Mixing mono anyone?

[mojobone]

I have found EQing in mono to be very helpful, esp. in a dense mix (thanks Graham!). Doing it has helped me a ton. Pretty sure any DAW has some sort of utility plug for that (in Logic, the 'Gain' plug has a mono function). There are other reasons to monitor in mono, as has been mentioned, but if you don't have to worry too much about phase issues, starting in mono is still a huge help, for me at least. I find I can really focus on frequency ranges, and filter more by feel than I could before. I love it.

Exactly.

[Paulie]

Chapter 2 of "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" by Mike Senior is dedicated to supplementary monitoring. Senior gives several examples of why mono mixing/testing is a good thing. In a nutshell, while we are busy mixing in our studios, sitting in our ideal positioned hot spots or working in awesome studios with crazy good monitors, the rest of the world is listening to our stuff in earbuds, through laptop speakers, or in businesses, restaurants, clubs, elevators, bars, et al where you might be close to "A" speaker instead of a stereo pair. So, we face the battle of impressing the Taxi screeners and customers while at the same time hoping our music sounds good in real world listening situations. "The big drawback with carefully configured studio near fields is that they don't actually sound anything like the majority of real-world playback systems."

Senior breaks down near field monitor usefulness as follows:

• For investigating what's going on across the whole frequency spectrum, especially at the frequency extremes
• For judging the impact of mix processing on the sheer quality of your sounds
• For evaluating and adjusting the stereo image
• For understanding how your mix will sound ojn more high-fidelity listening systems
• For impressing the pants off of the artist, manager or A&R rep

One more quote from the book: "Listening to your mix from a single speaker not only confirms the vital mono-compatability of your production, but it also makes mix balance judgements far more reliable, especially for important sounds at the center of your stereo image."

Qunicy Jones calls the Aurotone's "the truth speakers." They make you focus on getting the midrange right because they don't have high or low end. Now, we know that today's music has a lot of low end, and the full sonic spectrum is getting filled up, so perhaps these speakers have past their time?

I may look at picking up an Avantone Mix Cube since the Auratone 5C's are hard to find and priced like antiques. (sort of like NS10s)

[mojobone]

Stereo just basically sounds better, cuz there's a sense of space and depth that you can't quite get, any other way. But if you can make the arrangement intelligible in mono, before touching a pan knob, you're several steps ahead, and your mix will sound better in either instance.

[Len911]

Virtual monitoring??

https://youtu.be/cmaHCyrBjmI?t=17m5s

Focusrite VRM
"...three different virtual environments (professional studio, living room and bedroom studio), with 16 different nearfield speaker models, each in a handful of different positions relative to the listener (including side‑offset positions, rather bizarrely). Different sub-sets of speakers are available to each room, but the list includes models based on typical current project studio monitors from the likes of Adam, Genelec, Quested and KRK, plus the Yamaha and Auratone sealed‑box classics, and a few oddities like a Creative computer desktop system and a Phocus (who?) flat screen TV, as well as B&W and KEF hi‑fi models."

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr11/a ... vrmbox.htm

[guscave]

I learned about mixing in mono on Graham’s site as well. It’s improved my mixes tremendously and also cut down the time it takes me to finish.

My DAW has a mono/stereo switch on the master bus so I’ll first get a relative level for each track listening to everything in mono and using just the faders. Once that’s done’ I’ll listen for frequencies that are fighting for the same sweet spot and eq each track accordingly (also in mono). For me, these steps alone takes care of about 75% of my mix.

Once that’s done, I’ll switch over to stereo and work on the panning and adding compression and more or less eq if needed. I’ll still go back to mono just to make sure nothing got lost, but I’ll finish off in stereo mode.

I reference my mixes using a similar commercial song in my car, ear buds and even a UE Bluetooth speaker and the majority of the times when I use this method I’ll rarely have to go back to re-tweak the mix.

[mojobone]

My DAW has a mono/stereo switch on the master bus so I’ll first get a relative level for each track listening to everything in mono and using just the faders. Once that’s done’ I’ll listen for frequencies that are fighting for the same sweet spot and eq each track accordingly (also in mono). For me, these steps alone takes care of about 75% of my mix.

Mono forces you to think about which instruments are featured in the arrangement and which are background, as you only have front to back depth to work with; if your mix is solid but still has some space and depth, with everything shoehorned/jigsaw puzzled together in mono using subtractive EQ, it's really gonna open up, once you start panning. Mixing mono first really does speed up the workflow. If it doesn't come together really quickly, you maybe need to revisit the arrangement and maybe start muting stuff; now that tracks are cheap, it's easy to record too much stuff.

[johnlewitt]

I bought an Avatone this summer. It's great for quickly pointing out things in your mix that stick out (something being too loud or overpowering, for example). Is it a necessity? Not exactly. Is it helpful? Yes, as it speeds up my process, which allows me to get onto other things sooner. So, in that case it was worth the couple hundred bucks I dropped on it.

As to when do I use it? Once I think I've got the mix balanced properly.

Hope that helps.

[mojobone]

If everyone mixed using this method, there'd be no need for this plugin: http://www.bozdigitallabs.com/product/mongoose/ It's similar in effect to shelving bass out of everything that isn't bass, kick or the low end of pianos/orchestras and whatnot and placing everything that IS bass in the center; really nothing you couldn't do with a stereo parametric EQ and a mid-side processor, but it's darned convenient.

By the way, the price of that one's going up soon, so if you need it, better grab it. I find it useful on stuff other people mixed, and it can be a huge time saver in mastering.