Anyone Running Mono Output

T

Tonemaster

Inspired
I have 3 days to determine if I'm keeping my Ultra. Until last night, it was a done deal. I really want/need this to work for me as I love good guitar tone, but have a bad back. I currently have a rack system (Triaxis and Mesa power amp, etc..) that sounds great, but is very heavy.

Anyway, I run mono live and when I changed over last night the patches fell apart...I mean really bad. I tried changing Output 1 to L+R Sum and L>R. The latter sounded only a little better than the former. I've contacted support and they suggested setting everything up mono from the get-go and run that channel out to the board (left or right). I'm going to try that tonight, but figured I'd check to see if anyone else has had a similar experience, and if so, how did you overcome it?

Any help will be much appreciated as I was extremely disappointed when I discovered" this may not work for me.

Thanks
 
I don't have an answer for you, but I do agree that this can be painful. I love to run stereo when I can, but in the event you have to run mono and have not set up your patches for it, it can be a challenge.

I realize the work required could be immense, but it would really be cool if in the global settings you could flip a setting from stereo to mono and it would take care of all the necessary changes behind the scenes for best results in mono. And....the levels would stay intact when doing so.

Good luck.
 
One VERY important thing to consider: do any of your patches use the Enhancer block? If so, bypass it. The enhancer, when used in mono, makes your guitar sound like a cheap robot voice emulator in a Radio Shack keyboard.

There are other effects that will cause trouble in mon, but not nearly as much as the enhancer.

The reason I mention this is because, even though my sound is not as strikingly satisfying in mono as it is in stereo, it does *not* "fall apart". Either something obvious is clearly wrong, or you are very sensitive to the switch to mono (I suspect the former, not the latter).

Check your Enhancer, then check for stereo delays, phasers, etc. Someone had captured an incredibly useful list of the effect blocks and their effect on the stereo field... I forget who, and I didn't bookmark it (silly me!) I'll look for it later, but don't have time right this minute.
 
i'm not sure i understand the issue. you made a bunch of stereo patches, and now that you're going live for the first time, you changed the output to mono and don't like what you hear?

i run mono live too and it sounds great!

if that's the issue, it kinda sound like... i tune my guitar to C# tuning, but then when i want to play standard tuning, i have to tune it back! it's just how it works i guess.
 
I run mono. I always have. Out of the left into a guitar cab.

I think the reason I run mono is two fold: (1) a long time ago, someone told me that unless you're playing on a giant stage, where the audience is very far back, the audience can not really "hear" stereo because in a sense, both the L and R on the mains are right in front of them and both of their ears hear both; (2) I was worried that if a sound guy either wasn't good at doing a stereo mic job, or didn't have enough mics, booms and empty mixer channels, I would essentially be losing half of my sound.

I feel like I get good results going mono. If I ever do direct recording with the Axe, I will likely move stereo and do double amps, but for now, I am happy.

-Phil
 
I'm in the mono camp for live work and have no trouble dialing in what I want, but I think that's the point: Select mono or stereo first, then tweak.

IMHO stereo makes good sense for recording and large concert/production work, but for typical pub band work, the majority of the audience will only hear one half of the stereo image, so playing mono means they hear it all.
 
I think you`ll need to create a set of patches for mono use, just in my experience i find it`s best to have a seperate set of patches for each intended use.

There`s plenty of memory in there and it`s quite easy to copy a preset to a different location, then edit it from there to suit your mono needs.

Some patches setup for stereo can sound less than perfect in mono, especially if the enhancer is used. I tend to use the L>R setting also.

Stick with it as the Axe has it all in there ;)
 
I run mono...all my patches are written for mono...most PA's are mono. I use a single FBT 12ma live with a single out to the board (which makes it easy for the sound guy)...my FOH always sounds bad-ass and consistent from venue to venue.

when I'm wanking around at home in my guitar cave I sometimes use 2 FBT 12ma's and play around with stereo stuff which is a llot of fun and does sound great...but for live use I think mono simplifies things a lot and if the patches are written for mono they sound killer on stage and FOH.
 
I've always gotten great results running either the L or R output, I run stereo for my cab rig but am comfortable running DI etc. I do not use the Enhancer, and have never summed the outputs. For me this works better and simpler, and the patches sound great in mono or stereo.
 
Where do all you people from the stone age live that are still saying "most PA's are mono?" I don't think I have used a PA that was mono in the past 20 years or so. :?

archangel said:
I run mono...all my patches are written for mono...most PA's are mono. I use a single FBT 12ma live with a single out to the board (which makes it easy for the sound guy)...my FOH always sounds bad-ass and consistent from venue to venue.

when I'm wanking around at home in my guitar cave I sometimes use 2 FBT 12ma's and play around with stereo stuff which is a llot of fun and does sound great...but for live use I think mono simplifies things a lot and if the patches are written for mono they sound killer on stage and FOH.
Click to expand...
 
GaryRichie said:
Where do all you people from the stone age live that are still saying "most PA's are mono?" I don't think I have used a PA that was mono in the past 20 years or so. :?
Click to expand...

My sound engineer explained this to me several months ago when I was on the fence about running my AXE in stereo:

On a PA at a venue both right and left speakers output the same signal so that people sitting on either side of the room hear (roughly) the same FOH mix. If PA's were run in stereo the only people at the venue that would hear the mix correctly would be the thin band of folks standing right down the middle who were getting an equal mix of left and right.

Modern PA's are all capable of running stereo of course, but the way it was described to me was that they are setup to run SUM L+R in order to give a more consistent mix to the FOH regardless of where you stand in the room.

Now maybe my Sound guy told me all that just so that he wouldnt have to mess around with me using 2 XLR inputs instead of 1? IDK, but in the end I've written all my patches for mono, they sound killer on stage and FOH, I only need a single XLR input to the board, and I only need a single FBT...its easy living and I don't feel I've compromised my tone.

I'm not a sound guy...I leave that stuff to the production team, so I'm curious: how would a PA run in stereo work at a venue? Would the people sitting on the right side of the room hear a different FOH mix than the people on the left?
 
I considered it just to simplify things but I couldn't find a chorus that sounded good in mono.
 
I've run mostly mono from Day 1. The trick is you have to build your patches for mono though. Trying to use patches that employ stereo effects that mess with the phase will never sound right summed to mono nor will they work correctly if you only hear one side of the patch (copy L>R).

If your other rig sounds fine to you in mono, there's no reason why the Axe-fx won't.

D
 
Many PA's (possibly "most") of a medium or larger scale are run in stereo, but most engineers don't pan anything. Often they will even continue running mono effects. The logic is as stated earlier in the thread - the majority of the audience wouldn't hear both sides of the stereo field evenly and continuity would suffer. Why run the system in stereo at all, then? Because it creates a poor man's redundant system - you can lose one side finish the night using The other.

So running the Axe stereo doesn't make much sense, even on a stereo PA.
 
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