Guides

Bass mono: why club systems and vinyl need it

Updated 2026-09-06

Stereo bass sounds wide on headphones and disappears on a dance floor. Here is why, and what mastering does about it.

What goes wrong

A club system sums both channels into one set of subs. Anything in the low end that is different between left and right partly cancels when summed, so the bass gets thinner exactly where the system is supposed to hit hardest. Vinyl is stricter: a cutting lathe cannot track wide low-frequency stereo at all, and the mastering house will mono it for you, roughly.

What bass mono does

Below a crossover frequency the side channel is removed, so the low end is identical in both speakers. Above the crossover the stereo image is untouched. The kick and the bass land in the center with full power. Pads, reverb and guitars keep their width.

Where to set the crossover

• House, techno, drum and bass: 100 to 130 Hz. The club is the destination.
• Pop, hip-hop, R&B: 90 to 110 Hz.
• Rock, acoustic, jazz: 70 to 90 Hz. Low-tuned guitars and upright bass carry some real stereo down there.
• Ambient, classical: as low as 60 Hz, or off, if the low end is a wide sustained texture on purpose.

When to turn it off

When width below 100 Hz is part of the sound and the release will only live on headphones and home speakers. That is rare. Burnish keeps bass mono on by default with a per-genre crossover, and the switch is in the settings for the exceptions. The report prints the crossover it used.