Feature request: bring back the "mono" button

Yeah but the crappy aurtiones emulated the domestic rubbish at the time. If you want to emulate the domestic rubbish of today, then simpyl get a old boom box from a yard sale with an external input and hook it up.

Explain this to me, oh Woodlock the Audio Master:

The other day I played one of my mixes for a friend over the crappy computer speakers of a computer at the music store where he works. Both he and the other employess thought the mix sounded good, but I was HORRIFIED – the low end was crapping the speakers out if you raised the volume to any decent level.

Out of curiosity, I went out to my car and got the latest Robbie Robertson CD, mixed by R&B guy Tony Maserati. That CD has HUGE low end, so much that I turn my car’s bass down a bit (although it still sounds okay at level settings). I put that in the computer and to my shock, it played back beautifully – full in the low end, but not distorted like mine.

The “apparent” loudness of the bass on that CD sure seems greater than my mix, and yet my mix craps out and his doesn’t.

Explain that one to me!*


*I suppose the CD mix has all the really low ruble and sub-harmonics cut out, which actually lets him mix the bass that remains much louder. Still, I don’t know how to approach making those sort of cuts, if they’re so low I can’t hear them on my monitors

you had some very low end frequencies going on that the Robbie Robertson CD mix didn’t. A good bass isn’t about the real low bass.

The clue here is that the “crappy computer speakers of a computer at the music store where he works” isn’t actually capable of reproducing real low end… but your still forcing the LF energy through the amp and into them and crushign teh available headroom, hence the farting.


… which you have kind of answered anyway below …

*I suppose the CD mix has all the really low ruble and sub-harmonics cut out, which actually lets him mix the bass that remains much louder. Still, I don’t know how to approach making those sort of cuts, if they’re so low I can’t hear them on my monitors

This is why it’s important to master on full range speakers. Idiots who master on NS-10s expose their ignorance by your very anecdote

If you can’t upgrade to monitors that can reproduce LF then err on the side of caution and roll it off. After all most people who listen to your music will listen on speakers that roll off below 70Hz

Paul, I always felt this way too. Then I read the thread in here from a few months ago where someone was reviewing one of Lenny’s songs. Lenny said he rolled off the low bass for this very purpose (IIRC) and the other person (forgot who) said that he should keep it for the kick and bass guitar for those who have subwoofers.

All in all, it got confusing to determine who had the better argument. I will say this though: it was right about then that I started changing the way I mix to get a much better improvement in the overall sound quality. I route everything but the kick, bass, and toms through a hi-pass filter with a rolloff at about 120Hz, but those three tracks have no hi-pass at all. The result for me has been great clarity in the overall mix even on my laptop speakers.

It’s not that I’m disagreeing with you. If anything, I’m agreeing with you in principle while observing different results so I’m having trouble reconciling the difference.

My monitors are Event Studio 8’s which are of course ported monitors, so there’s got to be a pretty steep drop off down there somewhere that precludes them from reproducing the very low subharmonics. One good thing about NS10’s for mixing was that they were non-ported, enclosed speakers that had a gradual bass roll-off and also were pretty tight on the low end in the time-domain – very little resonating freq’s down there at all.

I’ve been hi-passing just about everything except kick and bass since my analog-tape days beginning over 30 years ago. However, admit I’m unlearned/unskilled regarding tapering the very low sub harmonics… I’ve certainly read about it over the years, and even tried it a few times. Problem was, I couldn’t hear any difference, cutting 40Hz and below.

Regarding the Lenny song, in my opinion the person who recomended restoring those low freq’s was quite in error – 90% of the time people will not have a sub-woofer to reproduce those freq’s and like I believe my story is indicating, will cause problems on various other systems



Having checked the two methods, I think hitting the mono button on the Stereo Enhancer plug-in is better than the control mixer mono button. Based on listening comparisions on WAV audio files, the mixconvert plug-in seems to unnecessarily attenuate the signal more. The link below confirms my suspicions.


http://www.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=6988&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=01d9c94aeaec6d74e1264693e3ef9d8c

Any thoughts?

Daniel.

Thanks Daniel, I’ll take another look at the mono-to-stereo insert

I thought the Control Room mono button was attenuating my volume a lot more than I would have expected

Is it not the mixdown plug that is in question, not the mono button?

For what it’s worth I have a quite big difference between the control room Mono button and my external monitor control mono switch. They sound quite different!!!

I also measured the Mix convert plug-in and the stereo enhancer plugin through the free Flux Stereo Tool.

When the normalise button in the Mix convert plug-in is pressed on, it attenuates for example, a 0dB signal, by -3dB when the mono button in the control mixer is on.

When the normalise button is off however, the signal is not attenuated, but the control mixer meter will display the signal as peaking at 3dB when the audio signal is really peaking at 0dB.

check out the JPG, One thing to note that my pan law is currently at Equal power…could that be making the difference in the control and regular mixer meters?

I’m bumping this…it still seems crazy that there isn’t a “proper” mono button on the main stereo outs. Anything else is just a clumsy workaround.

I seem to remember SB promised to put it back in after they took it out in SX2.1 ?