Quick tips for better sounding mixes, part 2
In this short series, I’m providing a few quick tips for improving your home mixes, that don’t require putting down any money. For more in this vein, check out the series called Quality Budget Gear. There’s great tips on making the most of what you’ve got in there.
This time we’re talking about mono compatibility. When audio is mono compatible, it means that your music sounds substantially similar when played back in both mono and stereo formats.
Why it’s important to check your mixes in mono
Mono!? Who cares about mono-we’re not in the 1960’s anymore. There’s a few reasons why mono compatibility is important.
Mixing in stereo can mask certain very critical mix issues. That’s because having a big stereo field to move stuff around in can result in subpar EQing, during the mixing process.
There may be frequency conflicts in your mix that make something sound tinny, or muddy, or harsh, but those problems won’t appear as obvious to you when all those different signals are panned around in the stereo field.
Mixing in mono solves this problem: it will crush everything into the center, and sometimes make your mix sound not great temporarily-that’s the point! If you can solve these frequency conflicts by using an equalizer effectively in a mono context, when you put your mix back into stereo it’ll sound expansive, wide, clear, and deep.
Particularly if you’re mixing harder driving music with lots of loud distorted guitars and reverb (for example, some hard rock and shoegaze styles), checking your mixes in mono will allow you to create space and clarity in the music, without also sacrificing sonic impact.
There are many easy ways to do this in the studio: a simple utility plugin set up on your DAW master track could do it. A lot of audio professionals like to keep a mono speaker like an Avantone Mixcube around, for this very reason.
The process for checking mono compatibility is simple. Just jump back and forth between mono and stereo while mixing, making sure everything sounds nice and tight in both contexts, and I think you’ll be surprised at how much more clear and focused your end result will be. If you hear big changes in the music moving from stereo to mono, especially any instruments getting softer or disappearing, that’s a red flag.
Another reason why mono compatibility is important is because many very popular Bluetooth speakers (like an Amazon Echo, for example), only have a single speaker built in. So, even if you’re playing a stereo file through an Amazon Echo, it will always appear in mono, and you want your music to sound consistent no matter where it’s being listened to.
If your mix isn’t mono compatible, your listeners using a smaller Bluetooth speaker could be hearing completely different music with instruments missing-not something we want.
