Panning for width and the mono test...

[Sinergy]

So I've learned that it's good to check your mix in mono b/c a lot of bigger club/show systems are in mono (yes, I know my track probably won't be played out on such a system, but I'd like it to sound nice if it were, worth the thought)

Now, I learned long ago that it is good, especially for synths, to be panned around to achieve that huge sound. So usually what I do, and it's probably lazy panning, is take the patch, duplicate, pan hard left and right, add like 30ms delay, and I get this super fat and wide sound. Sometimes I'll add a higher or lower version of the patch center if it sounds right.

Naturally, if you do this with one sound in your main "drop" or anywhere in the song, you kinda have to do it to just about every other synth. Otherwise, the other synths will not be as loud and wide, making them sound weaker and having to crank their volume up to get them to mix well costing headroom and probably really weird peaks.

So, my latest tune i've been working on I threw into mono. I had expected, that just about everything is going to sound a bit worse in mono just because stereo IMO sounds better, especially if panning is involved in any form.

It sounds, pretty shit. As if I had uploaded a shitty mix of it to youtube, then ripped it. Like all the synths sound distant, scratchy, and distorted. Bunch of noise going on also.

Is this, just how stuff sounds in mono? I mean, even the drums that don't have too much panning going on sound worse.

Any tips? Is this panning hard for width a bad idea to begin with? Or is this just mono.

Thanks.

[skimpi]

try messing around with different delay times, whilst monitoring in mono, and then settle for one that sounds good in both mono and stereo. It is gonna change due to how much phase cancellation goes on with the different delay times.

what you could also do though, is instead of duplicating the track, maybe have two different synth sounds playing the same melody, panned left and right, if they arent the same exact sound then they shouldnt cancel out

[Hircine]

try messing around with different delay times, whilst monitoring in mono, and then settle for one that sounds good in both mono and stereo. It is gonna change due to how much phase cancellation goes on with the different delay times.

what you could also do though, is instead of duplicating the track, maybe have two different synth sounds playing the same melody, panned left and right, if they arent the same exact sound then they shouldnt cancel out

This is why you slightly change the amp and cabinet settings when double tracking guitars. Having two high end lead sounds slightly different panned haas style / going through a doubler plus one mono with more mid/low end content will sound way bigger.

[skimpi]

try messing around with different delay times, whilst monitoring in mono, and then settle for one that sounds good in both mono and stereo. It is gonna change due to how much phase cancellation goes on with the different delay times.

what you could also do though, is instead of duplicating the track, maybe have two different synth sounds playing the same melody, panned left and right, if they arent the same exact sound then they shouldnt cancel out

This is why you slightly change the amp and cabinet settings when double tracking guitars. Having two high end lead sounds slightly different panned haas style / going through a doubler plus one mono with more mid/low end content will sound way bigger.

Well I wouldnt have thought you would need to change any settings as the two riffs are never going to played exactly the same are they, no matter how good you are haha, theres always gonna be different accents and timing for each note.

[efence]

one trick i used to use in my analog days ways running duel mono into high band EQ(i had a 10). then cutting and boosting opposite frequency's then when its starts sounding fat, start a/b/c a mono test ,mono with eq and eq stereo. its not as drastic as stereo phase but almost always sounds decent in mono

[enjarcher]

I always turn up unison on some of my synths and turn up the pan a bit. Works well.

[Sinergy]

Hm... Because I want wide sounds, just i'm not sure how the hell to do it.

The duplication and hard panning with delay is starting to seem like a bad idea, as for some sounds it just doesn't sounds good. And the problem with that as I stated above, you need to hard pan in order to keep them out of each others ways. If they were only say, 70% left and right, they would almost "bleed" into each other, which might make them sound more like one sound, plus I don't really need the width of 100% panning for every sound, but I can only imagine how much headroom would get messed up with identical sounds (same freqs) coming in the same place at the same time, not to mention the muddiness.

Basically all of this I'm applying to midrange bass sounds. And this gets confusing because everyone says "keep bass mono", but I assume they're speaking of SUB bass in mono, which I totally get, but I'm always having trouble getting the midrange sounds to be wide and not sound so "mono".

Basically I'm in need of good layering techniques that isn't going to make my sounds all muddy, and having a clean mix is going to make things sound much bigger than wide sounds that are muddy and not gelling together well.

Anything I could do in multi-band to achieve width? Leave low end mono, and apply maybe stereo width to the much higher end? I've sort of tried this, but I do it with Abletons "Utility", and increasing the "stereo width" knob usually makes the sound get much quieter and then almost disappear.

[skimpi]

The duplication and hard panning with delay is starting to seem like a bad idea, as for some sounds it just doesn't sounds good. And the problem with that as I stated above, you need to hard pan in order to keep them out of each others ways. If they were only say, 70% left and right, they would almost "bleed" into each other, which might make them sound more like one sound, plus I don't really need the width of 100% panning for every sound, but I can only imagine how much headroom would get messed up with identical sounds (same freqs) coming in the same place at the same time, not to mention the muddiness.

with the delay idea, assuming you are doing it by duplicated channels and just delaying one of them fully (not just adding a delay effect) then yes you need to 100% pan. However you seem to think that 100% is too much panning or too wide, well its the delay time that decided how wide the signal is. As if you have the channel duplicated and panned hard left and right but with no delay, it wont be panned or wide at all as its just the same signal in each speaker. Delaying say the right channel will then make it seem as the sound is coming from the left, and that channel hits your ear first, and longer the delay, the more it will seem to come from the left

[AxeD]

30ms is about the maximum you can delay the signal before it starts to sound like a separate source.
Maybe take that down a bit.

[enjarcher]

Hm... Because I want wide sounds, just i'm not sure how the hell to do it.

The duplication and hard panning with delay is starting to seem like a bad idea, as for some sounds it just doesn't sounds good. And the problem with that as I stated above, you need to hard pan in order to keep them out of each others ways. If they were only say, 70% left and right, they would almost "bleed" into each other, which might make them sound more like one sound, plus I don't really need the width of 100% panning for every sound, but I can only imagine how much headroom would get messed up with identical sounds (same freqs) coming in the same place at the same time, not to mention the muddiness.

Basically all of this I'm applying to midrange bass sounds. And this gets confusing because everyone says "keep bass mono", but I assume they're speaking of SUB bass in mono, which I totally get, but I'm always having trouble getting the midrange sounds to be wide and not sound so "mono".

Basically I'm in need of good layering techniques that isn't going to make my sounds all muddy, and having a clean mix is going to make things sound much bigger than wide sounds that are muddy and not gelling together well.

Anything I could do in multi-band to achieve width? Leave low end mono, and apply maybe stereo width to the much higher end? I've sort of tried this, but I do it with Abletons "Utility", and increasing the "stereo width" knob usually makes the sound get much quieter and then almost disappear.

One solution to all your problems... Izotope ozone imager. Works like a charm.

[MrBaxter]

Anything I could do in multi-band to achieve width? Leave low end mono, and apply maybe stereo width to the much higher end? I've sort of tried this, but I do it with Abletons "Utility", and increasing the "stereo width" knob usually makes the sound get much quieter and then almost disappear.

you can leave the low end mono, and then use a simple delay to create the haas stereo effect. aka, full wet, one side 1ms the other 2-25ms. The "stereo width" knob on utility essentially kills the frequencies it affects, so as you increase the width the center frequencies disappear.It doesn't do anything to widen the sound any more than it is.

[Sinergy]

Ack, it's not so much width I'm after, but just size.

I've got all these midrange bass sounds, that are mixed just fine, but onyl really shine when I used this panning technique. But for some synths it makes it sound oddly wide or like 2 sounds.

Like for a growl bass, it's like too wide whereas I really want movement and size, it sounds like the same sound is coming from each speaker, so I lose the twisting midrange stuff that would be in the center. If I take this panning/delay off of it, and it's mono again, it sounds small and muffled and just overall shit.

[antipode]

I do a lot of mixing and eqing in mono

why not use chorus and or flangers for stereo width on sounds?

or even reverb for that matter

[NinjaEdit]

Hm... Because I want wide sounds, just i'm not sure how the hell to do it.

The duplication and hard panning with delay is starting to seem like a bad idea, as for some sounds it just doesn't sounds good. And the problem with that as I stated above, you need to hard pan in order to keep them out of each others ways. If they were only say, 70% left and right, they would almost "bleed" into each other, which might make them sound more like one sound, plus I don't really need the width of 100% panning for every sound, but I can only imagine how much headroom would get messed up with identical sounds (same freqs) coming in the same place at the same time, not to mention the muddiness.

Basically all of this I'm applying to midrange bass sounds. And this gets confusing because everyone says "keep bass mono", but I assume they're speaking of SUB bass in mono, which I totally get, but I'm always having trouble getting the midrange sounds to be wide and not sound so "mono".

Basically I'm in need of good layering techniques that isn't going to make my sounds all muddy, and having a clean mix is going to make things sound much bigger than wide sounds that are muddy and not gelling together well.

Anything I could do in multi-band to achieve width? Leave low end mono, and apply maybe stereo width to the much higher end? I've sort of tried this, but I do it with Abletons "Utility", and increasing the "stereo width" knob usually makes the sound get much quieter and then almost disappear.

One solution to all your problems... Izotope ozone imager. Works like a charm.

I disagree, I find that this does not preserve the mono sound.

Maybe detune the two sides, rather than set them out of phase?

[ehbes]

haas effect. look it up

[AxeD]

He already knows about it and is using delays to create the effect. I just think OP might be overdoing it, as
he said he delays either side 30ms. And is experiencing oddly wide sounds or even separate sources.
Which is a consequence of the 'high' delay time.

[johnnythird]

The mono test seems to be BS, every song in mono sounds real bad.
Also club systems aren't mono, its a each pa unit plays the stereo track. If that makes sense. so the left side of the PA system doesnt play the left part of the track and the right side doesn't play the right they both play the same stereo mix, this isn't mono. If you are worried about phasing use a correlation meter.

I hope that helps

[Genevieve]

The mono test seems to be BS, every song in mono sounds real bad.

Nope, been importing mad songs in mono recently and they're still sounding good. Not AS good, but it's not a world of difference.

Still can't get shit to sound good in mono.

[efence]

one trick i used to use in my analog days ways running duel mono into high band EQ(i had a 10). then cutting and boosting opposite frequency's then when its starts sounding fat, start a/b/c a mono test ,mono with eq and eq stereo. its not as drastic as stereo phase but almost always sounds decent in mono

^ This and dimensional expander will not have any stereo phase. The eq method will be harder for mixing purpose and the dimensional expander will give a sense of space in a room almost like a reverb but will not cause any phasing in mono because the effect is inverted on the left side, which will cancel it self out in mono leaving a dry signal.

With the delay method you can sometimes get the ms just right and you will have minimal or no phase. It all depends on the hertz of the channel so the more the channels pitch changes the more likely at certain frequency it will start to phase.

[NinjaEdit]

I think this has been suggested, but you can set the delay time while listening in mono, but you will still lose something.

Also club systems aren't mono, its a each pa unit plays the stereo track. If that makes sense. so the left side of the PA system doesnt play the left part of the track and the right side doesn't play the right they both play the same stereo mix, this isn't mono.

So both sides sound the same?