It’s the middle of the Fabulous Sixties. Many if not most people still don’t have stereo sound equipment to play their 45s and LPs on. Stereo FM is a cutting edge technology, and AM radio stations still play music. Shucks, a lot of turntables and record players still have settings for 78 rpm.
You’re a recording engineer, and you’ve just been given two jobs. One is a pop 45 in mono, the other is an LP by a prestigious jazz artist in stereo. You’re going to do recording and mixing for both projects. What would you do in the mono recording that you wouldn’t do in the stereo recording, and vice versa?
For one, panning wouldn’t work in mono. Is that what you mean?
Hungry hungry hamsters again. Methinks the board is about to crash.
Geek, yes. Recording engineer, no.
But I will watch this thread with interest.
Sort of. But I’ve read where the Beatles put most of their work mixing Sgt. Pepper into the mono version and let studio technicians do the mixing on the stereo version. They expected that most of their fans would be hearing it on mono equipment. It got me to wondering what an engineer recording and mixing in mono would do differently from an engineer recording and mixing in stereo. (Not that it makes much difference, since nobody releases new recordings in mono any more.)
If you’re working for Motown Records you would boost the bass & drums for the mono 45, knowing that a rhythm-heavy mix would work better at the discotheques and dances where the 45 would likely be played.
I mix audio (mostly for video) in mono or stereo depending on the desired result and intended audience (our local community access TV doesn’t broadcast in stereo, so why bother).
With stereo, you can depend on the separation to distinguish instruments, but that doesn’t work in mono.
One thing you have to keep in mind if you’re mixing to stereo but intending to combine 2 tracks for an alternate mono mix is phase. Something slightly out of phase in stereo will cause partial cancellation if combined.
And to illustrate a worst case, and a favorite fun example of mine, Casey Kelly released a record once with a song called Escaping Reality. It had a single vocal (Casey) line, on both left & right equally (centered), the way most soloists are mixed, but at the chorus, the engineer put the left-right vocal 100% out of phase. If you listened to this song with good separation, like with earphones, suddenly the vocal, which during the verse sounded centered, split apart at the chorus and your ears couldn’t tell where it was coming from; it was everywhere. But the backing instruments didn’t change (normal phasing) and the voice was superimposed. It was a neat effect, and certainly sounded like you were “escaping reality.”
But the album liner notes had a warning to DJs: “Don’t play this record on the air! If you do [and you broadcast in mono or your audience listens in mono], you will lose the vocal entirely in the chorus!” due to phase cancellation.
If anyone’s curious, the major record companies stopped creating mono mixes for consumer purchase in 1968.