All my tracks are not 'mono-compatible'?

crutos1 said:

So, as a non-professional, am I just overthinking this?

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Yes.

Dan Worrall has a good series on this-

The big thing is mostly that panning instruments in stereo will affect their volume in mono. Whether or not this is a bad thing depends entirely on what you hear, not on a phase meter moving around. All the meter is good for is letting you know that something isn't translating 1:1 to mono, it's up to you to decide if it's an issue and how to solve it.

Fellow hobbyist here as well!

crutos1 said:

So, as a non-professional, am I just overthinking this?

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Imho... yes.

crutos1 said:

I do mix in mono all the time, so maybe I've just been doing that wrong?

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That's good! Then you've probably compared how your mix sounds in mono compared to stereo. If you think it sounds fine in both, imho that's "mono compatible" enough, great even. What you want to avoid is your track sounding like shit in mono (e.g. double tracked guitars disappearing completely because of a widener you used or similar surprises).

crutos1 said:

I try to keep up with all that I learn, and it's so defeating when I discover a new topic that feels like I'm back at square one! Any help appreciated.

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I think more likely you already were at square 3 and watched a square 2 tutorial of questionable quality that made you question things that you were already doing correctly.

Can you post the audio?

Overall looks fine, correlation is near Center, phase is fine. Doesn’t look tilted, although slightly left (would need to see it playing), or more like a horizontally squashed oval.

One reason could be how mono compatible (if you split them into bands) the low mid and high ranges are. Something like the low end being more stereo than mono could have caused it to flag up.

But if it sounds fine in stereo and nothing disappears completely when checking in mono. I wouldn’t worry.

Only time I’d worry if was the whole mix was in negative phase or didn’t stay north of zero, or if looked more oval and horizontal. If it’s vertical but tilted permanently \ or / then I’d check for a problem, might be volume and panning related.

Dont stress too much about it. The only real thing I would ever stress about in mono, today, is how your bass response is: does it vanish when summed together or not? If so, you have polarity or phasing issues which should probably be cleaned up anyways, but you still may not want to fiddle with it too much if it sounds good. (Also a good way to check polarity on drums etc. Snares may vanish in mono due to mics, but you should be able to catch this in stereo due ot the amplitude difference). Do you lose instruments that are panned or widened? If so, does it sound good in stereo and are you OK losing that image for better mono compatibility?

After that, no one listens to mono, and if they do, it already is—most likely—going to be on subpar playback equipment in less than desirable locations. Trust me, nothing will sound good blasting in the mall or grocery store. I'd be more worried about the frequency response of a mix, which is just mixing well to begin with, before mono compadibility. If you are working on a mobile game: do not, please for the love of all that is innoncent in this world, mix or compose for IMAX. Bernard Herrmann was a master of this: know your final use case.

Most classical, film, and game recordings are going to be "mono incompatible". Why? Because we mix for the theatre or headphones, and now with streaming, we usually target for airpods or laptop speakers. The nature of the material we record and use is also more disperse to begin with. If it sounds good on your fancy studio headphones or monitors and the audience has any form of decent equipment that lands in between those two extreme ranges of playback devices, it'll translate well enough to everything in between. Cheap equipment? You know it works on airpods. Equipment equaling a calibrated studio or theatre? It will translate like it should.

I always check my mixes on crappy equipment, as I know the threatre/album mixes are already taken care of based on my mixing enviornment. Check your mixes on various playback devices and use your ears. This is definitely something that people tend to overcomplicate. There are times when it does get messy and really technical, but the majority of the time, it doesnt matter as much as one may think.

Generally, keep lower frequencies centered, humans dont spacialize these anyways, and feel free to pan/widen higher frequencies. If you are already doing that, you are probably fine.

The only major spacializing thing I have noticed I started to more after I got into mixing for film, tv, and games, is that I do less hard panning of certain elements than I did for traditonal album. This is predominantly so if someone sits on one side of the theatre, they arent missing out on something that is ONLY blasting from the other side. This doesnt mean there are not hard panned elements, but I definitely consider that, especially after I had done some dub mixes earlier on. Even if I hard pan, I'll still try to add some balance so that, from an album perspective, it hits like an element is isolated and hard panned, but it plays well in a large venue.

Dan's videos are fantastic primers on these topics: eq, saturation, stereo spectrum, so if you have not watched them, do so. Even if you do not own fabfilter, those principles apply.

I get stressed about my mixes too and worry about how the 13 other people that will listen to it will judge me :-/

True story.

Just check your track in mono and check for level changes vs stereo, if they are small or none, you're good

It should go below 0. Otherwise it's probably too narrow.. or it's an EDM club mix, most songs should have moments below 0

Also don't mix in mono, check in mono.

FireGS said:

Can you post the audio?

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Sure, here's a snippet.

Piano Pete said:

Dont stress too much about it. The only real thing I would ever stress about in mono, today, is how your bass response is: does it vanish when summed together or not? If so, you have polarity or phasing issues which should probably be cleaned up anyways, but you still may not want to fiddle with it too much if it sounds good. (Also a good way to check polarity on drums etc. Snares may vanish in mono due to mics, but you should be able to catch this in stereo due ot the amplitude difference). Do you lose instruments that are panned or widened? If so, does it sound good in stereo and are you OK losing that image for better mono compatibility?

After that, no one listens to mono, and if they do, it already is—most likely—going to be on subpar playback equipment in less than desirable locations. Trust me, nothing will sound good blasting in the mall or grocery store. I'd be more worried about the frequency response of a mix, which is just mixing well to begin with, before mono compadibility. If you are working on a mobile game: do not, please for the love of all that is innoncent in this world, mix or compose for IMAX. Bernard Herrmann was a master of this: know your final use case.

Most classical, film, and game recordings are going to be "mono incompatible". Why? Because we mix for the theatre or headphones, and now with streaming, we usually target for airpods or laptop speakers. The nature of the material we record and use is also more disperse to begin with. If it sounds good on your fancy studio headphones or monitors and the audience has any form of decent equipment that lands in between those two extreme ranges of playback devices, it'll translate well enough to everything in between. Cheap equipment? You know it works on airpods. Equipment equaling a calibrated studio or theatre? It will translate like it should.

I always check my mixes on crappy equipment, as I know the threatre/album mixes are already taken care of based on my mixing enviornment. Check your mixes on various playback devices and use your ears. This is definitely something that people tend to overcomplicate. There are times when it does get messy and really technical, but the majority of the time, it doesnt matter as much as one may think.

Generally, keep lower frequencies centered, humans dont spacialize these anyways, and feel free to pan/widen higher frequencies. If you are already doing that, you are probably fine.

The only major spacializing thing I have noticed I started to more after I got into mixing for film, tv, and games, is that I do less hard panning of certain elements than I did for traditonal album. This is predominantly so if someone sits on one side of the theatre, they arent missing out on something that is ONLY blasting from the other side. This doesnt mean there are not hard panned elements, but I definitely consider that, especially after I had done some dub mixes earlier on. Even if I hard pan, I'll still try to add some balance so that, from an album perspective, it hits like an element is isolated and hard panned, but it plays well in a large venue.

Dan's videos are fantastic primers on these topics: eq, saturation, stereo spectrum, so if you have not watched them, do so. Even if you do not own fabfilter, those principles apply.

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I greatly appreciate it. Thanks for this!

Joël Dollié said:

Also don't mix in mono, check in mono.

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Appalling balderdash, my good sir! Mixing in mono is teh bestest and I'd definitely recommend to use it for at least 30% of the time spent mixing. I usually start with stereo for the first pass, then hop to mono for the second, then stereo, etc. It's absolutely revealing for balance issues but also frequencies and even panning to extent. The "bigger picture", if you prefer. For me, it's the #1 problem-solving trick.

I actually sometimes carve my first EQ tweaks in mono listening when mastering as well. I've noticed that the more crappy the mix is, the more revealing mono listening is to pinpoint the worst offending issues fast.

I have a TC Electronic Clarity M where I can observe a stereo scope and correlation to keep an eye out for any phase issues (though there are plenty of plugins out there, Izotope Insight, free ones too I think from Melda and Youlean perhaps). Also my monitor speaker controller allows me to flip my speakers into mono so I can check to ensure nothing just drops out – if you don't have this I think there are also plugins you can add at the end of your stereo bus which will "mono-ize" everything for the purpose of checking.

That said, I basically just use my ears as a judge. Seeing the scope and correlation meter is helpful to catch phase issues which I may not detect, but rarely ever is anything in perfect correlation – aka perfectly mono "compatible," unless it's literally already in mono to begin with. What I do keep an eye out for is anything which is off the charts in negative correlation, which will show me something is wrong or out of phase, and likely will not collapse well to mono.

Anyway this is why I still force everything into mono at my final mix or speaker level as a check, using my ears. If I can hear everything as intended, then as far as I'm concerned we're compatible. Will it sound less big and kinda shitty? Yeah, but if all the elements are sitting in the right place relative to that, then nothing to worry about.

However if suddenly elements entirely disappear, or volumes become drastically different, then you know you have a compatibility issue which you'll want to investigate. Find the problem and fix until when listening in mono everything sounds correct.

Hope that helps!

wing said:

have a TC Electronic Clarity M where I can observe a stereo scope and correlation to keep an eye out for any phase issues

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I got it as well and absolutely love it, though I use it mostly for LUFS etc dynamics. Anyway, I've found that especially when working with samples and synths there's so much stuff that can make the meters go bonkers for no "valid" reason that just like you, I'd trust ears first and sight second.

Personally, for what it comes to phase and mono compability for me, I've noticed two sorts of options. Either the music is "normal" and doesn't really sound "bad" in any output configuration or it's horribly crooked and sounds completely unnatural due to too much widening and/or phasing issues. Anyone with a bit experience can spot the latter really fast IMO just because it sounds very weird. So if the music doesn't sound like the latter, just ignore most of the phase meters unless you're an LP lathe operator!

Henu said:

I got it as well and absolutely love it, though I use it mostly for LUFS etc dynamics. Anyway, I've found that especially when working with samples and synths there's so much stuff that can make the meters go bonkers for no "valid" reason that just like you, I'd trust ears first and sight second.

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Oh yeah totally, I use it mostly for LUFS as well, to make sure I'm sitting in the right place. Handy with all the little screens you can page through without having to open any plugin.

it's horribly crooked and sounds completely unnatural due to too much widening and/or phasing issues. Anyone with a bit experience can spot the latter really fast IMO just because it sounds very weird.

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I'm a big fan of modular synths and there's a lot of cool modules which allow you to do crazy panning and waveform phasing tricks. However with such freedom comes responsibility - there are sooo many synth videos on YouTube etc where I can hear in an instant it isn't mono compatible. Wide is good but some of these are just toooo wide, almost disorienting to the ears. Then I switch my speakers into mono and sure enough – half or almost the whole thing disappears and becomes whisper silent due to everything cancelling everything else out

Check your mixes in mono, and just make sure things stay mostly in balance.

I once recorded a guitar player who sent me a stereo feed from his pedal array.
Only after mixing, mastering, and CD printing did we discover that his guitar part COMPLETELY disappeared when played in mono.

Lesson learned the hard way.

I mix a lot of metal and most of it doesn't translate well to mono because of hard panned left and right guitars. I don't worry about it since it's the same across the whole genre and due to the density of the mixes metal doesn't work unless it's on a decent sound system anyway (unlike a stripped back folk mix for example).

tcollins said:

I once recorded a guitar player who sent me a stereo feed from his pedal array.
Only after mixing, mastering, and CD printing did we discover that his guitar part COMPLETELY disappeared when played in mono.

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Did you ever listen to it on headphones? I'd be curious how obvious the problem was at that stage (still stereo but listening over headphones).

MartinH. said:

Did you ever listen to it on headphones? I'd be curious how obvious the problem was at that stage (still stereo but listening over headphones).

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It was a dumb mistake, especially given that I usually check everything in mono. My guess is that I did actually check the mix in mono, but I didn't notice the guitar part missing since it was a recent addition of fill parts. The part completely disappeared in mono, so I think the problem might have been a cable wired backwards somewhere, putting the stereo feed completely out of phase.