Mono-Stereo dilemmas ?

I have a few dilemmas on recording AUDIO bothering me for some time. I used to record at my friends place. He has home studio and we made some stuff. Than I decided to go on my own and went into learning all this stuff (recording, audio/midi, use of Logic, everything I can get) and now I ended up with our old tracks I was goofing around with so I asked him how to open them in Logic and he said that basically we recoded everything (every channel) MONO but It's ok for me to import them as stereo into Logic. So I'm not quite sure what is the difference among tracks that are mono or stereo.

If I play MONO track and go panning it will have the very same effect as if I pan stereo track. I really don't understand. While recording (bass, guitars, vocals, drums) should my input signal go to mono or stereo audio channel strip ?

Should I record mono or stereo?

Thanks

What your friend told you is more confusing than helpful.

Keep it simple. Treat mono as mono and stereo as stereo.

Guitar, bass, and (one) vocal are usually in mono.

Drums can be stereo if you only use a set of room mics. If you have overheads you use 2 mics also too give a better sonic space representation.

Single components of a drum kit are mono: kick, snare, hi hat.

Toms can be stereo in the final mix, for example if you have 3 toms recorded individually you group them and bus them out to a stereo aux. The placement of each tom is done with the panning: tom 1 left, tom 2 center, tom 3 right (this is drummer's perspective mixing).

Keyboards are stereo most likely.

Sometimes you can send a mono signal to a stereo aux and put a stereo reverb or delay on it to spread it out.

Hope this clears it up a bit.

What your friend told you is more confusing than helpful.

Keep it simple. Treat mono as mono and stereo as stereo.

Guitar, bass, and (one) vocal are usually in mono.

Drums can be stereo if you only use a set of room mics. If you have overheads you use 2 mics also too give a better sonic space representation.

Single components of a drum kit are mono: kick, snare, hi hat.

Toms can be stereo in the final mix, for example if you have 3 toms recorded individually you group them and bus them out to a stereo aux. The placement of each tom is done with the panning: tom 1 left, tom 2 center, tom 3 right (this is drummer's perspective mixing).

Keyboards are stereo most likely.

Sometimes you can send a mono signal to a stereo aux and put a stereo reverb or delay on it to spread it out.

Hope this clears it up a bit.

Thanks. It does make sense. I will record here at my place one instrument by one. No amps and external rig. I will plug guitars, or mic into a audio interface so that should be MONO as you said. I know that final mix should be stereo and I already made discussions on this with people since I understand concept of "wide stereo sound" and "panning". But I was just interested in what you have explained. If I record drum kit pieces (snare, kick, tom 1,2,3...) I should mic them as MONO tracks and guitars, bass, vocal, they all goes to MONO tracks right? So if I understand my wholle mix would usually be constructed out of (audio) MONO tracks ?

So if I understand my wholle mix would usually be constructed out of (audio) MONO tracks ?

Yes, but remember that you could send some of these to stereo aux channels and process them with stereo plugins, too. A mono vocal sent to a stereo reverb, for example.

J.

So if I understand my wholle mix would usually be constructed out of (audio) MONO tracks ?

 

Yes, but remember that you could send some of these to stereo aux channels and process them with stereo plugins, too. A mono vocal sent to a stereo reverb, for example.

 

J.

Well I think of that as a putting a REVERB (plug in) to a channel strip of MONO audio tracks with vocal content. Is that ok ? I mean, I know I can use sends ( Aux tracks ) but I just gave an example of simple, vocal single effect usage.

If I can made it this simple, I would represent it (my understanding of mono-stereo in recording) as a group of MONO tracks I'm processing and panning so that they together make STEREO image and stereo track bounce of my mix. At least that's how I did so far. I would made 2 (or up to 6 guitars) pan them all across stereo field. Bass dead center. Drums panned left/right (except for kick and snare), vocal, dead center (of course back vocals, and overdubbing panned). And all of those were MONO audio tracks. THAT's what I bounce at a STEREO audio file as my final mix.

Is this how I should think on the subject of mono-stereo recording ?

You can do whatever you think works for the song as far as processing goes. If the end result sounds good, you have reached your goal.

J.

You can do whatever you think works for the song as far as processing goes. If the end result sounds good, you have reached your goal.

 

J.

I think the same way. I assume that everyone has it's own ideas and things that sounds good to that particular individual but some things are like common ways of production direction. So that's why I was interested if that is what most musicians do,record everything on mono audio tracks which are later on panned all across stereo field. Or recording on stereo tracks and THAN panning them. I still don't understand what difference would be made if I choose mono or stereo as my recording track.

I still don't understand what difference would be made if I choose mono or stereo as my recording track.

I'll try to break it down and make the situation easy to understand.

First of all, forget about what most musicians do. It doesn't matter what they do. As was said above, what matters is what YOU do to achieve the end result. But at the same time you don't want to do things in a way that don't make any sense or which'll potentially cost you time, or even wasted disk space. You'll see what I mean in a minute...

Let's say you're recording a vocalist, guitar, or drum (or anything else for that matter) with a single microphone. One microphone = a "mono source". Or maybe you're recording guitar or bass that (typically) has only a single output. Again, a mono source. So your mic cable (or guitar cable) is going get plugged into your interface on a single input. Single input. Thus, there's no reason to choose anything else other than a mono track to record that on. Choosing a stereo track will only cause you headaches, which I'll describe shortly. But first...

Let's assume that you use input 1 on your interface for this signal. When you create a mono track, Logic gives you the option to select a single input which feeds that track. Input 1, input 2, etc. In this case you'd choose input 1 (duh, right?).

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from creating a stereo track to record that mono signal on. So let's say you did. Here's what would happen:

• Logic's input selector now only offers you the option of selecting an input pair. You'll have no choice but to select input 1+2, or 3+4, or whatever. So let's say you select 1+2. With signal coming only into input 1 on your interface, Logic will record that signal on the left and absolutely nothing on the right.

• On playback, the sound will only come out of the left speaker

• The resulting stereo audio file (with nothing on the right side) will be twice as large as a mono audio file. That's because a stereo file -- even when one side containing no signal -- takes up twice as much disk space as a mono file, and takes twice as much processing power to play back.

So as you can see, there's really no particularly good reason to record a stereo track when you have a mono source. By doing this you waste disk space as well as your time wondering (and troubleshooting) why your signal is only coming out of the left side. Oh, and good luck turning that bizarre stereo file into a mono file and getting the level of that part to be the same as before (while totally do-able, you have to know what you're doing, and you could have saved yourself the trouble by having done things right in the first place).

But wait, there's more!

A mono signal playing back from a mono track can be panned using the panpot. When you have a mono track, the panpot acts as you'd expect. Move it to the left and the signal moves to the left, and vice versa. But things change when you're dealing with a stereo track...

A stereo signal playing back from a stereo track cannot be panned using the panpot. That's because the function of the panpot changes to become a balance control when you're dealing with stereo tracks. If you want to pan a signal on a stereo track you have to insert the Direction Mixer plugin to do true panning.

Now...

If you have a mono signal on a mono track, and you change that track to stereo, Logic helps you out by automatically causing that signal to come out of both sides of the stereo track. And the balance control on this stereo track? For all intents and purposes it will act like a pan pot. That's because even though it's still a balance control, by moving it, all you're doing is changing the balance of identical signals coming out of the L and R speakers. So in effect it acts like a panpot, but it has not stopped being a balance control.

I would HIGHLY suggest that you not just read all this stuff but rather, take an hour and tryout everything that's been written about in this thread. Only then will you really get it.

SKI....thanks for this AWESOME, huge ass explanation It's really helpful. I appreciate when someone dedicate his time to simplify something and go into details.

I will certainly do as you said. I will experiment and try all of these options ( I have tried some of them already ). And I will record MONO everything and than go panning to get width. If I would be recording GUITAR/BASS amp or DRUM kit I know that I would have more than one sound source so I could go STEREO.

For example if I record acoustic guitar and I put Mic1 right in front of the body of the guitar and Mic2 1 meter far I can blend those to get "room" effect or, stereo sound (since I have 2 signals recorded right ?). So because I have 1 I will go MONO and make multiple takes, than decided which one to pan where

You're welcome!

For example if I record acoustic guitar and I put Mic1 right in front of the body of the guitar and Mic2 1 meter far I can blend those to get "room" effect or, stereo sound (since I have 2 signals recorded right ?). So because I have 1 I will go MONO and make multiple takes, than decided which one to pan where

This is an interesting situation you bring up. I'll offer you some perspectives. But first, let's look at a slightly different example from what you described...

Let's say you were doing a live recording of a guitarist/vocalist in a great-sounding auditorium. No audience here, just the performer. You'd have one mic for vocals, one mic for guitar. So far, two mono sources.

Chances are that when it comes to mixing this song you'd pan both signals up the center. This replicates what someone in the audience might here -- both the vocal and the guitar coming from the center of the stage. Now of course you could get "artsy" and pan the guitar slightly to one side and the vocal to the other. But let's stick with kind of a traditional approach for now.

If you use cardioid (directional) mics, they will mainly pick up the sound closest to them -- guitar and vocal -- and not too much of the room sound at all. And since both mics are mono, and panned up the center, the sound of your recording won't really contain a sense of space or depth. So you'll want to capture the sound of the room too, in stereo!

There are two ways you can record the stereo room sound... one is with two individual mics, one located on each side (or in the back) of the room. Let's say you plugged these mics into inputs 3 and 4 of your interface. You could record them on a stereo track, set to inputs 3+4. The room sound (room reverb) washes over the room's L and R sides simultaneously, and generally it's assumed that a room reverb is going to sound consistent on either side of the room. So recording it on a single stereo track makes sense. Meanwhile, your vocal could be recorded on a mono track (input 1) and guitar on another mono track (input 2).

Your recording will now have 3 tracks: guitar, vocal, and stereo room. And you'll now have a tremendous amount of flexibility to alter the balance of guitar and vocal against one another, and also the amount of room you want in your mix. Pretty cool!

Could you recording the L and R room mics on two mono tracks? Absolutely! In this case you'd pan one mic hard left and the other hard right. Would there be any difference in the sound if you took this approach over the approach of recording those mics on one stereo track? Nope. None at all. But...

When it comes to mixing, you have four tracks, not three. And if you want to alter the level of the room sound you have to move (or group) two faders, not one. Furthermore, if you want to edit the song, you'll have to cut (and apply crossfades) to two separate mono tracks. Same with EQ... if you wanted to roll some low end off the overall room sound you'd have to open up and adjust two EQ's (one on each track). But if you record your reverb on a stereo track, you have only to deal with one fader and one EQ. And edits on one stereo track are infinitely easier to deal with than having that sound spread across two tracks.

But in this example, the room reverb you're recording is to provide a sense of stereo space (as well as the sound of the room itself). This is different from what you'll achieve per the example you presented, so let's get back to that so you can see the difference...

In your situation you're recording a mono room sound. When you blend that sound in with the close-mic'd guitar, the room sound will lend a great deal of sonic character to the guitar but won't provide the listener with a sense of stereo space. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. Not all recordings of a room's reverb have to provide a sense of stereo space! Sometimes you just want room character and not a sense of stereo space necessarily. So in this case would you want to record both guitar & room sounds on a stereo track in this case? My suggestion would be, "no, record them on two mono tracks". Here's why...

• Playback of two mono tracks (guitar and room) will automatically be panned up the center. If you recorded them on a stereo track, the guitar and room sounds will be panned hard left and right. That could be cool. Or maybe not...

• with two mono tracks you have independent control over the balance of near and far sounds on TWO faders (as opposed to the single fader of a stereo track)

• you can apply EQ and other FX to each track separately

Finally... if you did go ahead and record guitar and room on a stereo track, it is entirely possible to separate them later into two mono tracks. There are several techniques for doing this, actually. But in this case I'd consider the room mic and the guitar mic as two mono sound sources that you might want to treat separately in the mix. And it's generally considered good practice to record two mono sound sources on separate tracks so that you have better flexibility in the mix.

Gotta run, but HTH.

Absolutely PERFECT explanation once again It is really much clearer to me to get along with this now. Basically, after reading this, I think despite that 2 separate MONO tracks of room sound are more difficult to treat in the mixing process, this option is giving us a way more options to work with. I can group them and use BUS sends of let's say REVERB or any other plug in to save memory, CPU and time while sending both tracks to same AUX with effects. And If I want 70% of room sound left and 30% right I can pan them that way, put Gold Reverb on left and let's say Space Designer and Echo on right and get some interesting ambient and space character that way. I wouldn't be able to do this with only one STEREO track of room sound.

I mean after all this high end plug ins and space emulations I can use even just that dry acoustic guitar MONO tracks and put a LOT of good plug ins on that track and with smart usage get effect of that guitar being played somewhere in a wide, big space or just ANY space. I can use the same recording on 2 separate MONO tracks and process them differently so that one panned side and other panned side have totally different sounding space, blend them, etc. I klnow this is not the sae as recording with two mics but in purpose of getting listener into feeling that he is "somewhere" he feels that space coming out of his speakers, I think that should make some job done.

Here is an example I posted in my MXL 990 mic thread. This guy used really cheap condenser mic and made his settings in such a way that if you close your eyes you could easily imagine this guy in some really big hall space.

I know this might be offtopic since we talk about MONO-STEREO here but this is just in purpose of making my point on how we can make space impression.

Our vocal or guitar MONO tracks affected with plugins and then duplicated to 2 separate channel strips with different settings and panned L and R can make that STEREO FIELD effect to a listener.