Clubs sound systems are in mono, so you have to check if you good looking stereo track still is as good looking in mono. My main problem occurs with some pads (it happened to me with a couple of absynth presets) that have very nasty phasing when heard in mono
Incoming rant
:
This seems to come up an awful lot. I think many producers focus on this and really unnecessarily 'clean' up their tracks which actually makes them sound really weird.
You need to focus on being able to play your tracks on everything from the headphones, monitors, your car, a shitty stereo etc and it still representing what it 'should' sound like.
I used to create/mixdown for years on some crappy ipod headphones. Mainly using analysers and referencing other tracks. Ultimately the tunes sounded fucked. Its do-able, but ideally you need a decent pair of headphones/monitors which accurately represent what is playing. This ensure's its playability everywhere or atleast on a majority of different speakers.
When you start allocating places in the mixdown for certain things in certain frequencies thats when you can care about space and mono/stereo etc.
I.e If i have a pad which is usually 99% of the time in stereo i will allocate it a place in the mix and cut the subby low end. (thats if any lows are playing at the time)
Usually in an intro its pads and effects so there is no sub yet, in that case i'd keep the shitty lows in and attach a mid-eq to mono everything under a certain frequency. I will do that on individual things and on the master when it comes to finishing the track.
Also while im talking about this, take a snare for instance, if you have two conflicting snares trying to allocate the same (rough) frequencies, reverse the polarity of one of them and it should bind them together, if you get this wrong it will cause phase issues if you get it right they will sound like one fat punchy snare.
Read up on phasing and cancellation as it plays a huge part in making music. Sidechaining is a great tool but it gives room for mistakes. In a way you should be able to have a kick n bass mold into one without sidechaining. Use the the correct choice of sample get it in the right key alignment of the waves to avoid clashing or phasing then use sidechain to give it room/ make it more prominent.
9/10 if you are struggling for an overall sound its because something in the early stages of creating is muddying up the frequencies or taking up too much space in the stereo etc. You're not creating a film sound scape so panning and spreading or mono'ing things shouldnt be over done and in the same sense it should be controlled.
I can never answer these things in a paragraph i always end up with a bloody essay!