Stereo output to Mono to save mixer channel. Pros / Cons

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#1

I’ve been searching through the forums about merging a stereo signal into mono to save a channel on my mixer for my Machinedrum. I’m running out of channels and can’t afford a new mixer. Most of the topics go over the opposite, mono -> stereo unfortunately. My questions being…

  1. I don’t pan my drums too much, so am I losing much here within the stereo field?

  2. What cable would be best for this? Y cable to single?

  3. What advantages do you get by keeping drums stereo if they aren’t panned much?

  4. Will the fx such as delay and reverb suffer from being mono?

  5. Will merging the signals muddy the mix?

  6. Could I just use the headphone output to easily acheive this?

I don’t mind keeping the drums center in my track, I think they sound fine that way. Thanks!

#2

If there’s really no focus on panning, simply use either the left or the right channel alone.
Sometimes summing to mono changes the fundamental “space” of a reverb, so maybe that will turn into a surprise when you’re used to the reverb being stereo. But I absolutely don’t know the sound of the Machinedrum’s reverb, so take that with a grain of salt. I just notice this a lot on my Digitakt.
Similar with ping-pong delays; when summed to mono they sound much “denser”.

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#3

I’ll try this when I get home and see how the sound is effected on the reverb / delay. If it does effect it negatively, would the headphone output be a valid alternative? I believe the output decibels are different.

#4

Don’t think the headphone out will be significantly different. It’s the same signal as the main out, after all.

Oh and maybe another advantage you get when using just the left or right channel: the panning essentially turns into another volume parameter. When you pan something to the unused channel, it’s completely gone. When summing to mono, the pan parameter loses its function completely.

EDIT: But again, I’m talking very broadly in an audio-engineering kind of way. I have absolutely no idea how the Machinedrum works internally.

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#5

If your signal is already mono, no panning or ping pong delay, A or B output is ok as @Lauli mentioned.

Also check Global Setting > Routing. You can send all tracks to output A only for example.

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#6

Never use y-cables to merge, only to split signals

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#7

No need for Y cable, not recommended anyway. Global Settings > Routing is better for sure.

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#8

Totally forgot about the routing menu! Ahhh thank you @sezare56 ! This is a life saver. Happy I just picked up a channel on the mixer. Just two more question. Global settings are different for each Snapshot on the +drive, correct? Any advantage/disadvantage to use A output vs Headphone output?

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#9

Can’t tell, I think so but never tried, there are also Global Slots.

A is mono, not headphones.

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#10

What I mean is, headphones is stereo, but only runs a single cable. Can you run a headphone output into 1 input on a mixer safely? And is so, does it have a different sound character for better or worse?

#11

When you take the single cable from your headphone output and plug it into a mixer channel, the mixer will probably „interpret“ the cable as a balanced mono input and subtract the left from the right channel.

This is probably not what you want, but you can use this to your advantage in some cases.

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#12

So essentially the same thing as just using Output A. Got it! Thanks peeps!

#13

No, not at all the same!
Think of your stereo image. When you do this, you will ONLY hear the side information and lose all mid information.
This is something very different than just using an isolated left/right channel.

#14

Oh, I see because it is subtracting the entire left channel from the right. Duh! So it seems the best is to route ALL channels to output A, then it will sum everything to mono through the 1 output. Thanks again for the knowledge. Seems like some fairly basic stuff here, apologies for my ignorance :blush:

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#15

No problem :v:
Routing everything to A seems like the safest choice. But I will still urge you to maybe try out a few different routing options and explore the potentials (?) of each one.

If you’re smart, you can definitely squeeze some utility out of this subtraction thing too!

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#16

I figure it’s much better to lose one channel on my Machinedrum and now be able to run my Yamaha Reface CS in stereo. Had the CS running in mono, but obviously much better in stereo for chords, pads, melody with the chorus and delay fx. Thanks for all the info guys!

#17

Well, turns out the reverb and delay won’t output through Output A / Output B respectively. MD only outputs internal FX through the Main Out setting internally. Not a big deal as I’m running the Machinedrum internal routing output as Main and panning all the way left, as the instrument cable is only connected to the A / Left output. Seems to work fine for what I’m doing!

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