Hi All
I am just trying to improve my mixes this year and I am wondering if you could help me understand keeping tracks in mono vs stereo?
For instance BIAB drumkits ?How do you process them when it comes to panning and mono?
Are their any special considerations to take into account when using realtracks vs home recorded tracks?
Also are their general rules to follow with reverb on mono vs stereo tracks?
I have been going LCR with the panning with most in Mono on the wings but have been a bit lost on when to keep a track in stereo and why.
Or any other useful things that may help me in that area?
thanks appreciated in advance
urs Hugh

That is a huge question that can evoke a lot of opinions.

FWIW I always leave keys and drums stereo. I never pan drums and often increase the stereo image of them. I will slightly pan stereo key tracks or leave them, particularly pianos, centered ... all depending on what other tracks are present. For example if the left hand of the piano player doesn’t work with a rhythm guitar panned left then I will pan the guitar to the right, etc.

It’s very contextual. Any other stereo RTs, e.g., guitars I convert to mono. And again FWIW my objective is an open airy mix that sets up a soundstage like a small live band. Toward that end I spend a lot of time trying to get each track to have its place yet not sound isolated.

Panning, obviously, moves left and right while reverb tends to move the track more forward or something like that.

Bud

Thanks Bud,
I am going to try that with the drums and see how it sounds,
.Maybe at last Im asking the right questions lol,H

Hi Bud,
I tried that with the drums and it worked very well.I also had a tamborine and shaker I panned them left and right and left the drum kit in the centre with a preset that had a imager ,H

I always export all tracks as mono. This gives me more control of where to pan them in the final mix.

My basic approach is drums, bass and vocals dead center and everything else full right or full left.

On simple songs with only vocals and a single guitar part I will dupe the guitar track and shift it a few milliseconds. Then put one guitar track full left and the other full right. It makes a lovely full mix with only two tracks!

The issue with duplicating a track and shifting it a few MS is that it introduces phase issues. This is much more apparent when mixed down to Mono (such as playing through your phone or a mono bluetooth speaker) but can still be apparent with stereo speakers especially if you shift your head a bit as you're listening. The only way to avoid these phase issues is to record a double track, which I do on probably literally every song I record.

Hi and thanks John ,
So I in the quest for making room for vocals went away from putting tracks in the centre but I can hear now that it didnt work and that it was ok to put more tracks in the centre like you have said,thanks h

Hi Simon,
I find phase a bit hard to understand and I cant seem to spot when I have a problem with it,thanks for the advice ,h

Phase is hard to describe, but once you get it, you know it when you hear it.
A given track just doesn't sound right or act right especially when effects are added that should make it 'better' in a mix but don't. or sounds start cancelling out other sounds (I doubled the vocals but now some words seem muffled or have a weird chorus sound)
First test is, if you doubled it to another track and moved it, simply mute the doubled track .. does the problem go away? If so, likely a phase issue.

For panning, I try to visualize the stage.
I almost always use a stereo mix of the drums, whether they are generated or recorded live with multiple mics, just seems to work better for me.
On piano it depends; is the piano a central piece (needing more room/panning) or is it just a piano comping chords in the background?
If it is meant as a background comping I will likely split it to two mono tracks and position them both to have a narrower field, ie put the piano a little left on stage but still give it 'some' spread. Like 60% left for right hand and 40% left for left hand. Then it's still not 'MONO' but it is spread into a much narrower range of the stage.

Like J&B mentioned, this will vary from project to project and even song to song when you are mixing.

Hope that helps; there is a difference between having total control of two MONO tracks and simply panning a stereo track. So for any given solution it will depend on the application. No absolute truths.

By using two MONO tracks in the end, you can have more control over 'where' the instrument/performer is in the sound stage (and still control the L/R mix). But recording it in Stereo (or multiple MONO) tracks originally is what opens this option.

It’s all up to what sounds good to you. Both stacking tracks in the middle mono style and slamming them full L and R are much 60’s things. FWIW not my idea of a soundstage but that’s me.


Bud

Agree 100%. When stereo first came out in the 60's the only option was center or hard panned left or right. We have come a long way since then!

Hi
As with all things it depends what you are trying to achieve.

Say the sound of a full orchestra then see pic below as positional guide and then adjust volumes to move them forward or back in the mix (don’t over do it)

So if we are dealing with a smaller set say jazz band or pop trio quartet etc, the try to visualise how the would be laid out at a live session.

Much also depends on how wide you want you sound stage and how wide the listeners stereo image is (how far apart are their speakers)

In the world of midi you can get some very nice KSP (keyboard stereo panned) pianos
So that the low notes are on the pianist left and the high notes on the right in 88 steps.
This is great but it would sound a bit odd with the speakers 10 feet apart, that’s some wide piano

So it is a matter of horses for courses at the end of the day.
Have fun
Mike

Mike, I looked at your image and found it to be different then the one I have. I googled orchestra instrument seating arrangement and looked at the images and discovered there is more than one way to set up an orchestra. Who knew? Not me! So I did learn something new already today.

My first thought was where are the flutes?
<grin>

Yes, I’ve played in orchestras with different layouts, but Mike’s diagram is what I’ve normally seen.

After a browse, I don’t see any mention of what NOT to pan. You don’t pan the lead vocal. That’s in the center. And you don’t pan the bass, because bass is very difficult to locate and you want the maximum sonic energy.

For example, if you shift one track by 1 millisecond, you'll have cancellation at 500hz, 1500hz, 2500hz, 3500hz etc basically acting as if you added an EQ reducing those frequencies. You can hear what happens in this video just before the 3 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pJOkhPTpLo

As others have said, whatever sounds good is good, but phase issues are one of those things where it may sound "good" in very exact circumstances - your speakers, your room, your sitting position, your ears. Change any of those things and it'll sound terrible.

It's partly for this reason that when mixing I have a monitor controller that allows me to listen in Mono and with one speaker's polarity flipped, as it helps me hear certain phase issues more easily. I have a hardware monitor controller, but this can be done in software with plugins like the free Maat 2BusControl plugin.




Agreed. I also don't always pan lead guitars or lead instruments in general, though it depends. For drums (when mixing separate stems for each drum) I don't pan the kick and usually don't pan snare (depending on the recording setup).

Yeah, as Simon said, don't pan kick drum at all, that would probably lead to problems.

I differ with Simon in that I am open to panning the snare, though usually slightly .. mainly to add some dimension to other drums. In many recording setups, the live snare is pretty prominent, and is usually picked up by other mics also. Like overheads, hihat, and even the ride on the other side of the kit. So the panning/EQ on all those tracks can affect the end result snare sound.
In my opinion, drums are the most complicated tracks to mix, so you have to keep an open mind and try lots of stuff.

I've had moments where I EQ'd the crash cymbal mic and the snare suddenly had more (or less) presence in the mix.
So I always start with bass drum center, but am OK with moving the snare a bit..

Mixing drums ain't easy

It's worth noting that there are more than one ways to pan a stereo track. One way seems to raise the gain in the favored channel and reduce it in the less favored channel and leaves the L/R image intact. One way seems to move the full stereo image further left or right. The third (that I know of) seems to separate the channels and allow them to be moved independently. As a corollary to that, stereo widening (and narrowing) is another option. With those choices, I tend to leave stereo tracks stereo. There is often a reason why they are stereo beyond simply how they were recorded/mixed. Some effects even on solo instruments are stereo themselves and it seems best to try to preserve that.

I find panning useful for both rehearsal and performing live with backing tracks
Lately I've been panning my tracks with bass hard left and the drums hard right.

if a drummer sits in (or shows up for rehearsal) i can pan the playback hard and drop the drum track out completely.
I can also pan it slight down at rehearsal to give the drummer some idea of what my thoughts were when I created the arrangement.
I also sometimes pan the drum volume slightly down and get the drummer to play percussion (congas, etc).
I do the opposite if the bass player shows up. I mix any other instruments (usually a keyboard or other chording instrument) dead center and normally at a noticeably lower volume than bass and drums. This works great as a guitar trio sound with just the slightest comping from the keyboard. Keeps me (guitar) from having to play so much. Nothing worse than an guitar player overplaying.

Another option I used for a while was to pan both the bass and drums hard one side. This allowed me a quick and dirty eq capability when playing a boomy room. Not sophisticated but sometimes quite helpful. This was suggested by another member of this forum (i forget who to give the credit to) I found it useful back when gigs were more plentiful and I was playing everything from intimate restaraunts to outside tiki bar settings.

Hopefully we will soon have to once again deal with such problems.

That is why you should listen to your mix on a variety of setups. And not just for phase problems!

60's thing, 70's thing, 80's thing, 90's thing, 00's thing, 10's thing and now 20's thing! It never went out of style!

Some folks love LCR and some don't. Whatever! As stated multiple times here if it sounds good then it is good!

If you are interested in LCR search Google for "audio LCR explained".

Thanks for mentioning the above.

I often use Logic Pro’s Direction Mixer that offers a lot of versatility other than just a simple shift. I find it helpful when getting rhythm tracks to cooperate with one another.

I’m far from a keys guy but it’s hard for me to, in my mixes, envision a mono Grand Steinway

Bud

Bud

Mixing is a huge topic. It's also genre dependent.

BUT....

If a track is stereo, or mono, should depend on how it was recorded and predominately if it is an instrument capable of being a stereo source or a mono source. Drums, and keys, as well as orchestras are typical stereo sources. Bass, horns, fiddles, guitars, are often mono sources.

What I do. If a track is a stereo track, I will rarely pan it. It already has 2 sides for a reason. I will simply leave it centered and adjust the level so it fits the mix. Panning a stereo mix often simply looses one channel of the stereo sound. To alleviate this, you should convert the stereo track to mono and THEN pan it.

Mono tracks are easier to pan and place in the mix. When I pan something, to one side, I like to pan something to the opposite side at the same level to balance the sound.

Like I said.... mixing is a huge topic and more art than science but certainly a mixture of both exist in this thing we do. You get better at mixing by reading about it, learning the tools, listening and discussing mixes you like with others, and then of course, actually mixing. And don;t just mix your stuff..... mix tracks that others have done.