I am a fan of monitoring in mono. One speaker is also better than two speakers in mono as well. And it should be a small mono speaker eg Auratone type thing. I have an old hi fi amp with a mono switch driving it and it works rather well.
Although people may not necessarily listen in mono there are many advantages to checking mixes in mono on a small speaker down at low volume. It reveals so much about your mix. I call it the
critical mix.
If you pan things on your stereo monitors some of those parts might get a little lost on the mono speaker but usually after a minor tweak you can still satisfy the mono speaker and things have not changed much in your main speakers.
What a small mono speaker will tell you is if you have say three rhythm guitar parts and they are all of a similar sound they will all end lined up behind each other in a mono speaker and they will be hard to distinguish. Take one of the techniques from the mono era. When that sort of thing occurred what they did was to go out of their way to change the sound of the three rhythm guitars much more during tracking. eg different guitars, pickups, amps, speakers etc..Then they still all end up behind each other in mono but now you can separate them much more. Back in stereo again and once you start panning them they will become very very clear then. And you will have the luxury of being able to turn them down too. Maximum illusion minimum voltage.
Another thing a small mono speaker is very good for is setting vocal levels correctly over the music. This is an area many have trouble with. It is so easy on a small mono speaker down at low volume. You still need your big speakers for bass and reverb levels and a couple of other things like that.
post edited by Jeff Evans - 2013/02/24 18:17:09