Mixing Mono in Stereo

In general terms I believe if the source is mono, you should record it in mono. I always record vocals, bass, flute, violin, etc as mono tracks. Much easier to place in the stereo field.

I almost always use mono tracks....gives me more flexibilty in my mix especially with panning.

Synths ouputs, for instance, tend to be stereo and can swamp the rest of the sound unless they are constrained some how, and this is one way of doing it. Reverb returns too can be panned local to the original source to avoid it washing out the whole sound. Not always necessary but sometimes it is.

In complex mixes with many instruments, it's usually advisable to make your tracks more mono so as to reduce the risk of mudd. Simple tracks with just a guitar and vox could benefit from a stereo miced guitar much more than something with a full band involved.

I personally record everything in mono as my equipment limits me, but I would do that anyway most of the time. I then use delay to bring some stereo perspective and reverb often sounds good with a little bit of stereo separation. I also use doubling (recorded, not cloned, then panned) of tracks often to obtain my stereo effect. Generally I don't like to get each individual instrument to have too much stereo separation. It just gets lost in the mix like that. I like it to have it's own place in the stereo field, frequency field, and depth. If it has lots of stereo room in it's particular place where it is living, it can sometimes be ok to widen it a little to fill that gap a bit more, but often I don't like to go too much.

I only have a condenser and dynamic mic so can't do traditional stereo micing, but I find you can get a larger sound by double micing your instrument and panning the condenser hardish to one side (due to it being more bright) and then the dynamic slightly softer to that same side. This can really fill out the entire side of one channel and sound very omnipresent. Just gotta be careful there are no phasing issues.

You mention panning to help avoid possible EQ problems. I would try to steer clear of this being a solution to badly EQed/recorded instruments. I always like to check my mixes in mono to make sure I am not losing anything that sounds fine in the stereo field, but disappears in mono.

I think more mono sounds tend to sound more forward in the mix as they don't get as masked, but it always depends on the situation.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

IMO, every track should be mono unless it clearly benefits in some way from being stereo. This avoids a LOT of problems.

Of course, there is really no such thing as a true mono source in the real world, because we hear everything with two ears and those two ears don't hear the same sound from any source. Even an electric bass guitar has a three-dimensional aspect. But in an ensemble, getting the full stereo image is much less important than establishing clarity for each instrument, so mono is definitely the way to go.

There are a few exceptions. All solo acoustical instruments should be recorded in stereo. If you're recording a piano sonata, it should absolutely be stereo - but rock piano almost never needs to be. A string ensemble should be stereo. A Leslie should be stereo. Of course, drum overheads, too. Not much else needs to be.

ORIGINAL: mattplaysguitar

you can record your main vox that was sung best, centre it, then another two takes panned out left and right and put back slightly softer in the mix. Also if you cut some of the highs out on those pans then it makes it sound less like three takes because what I find helps makes a vocal sound like multiple vocals is when sharp sounds (s'es for example) are slightly off time. Cutting those *could* make it sound more like a single vocal, that comes form everywhere.

Also if you cut some of the highs out on those pans then it makes it sound less like three takes because what I find helps makes a vocal sound like multiple vocals is when sharp sounds (s'es for example) are slightly off time. Cutting those *could* make it sound more like a single vocal, that comes form everywhere. I often put a sharp lowpass and highpass on my delays as well because you don't need as much content in those to get the desired effect. If you leave it the same as the original then it may be filling the space with too much stuff and it can make your vocals unclear. I would probably often highpass it up to 600-800Hz and lowpass to maybe 4k, but that depends on how noticeable you want the delay to be. For a strong noticeable delay (which I am hearing in more and more pop songs these days) I would probably not use a lowpass filter and cut my highpass even higher.

ORIGINAL: altima_boy_2001

I've been hitting the "stereo interleave" under the fx bins (to *1/2*) on several tracks, wondering if this provides true mono for instruments recorded in stereo.

What do you mean "true mono"? Setting the track interleave to mono sums the left and right stereo channels into a single channel. Assuming your pan is set to center, both channels will play identical material and that's pretty much the definition of mono. The results may be slightly different than if you had recorded the performance with a single mic, but the result is still mono.

If I were doing a true solo piece, I'd definitely record the instrument in stereo. But in a rock context, I think mono + FX is the best thing for the mix. Oh, one thing about stereo pianos... if your low notes are in the left ear and your high notes are in the right ear, it's a dead giveaway that it's a fake (midi) piano. There is no way you could have that sort of separation in the real world, but digital pianos all sound that way