steevio wrote:i think alot depends on whether your music is meant to be played in clubs or not. all the fancy stereo effects virtually dissappear in a big club, where unless you're standing dead centre between the sound system stacks, and that might only be 20 people in the whole club, (if the systems are even in stereo)NoAffiliation wrote:you can widen the bass to resolve issues. imo it's not so much of a problem with the frequencies but it's gonna sound flat if everything is dead center on top of each other and you will spend alot of time trying to make it work
before someone says bass is supposed to be mono, the definition of mono is that it's the exact same thing coming out of both speakers, that's it. this is why modern DAW developers like ableton only give you "stereo" channels to work with because mono isn't just single channel audio. you can have a super wide bass that still works in mono. yes for vinyl pressing the subs should be mono but JUST the subs, there's alot more frequency content in kicks and bass that can be played with in the acoustic space. the subs mixing together a little isn't going to be a problem, the problem is when you have two big sounds like kick and bass dead center, the envelopes fight each other much more than just those super lows
just load up your favorite track from favorite artist on a good phase scope and watch it as it plays
there's a ton of badass plugins that do all kinds of widening magic, pair one witha phase scope and it's on
in fact they might only weaken the sound, and sounds panned widely will be totally lost on one side of the club.
what sounds amazing in headphones, might not translate into the places where the music is meant to be heard.
i'm not sure what you mean by envelopes fighting each other, i call that tightness, and punch. i'm often more concerned about smearing the sounds too much in the stereo field, and cluttering it up. dead centre is also part of the field, and it provides solidity to have powerful sounds residing there.
like you say it is only absolutely necessary to centre the low bass for vinyl pressing, the rest is down to personal taste. i quite like to have a more 'mono' sound to my tracks, it seems more punchy and focussed that way, but i can also appreciate super-wide effects too, but theres no compulsion to use them like everything else inproduction
everything im talking about translates 100% to mono because it is mono, just really wide mono, not stereo tricks. IMHO using space is the most important part of music production. i can tell within half a bar of a track if the person grasps this or not