recording synths mono for clubs
 

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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