Splitting Stereo Tracks

[Gar23]

Hey everyone,

I've had what probably amounts to an interpretation issue when mixing. I know that you really want to use mono tracks to make a stereo mix (with stereo tracks only being used for some tasteful bleeding) but alot of my vst's are all stereo and summing them to a mono track usually sounds horrible.

So, should I be split mono'ing everything? I've done this on the last couple of mixes I did and I ended up with a ridiculous 100+ tracks to manage.

The one thing I am going to try next is just recording all of my vst's to a single stereo track, once i have mixed them in their default stereo tracks, and splitting that. It seems a little too simplified but I know I must be doing something incorrectly with the way i have been working so far.

Sorry if this was already covered somewhere, I did a search but didn't see anything addressing this specifically. If anyone could explain how they approach getting their mono tracks together that would be awesome.

 

[nezvers]

Maybe that's my English but it's hard to understand what are you wanting to achieve.
1) tell which DAW are you uing.
2) if I understand right your problem is that all recorded tracks recorded as stereo instead of mono?
If so, check info about your DAW how to set a mono track recording
3) If you have stereo track but it has both sides 100% same sound than it's basically mono signal, so it doesn't really matter and you can simply use that for mixing.

 

[mva801]

Are you creating with primarily VST instruments? What are your recordings composed of? If it's guitar/ bass/ drums/ vocals/ etc, then most all of that should be recorded in mono. Many times I'll record my overheads into a stereo track but in that case it's still two tracks panned hard left/ hard right. If you have a shit ton of software instruments that are all coming out stereo then yea, that can create some issues.

 

[Daybreak]

So, your problem is that you want to be able to pan your synths left/right without it sounding like shit? If you don't wanna pan, then it isn't a problem that it's a stereo track. Say you wanna pan one synth hard left, but panning both the right and left track in that stereo track sounds like shot, then just try splitting it into mono, delete the right track and pan the left.

 

[Trevoire520]

Um why do you think you need everything to be on stereo tracks exactly? Use stereo tracks for your stereo sources and mono tracks for mono sources. Anything else is just needlessly overcomplicating things.

 

[Gar23]

This is where i'm having problems. Once I get this figured out i think i'll have a new perspective on the whole mixing thing.

I should have posted this example earlier but say you have an orchestra, a couple of layered synths, and a choir pad along with the usual Guitar Bass and Drums. And these were all stereo patches in your DAW recorded one track apiece. In order to keep the guitar sounding wide and dominating you would need to get control of all of those elements and take them out of their default stereo setting right?

So would you split everything? Split a few things and leave the rest stereo? Bounce everything together then split? Split the orchestra alone? Or am I just talking crazy and making an issue out of nothing? ... and maybe using way too much sound for my own good?

I'm really just trying to figure out the mixing process for my favorite band

 

[nezvers]

Now it's hard to understand what you want.
Why you need to record everything in one stereo / mono pair? If do so you can't split any instrument.
Just record like you should - one guitar into mono, second guitar to his mono, bass to his mono, drum mics each their own tracks, etc (and process them there). Than group all respective groups to their own summing bus (mixing tweaks for groups). In the end everything will go to master stereo track like it should and that will be your stereo track.

 

[Gar23]

Now it's hard to understand what you want.
Why you need to record everything in one stereo / mono pair? If do so you can't split any instrument.
Just record like you should - one guitar into mono, second guitar to his mono, bass to his mono, drum mics each their own tracks, etc (and process them there). Than group all respective groups to their own summing bus (mixing tweaks for groups). In the end everything will go to master stereo track like it should and that will be your stereo track.

What I am looking for is information on how to work with everything but the guitars, drums and bass. Since the processing for that is a given, otherwise it's not going to be very metal, I'm wondering on how to cram other VST's in their so that everything sounds big and full but not interfering with the guitars and at the same time not taking up a ton of tracks in my DAW. I'm hoping to end up with more of an epic deathmetal type of sound and less of a Transiberian Orchestra sound.

I messed around and just did a bunch of shorter mix exercises the last few days and I seemed to have some success grouping certain instruments together in a single stereo track and splitting that to mono tracks when the guitars played. Still there's alot more ground to cover but I seem to be making some progress.