In this video I’m talking mono, but not in the way a lot of people preach it. I’m not sitting there chasing “perfect mono compatibility” at the expense of a stereo mix. What I care about is using mono as a tool to expose problems fast—especially distortion and pitch issues that can hide when the sides are distracting you. When you collapse to mono, anything ugly tends to jump out immediately, and that’s a super practical check when you’re moving quick and trying to finish records. We also get into a huge low-end issue: trying to compress an 808 or bass line that jumps octaves with one compressor setting. That’s basically impossible to do cleanly because you’ll either over-compress to catch the low note or miss the behavior on the higher notes. My solution is simple: I cut the bass into multiple tracks—high notes on their own track, low notes on their own—and I process and level them differently so every note feels equally present. The takeaway is: use mono to reveal problems, don’t mix for mono, and don’t force one chain to solve bass notes that behave completely differently across the line.