Mono units for stereo applications

[jBam]

Hi all

It's been a long time since I popped in. Hope everyone is doing well

I'm great - just had our second daughter 3 days ago... feeling amazing, and even though I have even less time for a soldering iron, I've been blessed with EPIC long nights doing the night shift looking after little Lani in-between feeds. I.e. phone in hand, baby in the other, I'm dreaming up DIY projects and studio shake ups (that may stay dreams, but meh... don't ruin it for me ).

One dream has been a new 8 or 10 channel processing rack... maybe 500 series... process mono tracks (e.g. drums) back into daw, but then run that stereo bus back out after recording to the same rack for bus processing...

So: original dream, night one, was "get stereo pairs of various setups, then I have mono mixing AND stereo bus options"... good. I like this option.

Then at 5am this morning I was thinking through the laborious process of matching two eqs and thought "well, the perfect matched eq is the same eq, same settings processing the LR separately in two passes". That approach could also mean I have more sonic options across the 8-10 channels... I'd still probably double up a few, but I don't have to have perfectly matched duplicates of everything...

I understand the downside of this approach at a workflow level... I might spend some time trying it with my current setup pre committing... but: is there any real downside other than that? Providing I carefully start each L and R recording at the same point (same sample accurate point), it should be relatively sample accurate timing wise once recorded, other than minor intersample timing differences which is... well, pretty minor phasing concerns right?... I could even go 96k if that's the key issue.

Do / have any of you done this with eqs? I get compressors are a different story (although I could sum channels to a side chain I guess for a linked stereo comp outcome too I guess).

So workflow aside - any warnings? Thoughts? Is the identical nature actually losing some of that benefit of stereo units (the minor inconsistencies) or is it "actually a better outcome have it identical"??

 

[totoxraymond]

Hi!

My major concern wou'd beto not be able to listen to the stereo signal before it's been processed twice.

In my opinion, small inconsistencies aren't a problem as long as you can't hear them. If, you can hear them, well having two mono channels allows you to match by ear. And if you are really worried about perfect matching, well build things with discrete settings (ie rotary switches instead of pots).

Good luck with the baby, get as much sleep as you can!

Cheers,

Thomas

 

[jBam]

Thanks Thomas

Yeah... I think that's where I was at... I'm on the fence a little... what really tipped me over onto this discussion wasnt the 500 series idea above, but pipe dreaming about an AML EZ627... thinking "ah, one day when I buy a bigger house, I might be able to justify 2x 4U mono eqs in my studio"... then thinking about matching stereo without stepped controls (627 design is continuous) led me here (to mono eq in even in a 500 series rig)... and then I was also thinking "well, if I just went mono, I could maybe squeeze in a 627, eqp and maybe even an meq5", which is a pretty solid vintage eq selection.

In honesty, I'd never have the 627 on my radar, but I (foolishly) listened to some examples... tsk tsk. Shouldn't have. Low end sounds... well... doesn't matter... I'm trying not to think about it lol...

I'm with you on the stereo monitoring. It'll either be fun listening for the first time after the fact, or tedious and annoying. I'd definitely set up a switch for L/R/mono switching while pulling settings. I guess "luckily", the majority of music I write is electronic and while there's of course a lot of stereo content, it's a lot less "guitar panned slightly right, ukulele left" type stuff.

I think I might run some tests with what I have now (a few of stereo or dual mono, but could do some theoretical tests with plugins) and see if work flow sucks.

Oh crap... my baby (in my arms right now)... that's right... hmm... might be a few weeks until I do any real tests though lol