Aww you guys make me blush! Thanks anyway. Yeah I agree with jb101 in that I do the mono mix outside my DAW and mixer for that matter. That is what is cool about it. Even if I am playing a CD I Only have to turn up that mono send and its all there in mono.
 
I remember reading some Beatles stuff and sometimes they had issues with having done say 2 or three overdubs from Geroge's or John's guitars and when they lined them all up in mono suddenly they could not hear the parts too well.
 
So that forced them to re do the overdubs and do things like switch guitars, pickups, pedals, EQ's and amps. Then they could hear the parts much more clearly.  And of course they were basically in mono so they had to deal with that clarity issue all the time.  Mono sort of forced them to make the parts clear and more distinct from each other.
 
I grew up too in a mono world for a little while.  All the records we had were mono up to about 1968 here in Australia.  I supposed I just got used to it and thought it was the norm.  I remember the record salesman saying do you want this in mono or stereo (after 1968 that is)  I had to convince my father to buy a new record player that was stereo!!  I knew it was going to be good.  Well we have not really looked back have we.
 
But as we know they did some weird things mix wise when stereo first came out.  But there were still some records that used the stereo spread rather nicely too.
 
On the single mono speaker and down low in volume if I find things are starting to sound cluttered as well it usually means some parts have to go!!! Not just sound alteration now but maybe just too muich information in there and not enough of that elusive black backdrop that I have mentioned before.  The black backdrop should still be present in a great mix.  It is in leaps and bounds with Kraftwerk and Steely Dan and even Tangerine Dream despite the complexity there.  TD albums sound great in mono too.  (Edgar Froese would have been dealing with mono synth sources for many many years!!)
 
 

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

Jeff has an open mind, which is one very important element that makes his advice valuable. I guess good ears probably helps too 

I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes I hear a classic track in a deli or coffee shop pumping out of a mono speaker and I think wow, I love this song, I must add it to one of my Spotify playlists when I get home. But when I listen to it back home in glorious stereo, I don't like it so much. There's something about the power of a well mixed song coming out of one speaker in mono that's always impressed me. 

Most of my mixes end up being backing tracks for live shows so they have to sound great in mono. I normally only fiddle with stereo placement when I'm producing a demo from one of our songs. I record soft synths in stereo so I don't loose the width for demos but everything else gets a mono channel.
When I'm mixing a demo, I hit the mono button on my monitor station occasionally to make sure I'm not screwing up the mix but I keep the DAW in stereo.
 

Beepster
Only a suggestion from a novice mix engineer...
 
I do this on the Master bus by clicking the interleave button. This brings the entire mix down to mono so you can hear how it sounds and fix any problems.
 
 

Wow, Thanks Beepster. I have been using sonar since 8.5 without knowing this feature. 

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/

Thanks! Just been playing around with this - it seems to work well. As Jeff points out it is a little disconcerting to select Mono and to have the resultant audio come from the centre of my stereo field between my two Nearfields. But it seems to accurately present the mono information (either left or right, or both).  This may seem sacrilegious given the minor kerfuffle that arose from the inclusion of "Bark of the Dog" (which I love by the way) as a freebie in the ProChannel for the Braintree update - but I would love to see the Panipulator as a ProChannel Plug just for the convenience of it.
Anyway I am sure there will be arguments about why a mono speaker is the only way to go but this fits my needs perfectly. Thanks again! Great find and practically zero CPU hit.

Brando
 I would love to see the Panipulator as a ProChannel Plug just for the convenience of it.
 

Boz has already announced the PC version is coming.

musichoo

Beepster
Only a suggestion from a novice mix engineer...
 
I do this on the Master bus by clicking the interleave button. This brings the entire mix down to mono so you can hear how it sounds and fix any problems.
 
 

Wow, Thanks Beepster. I have been using sonar since 8.5 without knowing this feature. 

It is quite helpful. I think interleave buttons on tracks/busses has been pretty common in most DAWs but admittedly I've only played with a few. As has been noted it is probably better to do this kind of thing even further down the signal chain (like at the hardware level) but doing it on the master is very convenient and I think probably gives a good indication of whether there are problems.
 
I'm kind of liking jb's method of doing things in mono until the very end and then dealing with pan but because I tend to spend so much time working on things from the first riff to the final master I do like to get an idea of how the final result is going to work. I think maybe I'll keep doing things the way I do BUT be sure to hit that Master interleave button a lot more often as I go. It really does seem to help with choosing proper mix levels. If I'm having a hard time deciding if something is too loud or quite I'll hit that button, adjust some levels then switch back to stereo and it generally sounds right. I have no idea how or why that type of thing works but it does.
 
And on another note... I gotta give props to Jeff Evans as well. He knows his shiz and I always try to pay attention when he posts. Heckuva a nice guy too. Cheers, Jeff.

scook

Brando
 I would love to see the Panipulator as a ProChannel Plug just for the convenience of it.
 

Boz has already announced the PC version is coming.

Geez I feel like a Set-up Man. Had no idea. That's great news as this will be really useful I think.
Thanks Scook - again!

I've always used the interleave button on the master bus. Would it be better to listen to the mono signal on a single speaker? If so, what's the best way? Physically, I mean. My interface doesn't have a summing option.