Audio Recording

Checking your mix in mono is a very important checkpoint when you are mixing regardless of music genre. The following are the reasons why you should check your mix in mono:

1.) There are a lot of important applications of your recording in mono. For example mono is commonly used in film and TV music projects. If your recording does not sound good in mono; then it can affect the success of your recording in that particular field.

2.) Some mix sounds very good in stereo but when played in mono; it reveals a lot of issues. This is particularly due to poor stereo imaging and “phasing” issues.

So how can you make a good mono mix? There are different approach that depends on the technical background of the sound mixing engineer and the music itself.

First method:

1.) Mix first in mono; so all tracks are not yet in stereo.
2.) Apply EQ, Compression and other effects as needed.
3.) Do a mixdown of the mono mix.
4.) Assess the mono mixdown for some audio mixing related problems.
5.) If there are no issues and your mono mix sounds well. Proceed to create a stereo image out of that mono mix. This is where you will start to pan the tracks in the stereo field.
6.) Do a stereo mixdown.
7.) Optinally, you can convert the stereo to mono mix and check if the sound quality is at most retained.

Second method:

1.) Mix as usual.
2.) Apply effects, EQ, compression and stereo imaging/panning.
3.) Monitor the mix in stereo.
4.) To evaluate the mix in mono, mixdown the mix as mono.
5.) Evaluate/assess the mix for problems, etc.
6.) If there are no problems proceed to the final stereo mixdown which will be submitted to mastering.

In Adobe Audition, there is a feature where you can implement the second method quite accurately. It is because Adobe Audition has a feature to mixdown the entire tracks to mono. This feature might be available in some DAW software although it might be using a different name.

Below are the steps on how to check your mix in mono:

1.) Launch Adobe Audition.
2.) Go to multitrack and load up your mixing session/project.
3.) Once all tracks are loaded and locked, do the following:

a.) Go to Edit – Select all.
b.) Go again to Edit – Mix down to file – All Audio Clips (mono).

c.) Adobe Audition will then create a mono mixdown.

4.) Make sure that mix down should be mono. It should look like this (only one row of wave, not two rows):

This is mono:

This is stereo:

That’s it and start listening to the mono mix. The crucial thing is that your mono mix should not deviate significantly from your original stereo mix, or it should sound very similar.

In problematic mono mix, there are some instruments that will be lost or the quality of mono is very poor compared to the stereo mix.

As an illustration of this tutorial; below are the stereo and mono mixdown of the same song (no mastering yet applied) in one of my projects. If you try to listen to it, the mono and stereo mix should be at least similar. Until then you can decide that your mix should sound well in mono.

Stereo mix:

Mono mix: