Dude, first thing that you're having a problem with is that your vocal is pretty much 180° out of phase. If you collapse your mix to mono, your vocal all but disappears. Sounds cool and stereo, really bad in mono.

Your guitar without an amplifier sounds like guitar without an amplifier. It's fine if you like the sound of guitar without an amplifier. I don't hear any hum problems?? Guitar pickups are designed to pick up extraneous fields. If you believe you're having come problems, rotate your self like a clock. Turn 90° and then another 90° until you reduce the hum. Flat wound pickups are particularly susceptible to noise. If you get humbuckers, you'll have less problem with hum but they will sound different. Getting the right equipment, the right cables can sometimes be an exercise in futility, no matter what you do. Televisions, light dimmers, computers and any other electrical items will interfere with the guitar.

A DI box is not a new placement for a guitar amplifier. You can however take your output from your recorded track, feed into an amplifier and Mike that, recording it to another channel. You need to compare your recording style to other popular recordings both in mono and in stereo, it's imperative.

You're getting closer
Ms. Remy Ann David

thanks for the feedback

All of the tracks were recorded mono, because my mics/guitars/everything records in stereo. I dont clearly understand what you mean by out of phase (recording wise.) I usually pan them to get a stereo sound. But other then that, i think the vocalist needs some work, hes trying his best :)

The guitar is amped by the way... it uses a microphone pickup. I just like recording directly with accoustic to get a clear sound. I only mic the electric guitar to get the right tone.

"All of the tracks were recorded mono, because my mics/guitars/everything records in stereo"????

Dude! Microphones, guitars and everything does not record anything! Most microphones and guitars output a mono signal, only keyboards offer a stereo output. Your software might want to default to recording stereo tracks from Mono sources but that is adjustable in your software. A mono source might record in the left channel, might record in the right channel, might record on both channels but a mono source is a mono source and so, you want to record it as a single track, not a tool mono track, unless you want to add stereo affects over top of your original track but it is better to have your stereo affects as a separately recorded stereo channel.

Your vocal microphone is absolutely out of phase from the left channel to the right channel. Either you did something in software or your cables are screwed up? Listen to your recording with left plus right, combined to Monoaural and you will notice the vocal disappears. You're doing something most definitely wrong! You need to read up on this a little more. A signal that is out of phase from left channel to right channel will electrically cancel and disappear in mono, that's what's happening. This could also be caused by improperly wired cables but I think you're doing something wrong in software?

It's usually operator error
Ms. Remy Ann David

lonestar19444 wrote: I dont clearly understand what you mean by out of phase (recording wise.) I usually pan them to get a stereo sound.

"Out of phase" means that the signal in one channel is the mirror image of the signal in the other channel. It's like putting +2 on one side of an equation, and -2 on the other side. When you add them together, you get nothing!

Listening to your mix through headphones, it appears the voice signal is panned hard left, but there is some kind of effect happening in the right channel to create a wider stereo effect. The problem is that when those two signals are added together (as they would be if someone was listening to the mix through a clock radio, older television or similar mono 'one speaker' situation), the voice cancels out and all you have left is the effect itself. And also, when heard in stereo, the cancellation is robbing the voice of its low frequency energy and 'body'.

This is something you really need to sort out before worrying about guitars, DIs or anything else, or else you're likely to have a very unhappy client knocking on your door soon!

On this topic, it is always a *good idea* to place the voice in the centre of the stereo image when mixing. It may not be so exciting from a stereo point of view, but it's the last thing you want to lose when summed to mono.