Mixing in Mono

I’ve been trying to figure out an easy way to mix in mono in cubase.
Does anyone have a nice method or workflow for this?

I remember older version of Cubase had a simple mono button.

I tried Setting the easily bypassed panning options on the Stereo Out to be “Stereo Combined Panner” and centered both sides… But I don’t think this is a good way to do it since it just forces left and right to be Centered, rather than just playing the true Mono field.

Please share your method for me!

EDiT: Using Cubase Pro 9.0.20

You don’t say which flavor of Cubase you are using (hint: that’s why we encourage folks to put their specs in their signature), but if you are using Pro then you can set the output to mono in the Control Room.

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If you use the control room there’s a button for monitoring in mono.

I find it more useful to monitor through one mono monitor rather use a stereo pair with a phantom centre. So you could turn off one monitor or buy on extra monitor :smiley:

Sorry, Cubase Pro 9.0.20
Can you be specific where in the Control Room?
I see Downmix presets has a MONO - But when I select it and see that it is powered… nothing changes. I still hear my audio hard panned.

In VST connections outputs make sure your stereo out is not assigned to any outputs.

And if that’s not it can you say if the small meter in the downmix section switches to a single bar when you select mono?

You want to mix in mono? Create a mono output bus and route everything to it.

Thank You! Apparently there was a lot about the Control Room I did not know…
I previously had everything configured to Stereo Out in VST Connections.
Just changed it to Studio Monitors.

Thx

That is actually a sensible way to do it.

There’s no such thing as “true Mono field”. There’s the mono sum - which this method and the control room method both offer, identically - and then there’s the phantom image, which can’t be derived accurately through an algorithm (i.e. you can expect lots of artefacts, latency, and weirdness).

Using Reaktor, I made a small mix-buss plug-in with the following options:

  • Normal stereo
  • Reversed stereo (left = right and right = left)
  • Mono, both monitors
  • Mono, left monitor
  • Mono, right monitor

If the last two options sound different, check your studio set-up. Or your ears :slight_smile:

I usually don’t use the Stereo/Mono button in the Control-Room-Mixer because it has a short audio dropout. Instead I just insert simple mono-plugins and Analyzers there, like flexionmusic wrote. When using the Listen-Button, you can use these plugins for every single channel too.

And next time your in the market for an interface, look for one with a mono button (like Steinberg’s UR28M).

Normally I just put the stereo enhancer(I think that’s what it’s called…its stick with Cubase plugin on the maser and switch it to mono. I just wish I could set the bypass of the plugin to a key command.

control room - setup - and theres inserts below volume knob that affects only monitor output. i put there voxengo msed to monitor mid and side separately, also theres my metering plug and magic ab. very handy stuff.

I just stick the mono->stereo plugin in the first slot of my master bus and set it to MONO mode.

Mono is soooooo 60’s bro!

Mono mixes are an essential extra check in the mastering process

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