you could, a lot more people would be trying it.

I've been thinking about something like this recently, and haven't had the opportunity to do it yet. I'd like to record a tune with a really simple accompaniment, like say vocals and guitar or vocals and piano. Then overdub the rest of the band, strings, b-vox, theremin, accordion, didjeridoo, tape echo solo, the whole 9 yards and kitchen sink approach. But put all the overdubs out of phase in the stereo tracks, so that if you sum the mix to mono, you get the minimal arrangement.

So if anybody tries this before I do, let me know...

[FNM]

Yeah I was thikning after I posted this about trying that, as I think it would be the easiest, and possibly only way to really do this with any success. I suppose it would be cool as a secret track or something.

[Professor]

Fascinating.

Truly fascinating.

I mean the idea seems simple enough, and we would think, 'well why not...' but then you start to really get into the math of it and it ends up being about as simple a concept as dividing by zero or the square root of -1!

To have something "appear when switched to mono" would mean that the sound would have to be in-phase and panned hard left and right, or perhaps even just left or just right. But how could the sound be hidden in stereo and 'appear' in mono.
The only way to make something sonically change when moving from stereo to mono is to have an out of phase signal cancel either completely or accross a bandwidth.

The problem is that you cannot make a sound appear in mono but disappear in stereo. It just can't happen.

But, as mentioned, you can make another sound disappear in mono and thus reveal a 'hidden' sound that was masked by the sound in stereo. But you are not making a new sound appear, you are making some other sound disappear. And somehow that doesn't seem to be the point of the experiment.

Masking and phasing seems to be the only real way to make this happen, but you don't want it to be obvious that something has been lost, so much as it should be obvious that something new has appeared.

I would suggest the following: (I'll assume we're working in a DAW)

1. Start with a broad-band mono sound like a distorted rhythm guitar.
2. Copy the track 3 times, and pan one track hard left and the other two hard right.
3. Apply a parametric equalizer to both of the 'hard right' channels.
4. Set one parametric EQ up in a "band reject" setup where a high-pass filter and low pass filter (or center notch) is set to reject a wide band like from 500Hz to 4kHz (3 octaves).
5. Set the other parametric to the reverse setting (band-pass) so the 500-4k band is kept and the rest is thrown out, BUT reverse the phase on this track.

* so, at this point we have a the track as recorded on the left, and the full bandwidth track on the right but with the middle frequencies out of phase.

6. Set up your 'hidden sound' so that it resides in that middle band of frequencies that should be cancelled in the masking tracks.
7. Pan that track equally to left and right, but drop it to a level where it can't be heard behind the 'masking track'.

Theoretically, when this is summed to mono, you would have the middle frequency of the guitar drop out, revealing the 'hidden track' which would come forward a bit to fill the void left be the middle frequencies. But the highs and lows from the 'masking track' would still be there, so the sound would seem to stay consistent.

The obvious problem is that the 'hidden track' will sum with the mid frequencies of the left and right busses during mixing, and may render the whole thing a big blob of ugly, mid-range mess. BUT, the freqs. that are reinforced on one side should, theoretically, be cancelled on the other, and vice-versa, so the 'hidden track' might actually come together out of the comb filtering, after all.

I really don't know for certain, as I've never tried this, but it looks like I have a fun experiment for the weekend.

-Jeremy

[Moon Unit]

Ya know . . . Nickelback have this cool trick where all of their songs sound like exactly the same song.

And it works that way in mono or in stereo.