Why MONO bass?

MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE · Post by **MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:48 pm

I know your meant to group and mono your low ends, but why?

532nm · Post by **532nm** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:05 pm

stereo or out of phase bass freq's require the needle of a record player to "wiggle" too much, causing skipping in the most extreme cases or simply causing the need for the grooves to be spaced out more on the vinyl, thus causing the record to hold less data.

shouldn't be a problem in a fully digital setup, but bass just feels right dead center, just like the highs add to a more full sound when generaly spread to the left and right.

Android · Post by **Android** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:42 pm

futhermore

some club systems run on mono

you wouldnt want your bass to disapear if the system ran on the opposite channel would you ?

you can apply a small amount of phase/chorus, in the range of less than 5% to get a bit of width, but at loud volumes it can make both the vinyl cutting lathe skip (very bad) or skip once the record is pressed (looks bad to your customers/dj's)

an Osciloscope is very helpful

I run Penguin Audio Meter on an old clunker PC just to have a nice read out, once you get familar with it, you will know how its sounds without the scope

MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE · Post by **MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 7:58 pm

Thanks for that, it makes sense now........... A. UK

adam · Post by **adam** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 12:53 am

Sometimes bass just sounds plain fatter when it's centralized. I don't have any science to back that up, but there you go

fl0w · Post by **fl0w** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 3:04 am

also, spatializing bass is useless, the human almost can't locate where it comes from.

clinc · Post by **clinc** » Wed Mar 07, 2007 7:54 pm

532nm wrote:stereo or out of phase bass freq's require the needle of a record player to "wiggle" too much, causing skipping in the most extreme cases or simply causing the need for the grooves to be spaced out more on the vinyl, thus causing the record to hold less data.

shouldn't be a problem in a fully digital setup, but bass just feels right dead center, just like the highs add to a more full sound when generaly spread to the left and right.

this is true.... however not everyone is mastering for vinyl out of their basement studios.

The necessity to make the low end mono stems primarily from the fact that stereo separated bass is somewhat overkill simply because most classic setups have one dedicated subwoofer. Also, I would assume that someone would want a much tighter, punchier signal without loss. The mono signal allows one to focus more on making one tone fatter without having to worry about compensation from either the left or right channels independently.

Measax · Post by **Measax** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:33 pm

doesn't matter...only for vinyl and the mastering engineer will mono certain frequencies in that case...I mean you wouldn't want crazy panning in you low end anyway...not sub at least...but I wouldn't worry about it that much...just try to keep kicks up the middle and if the bass is really low make sure you don't have it all over the place...