recording synths mono for clubs

[technomonster]

hey you guys. i am wondering if its best to record in mono, as i keep on reading that night clubs have mono systems.

if ever any of my stuff gets played at a night club i guess it would need be recorded properly.

are there any sites which claim they know.

i guess you guys check whether your mixes sound good in mono as well.

can anyone help me?

[ten]

Only extremely shit/cheap clubs would have a mono system. Although a ton of quality is lost in most clubs due to poor equipment, badly worked out acoustic placement of speakers, and general club usage they will still have a stereo capable system.

The only parts that really need to be mono are low bass lines, kick drums (actually, anything that is mostly lower end bass should be in mono) and most vocals (unless your doing some kind of effect on the vocal or vocal effect :)

Two reasons iirc, the human ear has trouble working out distances of bass when its in stereo so it can sound wierd in a club. Also if your pressing to vinyl stereo bass can make the needle jump about on the record which of course is not good ;)

ten

[technomonster]

actually i have read that - more than one would think, there are heaps of mono system clubs.

i guess the best clubs would be in stereo though.

very interesting

[Tomer=Trance]

One of the reasons you should check your mix in mono is to crealefy that non of the channels have megicly disapeared from the mix dou to mono summing.

[URBAN J]

Pads, Percussion, and FX are the only things in the mix that I will record in stereo. Everything else is mono and placed in the stereo field. If too many tracks are in stereo, the mix will sound overloaded and too cluttered, and will also mess with your pan placement. Less is more! I have heard many of my tracks in clubs, and played my tracks in clubs >(shitty and quality clubs), and have heard no problems yet! If the drums and bass are rocking and droppin, everything else is the just the cherry on top.

[jasedee]

The whole mono compatability thing came about back in the day cos not everyone had stereo radios....some were just little mono portable things.....or for example, in elevators, or in supermarkets where the systems were usually mono.

Im sure there are probably more technical reasons, like checking phase or something...

Oh yeah.....I dont think I have ever been in a club thats running a mono system, and I cant imagine that they would be very cool.

[technomonster]

i use logic audio 5.5,

in the output to got to the soundcard-of course there is the stereo output.

however you can also click it to mono.

would this be a good way to test whether ones music will also sound good in MONO, in a night club.
or does one need to do do this in the mixer stage, like not pan left and right just leave in the middle setting, and have the previous process -the outputs in the logic audio in the default stereo setting.

i have been listening to some pretty cool hard dance releases and studying their waveforms, and they sound pretty much alike when either i have the outputs in LOGIC on STEREO or MONO, giving me the impression that many of the parts have been recorded mono form the instruments.

the very MONO recordings sound really big and fat.

[jasedee]

But when you click the mono button in Logic, dont forget to turn off one of your speakers....

[Hollowcell]

i have been listening to some pretty cool hard dance releases and studying their waveforms, and they sound pretty much alike when either i have the outputs in LOGIC on STEREO or MONO, giving me the impression that many of the parts have been recorded mono form the instruments.

the very MONO recordings sound really big and fat.

Like Ten was saying above, pretty much all dance music will have the bass end in mono because when pressing to vinyl it helps the needle from jumping.

Other parts don't have to be recorded in mono, but referencing them in mono everynow and again is a good idea, just to make sure you don't get any phasing issues.

Basicly if your mix is good, you shouldn't loose any impact in mono.

[Gopal]

Hey guys, I've been DJing for approx 8 years in all kinds of clubs and venues and I can only name one rig I've ever played on one that was in mono. The only reason it is set up in mono is that there is a fucking spaghetti of cables going into the back room where the amps are set up and no one knows quite where to plug things in properly (and I don't have the time during the day to go in and pull it apart and rewire it). So what happens is, if you run the rig in stereo, the left sub is dead, switch the mixer to mono and it comes alive! Hence the rig gets run in mono even though it sounds fuckin aweful. So, don't worry about it in the producing side of things. Do everything above the bass frequencies in stereo and if the club wants to run their rig in mono, all they have to do is flick a switch on the mixer and voila! you have mono :P

[marc]

Hey guys, I've been DJing for approx 8 years in all kinds of clubs and venues and I can only name one rig I've ever played on one that was in mono. The only reason it is set up in mono is that there is a fucking spaghetti of cables going into the back room where the amps are set up and no one knows quite where to plug things in properly (and I don't have the time during the day to go in and pull it apart and rewire it). So what happens is, if you run the rig in stereo, the left sub is dead, switch the mixer to mono and it comes alive! Hence the rig gets run in mono even though it sounds fuckin aweful. So, don't worry about it in the producing side of things. Do everything above the bass frequencies in stereo and if the club wants to run their rig in mono, all they have to do is flick a switch on the mixer and voila! you have mono :P

in my experience, it is not so much that the clubs play tunes in mono but mixing a track for a club involves that you should take care of stereo signals. one reason is that most listeners won't enjoy the benefits of a stereo signal anyway. maybe they even would enjoy the opposite. imaginem you're standing next to the right speaker and you can hear something that only would make sense rhythmically if you hear the left speaker - which you obviously don't. and another reason is that (without proper equipent to measure the phase' correlation) it probably will just sound better for most of the clubbers.

marc

[MADSTATION]

I've been djing to more than 150 events(120+ raves and about 30 club nights) in the past 3 years and at least 80% of the time, the sound system is setup in mono.

[MacQ]

I guess what a lot of people don't understand is that mono systems are not set up for sound quality, they're set up for power output. If you bridge an amp to mono, you effectively double the power output for the channel. So, fewer amps gives you louder output.

It's not about how good it sounds, it's about how LOUD you can make it! That's what all the drugged out kids care about anyway, right?

~MacQ

[technomonster]

thats very intersting MADSTATION,

the thing is, in my LOGIC AUDIO 5.5 when i click the output to change from stereo to mono, on say the piece "sing it back" by MOLOKO

HAVE YOU HEARD THEM? goergeous female voice.

******anyway there is hardly any change in the sound.
makes me think that everything was recorded in MONO.

when i do that to a piece that i am working on, there is quite a difference.

one particular part-track that i used WAS A PRESET HIHHAT from a ROMPLER synth and it was programmed set to have prominence on the right speaker. it is an effect by the ROLAND programmer.

when switching the LOGIC OUTPUT to MONO this part when haywire, and had what could be described as out of phase type of sound.

i then decided to re-record that HI-HATT part and have the LOGIC INPUT in MONO mode - therefore end up with a MONO track.

THIS IMPROVED the sound of my piece when switching to MONO OUTPUT no-end.

i was wondering if just choosing the OUTPUT MONO option is a good way of testing whether the piece will sound good in MONO.

or should i try to test it via a mixer (no pan to left and right, just flat bang in the middle) to give me an impression on how my piece would sound in MONO.

[Gopal]

Thats interesting MAD, cause my experience would be at least double that, but completely opposite. Must be different on this side of the world.

Also, bridging amps to run in mono will give you more power, but doesn't mean that the rig is running in mono. It just means that one amp drives one speaker rather than two. Its not always an effective way of getting more volume either cause you will need twice as many amps to power the same amount of speakers and amps are alot more expensive than speakers. It probably will sound better though. The problem is that you will be running a very high current rig in that case and because 99.99999% of DJs can't resist running the mixer up into the red, chances are you will be up for a weekly speaker re-coning bill.