MALIK ARSHAQ
MIXING IN MONO
It was not until the late 1950’s that stereophonic sound was
being offered for public listening and even after it was, not
a lot of listeners had a device that allowed stereo playback.
What might come as a surprise to a lot of people is that, even
today, our music is not usually heard in true stereo. Whether
it’s from your phone, Bluetooth speaker or even even car
stereos, you might either be sitting closer to one speaker or
you’re so far away from both the speakers, that by the time
you hear it you might n ot be able to make out the stereo
separation and are probably listening to the audio collapsed
into mono. This means that it is very important that sound
engineers check for mono compatibility while mixing.
Not only does mixing in mono make your mix safer across
different listening environments, but it also allows you pin-
point certain issues with your mix that could ultimately help
in making your final stereo mix sound better as well. If your
interface has a mono option, you can activate it or using
stereo width plugins and turning them all the way down can
also give you an accurate enough mono representation. You
might start noticing that a lot of elements that felt like they
were sitting quite well in the mix, are now maybe a little
loud and upfront or lost in the mix. The three things that
you need to look out for when you’re mixing are the volumes
of the tracks relative to each other, the tonal quality of each
individual element and the positioning of each element in
the stereo spectrum. After having panned all the elements
into their intended positions, collapsing the whole mix into
mono will let you focus on the other two aspects without
being distracted by the width.
Certain elements, you might notice, sound thinner and
maybe a little lacking in the low end. For example, a guitar
that was recorded with two mics, one right in front of the
cone and the other a little further away from, it is possible
that when both tracks are played together in mono, they are
out of phase with one another. This causes them to partial
cancel each other out. This issue can be fixed by simply
phase inverting one of the tracks. While you may not notice
the phase cancellation while listening to the mix in stereo,
it becomes when collapse it down to mono. Since in a lot of
cases, the listener might be hearing your mix either from
a mono system or in an environment where the stereo
separation doesn’t translate well, it is important for to look
for elements that are out of phase and correct them.
Finally, after switching to mono and making sure that the
levels of the separate elements are just right, that each track
is EQ’d so that it fits in its place in the mix and it sounds
pretty good overall, you can be assured that after you switch
back to stereo your end-product is going to sound amazing.
Regularly switching back and forth between stereo and
mono throughout the process of mixing will allow you to
check efficiently for mono compatibility.
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
35