The importance of being Mono

[Phil Tipping]

This was prompted by a recent problem from a user, where the master song sounded different after transferring to a computer. The usual reasons for this are due to not comparing like with like, but not this time.

After re-reading the symptoms more carefully, it seems the song did sound ok after transferring, but only on some devices. On others, it was different... more specifically, the drums disappeared when played back on a cellphone. It's obvious now, but this suggested a phase issue, and sure enough, one of the drum tracks was found to be out of phase during the mixdown.

Checking for mono compatibility is (should be) standard working practice, but it set me wondering if there was a way of doing this before transferring the mix to a computer... so here's a video showing one way of doing it:

 

[-mjk-]

Phil, my Mastering DAW session has a Mono button as does my monitor controller. It's always good practice to check the mono compatibility before releasing something. Thank you for that excellent reminder!