hey guys as you can tell by the title my question is is it better to produce in mono and stereo? cause i dont know where it is that i saw that someone said that you should produce in mono or if you should mix in mono im not sure which one it is but is that something that ou guys would recommend?

the best thing to do is set up your static mix and level balance in mono. basically listen in mono while mixing do all the panning and eq compression and any effects in mono that way you can be sure to have mono compatibility. also if you can get sounds to sound separate and clean in mono then when you switch back to stereo it sounds amazing.
all that is basically stuff on the link above from the last poster also check out recording revolution. home studio corner and the other one are amazing places for info

Maybe mixing and everything in stereo - just check out that it's not catastrophy in mono before releasing it.

If you work in mono during most of the work, as soon as you start to pan things and apply many effects - balance will shift, and you are back to square one.

mono is da future

yea in mono the balance will shift and panning basically does nothing to add separation and because of that you have to actually use eq and compression the way they are supposed to in order to create a separation. I do my level balance panning and eq and compression in mono and it makes things easier to do and when I switch to stereo I get a much wider fuller sound then when i just do stereo mixing. and that's because everything you are hearing is the summed up sound in the phantom center so just because you have 2 guitars panned opposite does not mean they sound good together mono is the only way to to know if you separation is good with the way things sound or if you just used stereo to pan things to sound separate.

If someone says you should do this or that,you must do this or that they're simply wrong. You could try it and see if it works for you but i haven't produced in mono ever nor do i intend to in the future (that's not a very good tip though,one should always experiment).

im not saying you have to im saying it really is the only way to get true mono compatibility. like me example above it can give you more of a wider sound and a better idea of how to eq things. because when summed in mono those wide panned instruments are just in mono and sound muddy because they all are fighting in the same range.
you should not make a mono song and just print it in mono. but mono is kind of like a more of a way to really test to make sure everything is fitting in its own place

this mite be a stupid question but to produce a track in mono do I simply add a "mono effect" (not sure what they call it) on the master and then take it off at the end?

not a stupid question if you don't know ask that's how we all learn.
you can do that just thow a mono effect and the whole thing becomes mono. but i am not saying make a song in mono. thats lame
I have never done that ever. but I think mixing in mono is a great idea usually you can if in like reaper you can just click mono on the master fader pro tools you can pan it into mono, but you can ether use a plugin to mono sum the mix to listen to it or usualy a interface has a control software that can do it I know focusrite does
Last edited by jam92189 on Tue Aug 28, 2012 8:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi. Mono is the meat and potatoes of your tracks, because it is louder than the side channel.

so good to here someone say it

In Reaper you just press Mono button on Master channel - and can check out how it sounds.

In the past, summing to mono was very important as your track might end up on mono TV or Radio and the major mixing consoles all had a "sum to mono" button.

It's not as important today, but with some phones the output sound is mono or the speakers are so close together that they might as well be mono, the headphone jack is stereo.

If you think that your track will never be played out over such a device then you don't have to worry, if there is a chance that it will, then you should close the pans on the Master or "sum to mono" if possible in your DAW.

it is useful as said above to see if there are tracks that are very similar in their frequency content, EQing in mono to bring out the differences helps to add overall clarity and identity to the stereo mix.

Reaper also has a 'stereo width' button. When I'm mixing I set the levels in mono first, then I listen in stereo and if the sound is too loud I narrow the stereo width until it is the right volume and check again in mono. When it sound right in mono and stereo it is right.