FreeFlyBertl
 
 
May I ask how often you (or anyone else reading this) really applies the full blown mono-first-on-track-level mixing approach considering most consumer devices are stereo these days?

Are you talking about recording? If so I recommend keeping them stereo. Its really a matter of a mono source stays mono and a stereo source stays stereo. 

John

FreeFlyBertl
 
 
May I ask how often you (or anyone else reading this) really applies the full blown mono-first-on-track-level mixing approach considering most consumer devices are stereo these days?

Are you talking about recording? If so I recommend keeping them stereo. Its really a matter of a mono source stays mono and a stereo source stays stereo. 

No, I was refering to mixing. The way I read Bristol_Jonesey's post was that he folds stereo recorded tracks to mono when starting out to mix, gets the mix going and later uses Channel Tools to allow the stereo tracks a dedicated space in the stereo field ... I may have misread it, that's why I was asking ...
 

Jeff Evans
...  NOT your two main speakers in mono.  That is nowhere near as effective as one speaker.  Mono means one not two producing the same output.  Even two speakers producing mono will give you some stereo imaging due to the nature of sound arriving at both ears at slightly different times.  It adds to the mono confusion.
 
You can also use it very creatively too.  I have heard some great mixes that start out in mono (and sound great) then they just smoothly spread out to stereo over time. They can jump back into mono for a short period etc..
 

Thanks, Jeff, for joining. I always learn from your explanations.

Again I defer to the knowledge presented by others on this. It does certainly make more sense to covert to mono at the furthest point in the chain possible. I'm not even sure I have the capability to sum to mono beyond my Master or Output busses using headphones plugged into my interface. If I hooked up the interface outputs to my mixer I might be able to sum to mono that way (there is a dedicated mono output for the mains) but I think the only way I could monitor that with the gear I have would be to plug one of my powered monitors into that output... and that would be counterproductive for many reasons.

I avoid recording anything in stereo to begin with. The only thing stereo in any of my projects tend to be vsti's that are stereo and samples that are stereo and most of the time i convert those to mono. I tend to run into issues when I try to get cute with choruses and delay effects or when I get sloppy with eq and introduce phase issues.

dubdisciple
I avoid recording anything in stereo to begin with. The only thing stereo in any of my projects tend to be vsti's that are stereo and samples that are stereo and most of the time i convert those to mono. I tend to run into issues when I try to get cute with choruses and delay effects or when I get sloppy with eq and introduce phase issues.

Took me forever to figure out the whole stereo vs. mono track thing in Sonar. In my old DAW you had to literally choose what type of track you were inserting so it didn't make sense to me that there was no option for that in Sonar (and if you search back to when I first joined the forum I posted a thread about my desperate confusion on the matter).
 
It still confuses me but it seems if I choose a left or right input source on the track then I'll get mono clips. Obviously that is exactly what I want for a guitar or bass input.
 
For synths (especially drums) I tend to choose All Outputs Mono so I still get a stereo pair (just split into two mono tracks) for everything. Then for the stuff that should be mono (like close mic'd drums) I just delete or mute one of the pair. For the stuff that should be stereo (like overhead mics) I leave the pair as is and make sure their settings remain identical or combine them into a single stereo track.
 
Those are the best plans I've come up with so far.
 
I have recently seen another method regarding softsynth insertion where you choose All Outputs Stereo then go through and change the inputs on each track to whatever mono signal is available (left or right side but not stereo). That saves have to delete extra channels or combining things that should be stereo.

dubdisciple
I throw Boz Digital Labs' Panipulator on my master bus. It's free and hardly uses any cpu.
 
http://www.bozdigitallabs.com/product/panipulator/

Sure would be nice to have a ProChannel version...

Anderton

dubdisciple
I throw Boz Digital Labs' Panipulator on my master bus. It's free and hardly uses any cpu.
 
http://www.bozdigitallabs.com/product/panipulator/

Sure would be nice to have a ProChannel version...

Are you foreshadowing? Would be nice to have Mongoose as well,which has become an automatic on my mix bus.

To add to what Jeff said, the "quick and dirty" option is just to set all the interleave button in the Console to mono. You can do all of them at once with ctrl+click. The object of starting with everything in mono is you can see which tracks have problems (e.g. the chorus issues Jeff mentions) and which tracks "step on" other tracks in terms of frequency response so you can do some creative carving with the EQ.
 
If the mix checks out well, then you can move on to stereo and the space it creates will be very wide open.
 

Reading tips from Jeff has really helped my mixing a lot.

Basic question that may sound stupid for many of you.
 
Talsking about recording. Not mixing. Since we all hear in stereo, shouldn't we record every instrument in stereo? If I am facing a band/orchestra I hear the whole thing in stereo but also each instrument. What should be recorded mono and why ?
 
I often thought about that but never figured it out.