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mono check audio mix
hey,
I’m doing an audio mix. I need to make a stereo and mono version. Is there a quick way to check how my sequence sounds in mono? Do I use the Downmix button on my Audio Mixer tool bench? Do I have to change my sequence settings first to hear true mono? How do I do that? I know avid has a button on their mixer that lets you toggle between Mono and Stereo. Is that what the Downmix button is for?
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3 Replies
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Well sort of… the downmix button merges all your output channels down to stereo so that you can preview them. For example, if you have Dialogue on tracks 1-2 and music on 3-4 and you’re outputting 4 channels of audio, you most likely will only be able to hear tracks one and two (unless you have brought a mixer into this and are going through that with all audio channels). Downmixing witll send tracks 3-4 through your stereo mix so you can hear everything. To my knowledge, there’s no setting in FCP to downmix to mono, nor can you set your sequence to mono (essentially, mono would just be a stereo mix where channel 1 = channel 2.
If you want to preview your mix as mono, here’s what I’d do. Go into your sequence settings. Under the ‘Audio Outputs’ tab, set grouping to ‘Dual Mono.’ This will let you assign each individual track to a discrete channel, rather than assigning it to a channel group and determining L or R with the clip’s pan attribute (in fact, you will not have control over the pan attribute for clips in the timeline – though if you change back to stereo grouping, you will not have lost any pan settings you’ve already made). Then, set all tracks ‘audio outputs’ to use channel 1 (ctrl+click on each tracks audible button or in a track’s empty source patch area – ctrl-clicking on a sourch patch itself will allow you to change the source-destination linkage, not the output channel) This should play everything through channel 1, or Left.
If you need to hear mono out of both channels, I’d suggest creating a new sequence, again with ‘Dual Mono’ outputs. Nest your edit in this empty sequence. Your nested sequence will only have audio on track 1. Delete track 2 of your nested sequence, and then duplicate track 1 and move it down so that it is also in track 2. Now, make sure that track 1 is outputting to channel 1, and track 2 is outputting to channel 2, and you should have mono playing back in full, brilliant stereo… of course now the audio is doubled so it may seem louder than it actually is.
Tedious, maybe, but it actualy should only take you a few minutes to set all this up.
Best,
Ben
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simple way to do it in FCP”
make a new sequnce,
drag you existing one into it.select the nested sequnce,
control . (full stop) will pan it to the center.
otherwise do it externally.
pan your mixer to the center, or switch your amp to mono if you can.nick
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Good thinking Nick. That’s faster.
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