Old 08-14-2018, 04:10 AM   #41
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The other thing is if someone is listening to music in a silly left field way, your album is going to be normalized with everything else and skewed the same way.
It's not a silly left field way, it's a huge slice of all listening these days. When saying that, I mean it's especially relevant when making music that is bound to be used in a mobile context -- and in that group I would include music that you could potentially offer to be used in that manner, i.e. licensed for mobile applications after the fact, even years down the road.

Of course, now most of the devices are quickly becoming true stereo, but it's booming in China for example, and there are staggering amounts of new cheap mono devices there, for quite a while still, I would imagine.

If the music isn't compatible, it's not well suited for mobile games, youtube videos and similar, and that simply rules it out from being professionally used in that way.

Users who relax by playing for a moment on their phone or watching a video on their phone... very often listen to the audio through the internal speaker(s) instead of using headphones, just to play that casual game or check out a video.

What ever I might have done in music/audio, when judged solely by the number of listeners, everything in my resume pales in comparison with the amount of listens I've had in mobile games, just because the download volumes are so enormous even for games that can be considered "okay" successes, not even huge hits in any way. So if the material will be listened on some hundreds of millions of devices, most of the listens are through the internal speaker, and it matters .

In games, also according to telemetry, this adds up to thousands of years of continuous listening surprisingly quickly (in weeks) when all sessions are added up, haha, it's crazy these days -- just because of the user volumes.

And again, just from the point of view of potential use and licensing and all that, it's just as relevant if you don't want to rule out licensing your music for professional streamable commercial/video content and similar.
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Old 08-15-2018, 05:15 AM   #42
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Or just get cheap PC speakers. I bought some for about $4, they're powered of USB and sound better and sound good enough to check the mix on somehting cheap an tiny. Switch DAW to mono and monitor away.
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Old 08-15-2018, 01:35 PM   #43
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Just lying in my mrs house and notice a cool looking video on YouTube from a bass hour I follow. It's him playing 2 bass parts together on 2 different basses.

I put it on and, through the phone speaker, it's literally just a drum loop - none of the bass frequencies were even audible lol
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Old 08-15-2018, 01:51 PM   #44
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Just lying in my mrs house and notice a cool looking video on YouTube from a bass hour I follow. It's him playing 2 bass parts together on 2 different basses.

I put it on and, through the phone speaker, it's literally just a drum loop - none of the bass frequencies were even audible lol
I'm sure I'm going against some of the flow but I did testing of my last project on multiple devices during mixing/mastering - on the worst ones (phone speaker and some laptops), other than a couple of very small adjustments, I let it stand as is because there is a point where you chase every output device and end up taking away from everything else.

I do think there is a point where one commits what they want the user to hear under good conditions and the other stuff falls by the wayside (like I mentioned before get certain important elements like melody etc. good) - otherwise you become a slave to the sea of target devices at the expense of the overall production. I think Andrew Scheps mentions similar about chasing mono at the expense of stereo. At some point one needs the confidence to stand their sonic ground, within reason of course.

What I would do is compare your (proverbial you) mix with something you respect commercially and see how they compare on the same device, then make a decision.
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Old 08-15-2018, 02:22 PM   #45
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Besides for hitting the mono button once in a while, what do you think of hitting the "Auratone speaker" button one in a while? In other words, switching from good studio monitors to a speaker that expose the mix’s midrange.

I don't actually own an Auratone speaker, but the last song I mixed I set up an impulse response-IR as as last effect on the chain so I could flick a filter 'on' and have an idea of what the song would sound like on a cellphone, PC speakers, etc. I used this filter: http://www.1212music.com/simulate-a-...atone-speaker/

Have any of you tried mixing in mono with an Auratone speaker? And what do you think of using of an IR filter as an alternative?

Note: I guess I'm getting fed up or having to mix and render in order to export my song to various listening devices --> then fix, re-mix and render -->start over again <--- I'm not set up to listen in real time in various types of speakers.
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Old 08-15-2018, 02:28 PM   #46
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Have any of you tried mixing in mono with an Auratone speaker? And what do you think of using of an IR filter as an alternative?
There are usually two main advantages to the Auratone/single speaker idea:

1. No crossover/2-way/3-way anomalies to deal with.
2. No false mono to deal with.

For #2, with two speakers, anything in the "center" doesn't actually exist there - it's an audial illusion created by sending the same signal through both speakers; and since both speakers cannot be identical in response (both by their design and not sitting in a perfect space) then the resulting "mono illusion" can also not be perfect. However, we can mostly fix #2 by just switching to mono then panning to one speaker.

Actually you may be able to hear this with a simple test which is to take a mono source, listen to it in the center as "mono" then listen to it in just one speaker as mono. One can almost always tell the single speaker version sounds more distinct and "there" compared to the false mono image created by two speakers.
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Old 08-15-2018, 02:49 PM   #47
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The auratones are also supposed to have really good transient response, which isn't something you can emulate with an ir.
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Old 08-15-2018, 02:59 PM   #48
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The aurotone isn't representative of consumer speakers these days like it maybe was decades ago.

Even cheap pc speakers now have plenty of bass.

I personally don't care about mono compatibility other than the previously mentioned idea of ensuring nothing extreme happens (which won't without fake stereo processing).

Apart from phone speakers, I can't really think of another scenario that people will realistically be listening on.

I think it's still fairly common that people don't know what stereo is so have speakers miles apart and asymmetrical. That might be something to think about if you like to hard pan important tracks.
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Old 08-15-2018, 03:31 PM   #49
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The mixes I've heard that were specifically done for mobile devices sounded pretty horrible on a decent system.

Some of my favourite mix engineers never check in mono.

I did used to frequent one bar that had the left channel in the bar and the right channel in the pool room. California Dreamin' was particularly entertaining, because the patrons would have to sing the lead or backing vocals, depending on which side they were on.
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Old 08-17-2018, 02:04 AM   #50
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+1 SPAN
I really like when I hit the mono button on the master channel to have a listen. Then I hear something that just neeeds a little eq or something. Then next thing you know 47mins have gone by and I forgot I had just been continuing to mix in mono, all the while hearing nice improvement in the overall mix..... then BANG! Hitting the stereo button and the mix sounds like it 4times bigger than the room I sitting in!

Seriously though mono mix at some point seems like a must to me. And Reaper makes that totally easy and convenient.
+1 here!
This is a nice feeling, when your mix is not that bad in mono... and putting it back to stereo an you've got a nice wow effect
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