Wide Mixes That Don’t Fall Apart in Mono: The Do's and Don'ts

Hey guys, what's up? Today I'd like to talk about mixing a wide stereo mix while staying mono compatible, and the do's and don'ts. And therefore, I'd first like to start with a problem. Here is a mix that we should talk about. Have a quick listen to this. Okay, so far so good. Now let's consider what happens if people listen to a phone, uh, a mono Bluetooth speaker like my son does. It's very popular to listen mono today, and a large group of your listeners will all hear it in mono. So let's use a tool that I shared with my inner circle just the other day. Um, it's a Friday freebie. It's a free plugin, and it can simply mono sum the output. So let's check this again in stereo first. So far, so good. Let's hit the mono button. Yeah. Hmm. You hear it? Yeah. Yeah. Something is weird here, yeah. So, whenever we hit mono, the synthesiser suddenly loses level dramatically. It's definitely not mono-compatible. It even gets a little bit worse. So if we then go into the beat, let's consider what's happening there. ♬ ♫ ♪ Let's check that in mono. ♬ ♫ ♪ In stereo. ♬ ♫ ♪ Hmm. So what I hear is that, the synth is pretty much out of phase, and everything else is pretty much dead mono. The sustained 808 style kick, the snare, the drums, the vocal, and it's only the synthesizer which is pretty much out of phase. So there's a lot of range in the stereo field that is left unused, and I don't think this is a good mix because it's literally not mono-compatible, and it will simply start to fall apart on devices like this. So this is something that I want to talk more about in my upcoming workshop. I have a couple of videos following up, so stay tuned to the next video when we dive in stereo mixing tricks that hide a great, well-balanced mono mix inside a wide stereo mix. It can be done, and I would like to show you how.