a perception of extreme WIDTH in a mix (stereo tracks=mono)

joninc · Post by **joninc** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:05 pm

tchad blake's mixes are SO WIDE. (daniel lanois solo stuff often too.)

how does he do it!??

are your mixes W_I_D_E too? how do you do it?

his hard left/right of the stereo field seems so much further out than mine.

(it's also party a perception of openess and space - but right now i want to focus more on the perception of wideness)

i have been studying recordings trying to understand how to achieve more of this.

a few things i have noticed:

- drums often stay pretty close to the center - not hardpanning overheads etc...

- mono tracks often hard panned out

- things like guitars are often not mixed in stereo - they are more relegated to a tighter region somewhere to one side.

- melodic stuff that seems more centered is often more of the in and out little fourishes as opposed to constant elements that play throughout the song

do any of you have any tricks - processing stuff to make it appear wider?

i know M/S can address this a bit by using less center and more side to appear wider but on the plugs i have to try this - it seems SO SUBTLE and sometimes leaves weird crackling artifacts.

(btw i am on cubase 4/nuendo 2) and often mix out to my ghost console through my radar 24 converters.

i know it can also partially be attributed to gear and that some converters/master sections have been accused of "narrowing/collapsing" the stereo field somewhat.
do you buy that or is that marketing hype bs?

ALRIGHT - DISCUSS!

losthighway · Post by **losthighway** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:22 pm

I have one little trick that adds width to my picture: using two different mics on the same source, one at a great distance, the other close mic'd. I put the close mic up front in the mix panned a bit to one side, I take the distance mic, compress it liberally, turn it down to the point where it is hardly audible, and hard pan it to the opposite side.

That might not do anything for what you're looking to achieve.

I do like the idea of the main components of the rhythm section having a strong center, and the little guitar flourishes, overdubs, etc. being all around the edges.

nordberg · Post by **nordberg** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:33 pm

i know there are a few stereo width plug-ins out there. i believe to make an element seem further out than the speaker these plug-ins introduce a varying amount of a polarity inverted copy of the track on the opposite side of the stereo spectrum.
i mostly use this plug-in just for it's MONO button, but a few times i've widened a guitar buss or percussion buss or backup vocal buss or a weird sound effect... you get the idea.
be careful though: a little goes a long way as when you introduce these inversions, the signal will dissipate in mono.

- mike

palinilap · Post by **palinilap** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:05 pm

Occasionally I'll bus a mono track to two mono busses, setup different delays for both, and play around with the panning and delay times. I usually like a sort of 2:3 relationship between the delays, and use the Massey TD5's tap tempo button so it's easy to tweak the repeat times.

AstroDan · Post by **AstroDan** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:09 pm

Yeah, I listen to my mixes and it seems like they're coming out of the speakers in a narrow line in the middle; then I put on something professionally done and it sounds like it's coming from a majestic mountain miles away in either direction. Sucks.

I really think it's a lot to do with ME magic. Clever buss compression, proper eq/frequency alchemy of all the combining instruments, really refined stereo processing. I've tried things like delayed panning, but it always sounds weird.

Something that's brought me closer is buss summing the drums and bass with a stereo compressor. It sort of puts those two in a thick but even range across the mix. Things like the release of a squashed crash cymbal distributed through the left and right channel at varying milliseconds add a subtle amount of width.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:52 pm

i actually kinda feel like ITB is TOO WIDE sometimes. like the hard panned stuff is kinda hanging out on its own way out on the edges, and doesn't always gel with the rest of the track the way i think it ought to. i like mixing L-C-R, but i feel like it's more appropriate for louder rock stuff than for more sparse, acoustic kinda songs. last couple things i've tracked are of the latter nature and i'm pulling the guitars and things in more than i normally do.

but anyway, i do a similar thing to losthighway, close mic on one side, room mic on the other, the room mic is usually way lower in level...

mono drums will definitely make the other stuff seem wider.

farview · Post by **farview** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 6:46 pm

Sometime spacousness is mistaken for width. Dense mixes can seem smaller because all the space is used up, and sparse mixes sound bigger because there is a sense of space.

Making your mixes more sparse and making sure that none of the instruments fight with each other frequency-wise will, most of the time, give you a wider sounding mix than panning or delay tricks.

joninc · Post by **joninc** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 7:45 pm

true - i think that is part of it for sure. but also it's when i listen on headphones to these mixes that are amazing me - the left and right elements on some mixes appear to reach farther out than on others.

T-rex · Post by **T-rex** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:36 pm

You probably read this but this is the Gearslutz thread on panning when Tchad was a guest. It's got a little info and he mentions a hardware piece he uses.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/q-tchad- ... nning.html

firesine · Post by **firesine** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:56 pm

Sometimes I will flip one room mic out of phase with the other. It doesn't always sound good but the drums get wiiiiiiiiiide.

The Scum · Post by **The Scum** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:42 pm

do any of you have any tricks - processing stuff to make it appear wider?

The SRS plugs?

How about stereo sends to stereo reverb - otherwise your reverb'd tracks start where you panned them, then they recenter and bloom from there, sucking things back to the middle.

i know M/S can address this a bit by using less center and more side to appear wider but on the plugs i have to try this - it seems SO SUBTLE and sometimes leaves weird crackling artifacts.

I've used the Voxengo MS plug for exactly this, with no severe artifacts.

i know it can also partially be attributed to gear and that some converters/master sections have been accused of "narrowing/collapsing" the stereo field somewhat.
do you buy that or is that marketing hype bs?

Stereo perception is often a matter of subtle differences between the left and right channels. It's plausible that crappy circuitry will filter those details out, or possibly bleed from one channel to the other, doing damage to the stereo filed in the process.

About 15 years ago, when people started to notice and worry about the effects of jitter (the heyday of DAT and 16-bit converters), there was gear that made this obvious.

firesine · Post by **firesine** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:00 pm

The Scum wrote:
do any of you have any tricks - processing stuff to make it appear wider?
How about stereo sends to stereo reverb - otherwise your reverb'd tracks start where you panned them, then they recenter and bloom from there, sucking things back to the middle.

This is interesting. Would you match your aux pan with your channel pan?

Seems like matching them would be most realistic, while panning the send to the other side might actually increase perceived width.

FlowersForHuman · Post by **FlowersForHuman** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:20 am

Dense mixes can seem smaller because all the space is used up

i agree. one thing ive always noticed is that vast wideness and space is usually a phenomenon of "sparse" music...that is, music with nice arrangements where each instrumentalist has no problem taking a few bars of rest now and then.

i am far from a mix master, but a lot of times on older classic pop recordings it sounds like they use mono tracks, with a little room sound mixed in to make the part sound fuller, and then pull the fader down lower than one would expect so it sounds smaller. no matter where these instruments are panned, they seem to pull "out" three-dimensionally into their own spot...on their own beautiful mountaintop.

another way to put it would be that the instruments sound full bcause of the ambience, but they also sound small because they are quiet and because the ambiance isn't bleeding all over the place as it would if you were to put reverb on the mix bus.

another thing i noticed is that a lot of times if you can hear a very very quiet sound panned hard left against something loud panned hard right, it makes things sound bigger for some reason. sometimes this occurs naturally when bands play live and you get ambience in one channel.

thinking this way has worked for me on occasion but almost never with loud rock. may just be something to try messing with. again though, i still kinda suck at mixing so take that all with a grain of salt.

Z-Plane · Post by **Z-Plane** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:51 am

There's nearly always a trade off risk with mono playback, or on hifi speakers wired out of phase, but its largely about delaying part or all of the signal. The Waves S1 will indeed get you into this zone, and to understand the process there are two plugs in logic called "Sample Delay" and "Directional Mixer". With Sample Delay you can take a mono track, play it on a stereo channel and Sample Delay lets you nudge either side by the sample or millisecond values. As soon as you move one side by 40ms or above you will hear an extreme panning sensation begin to develop, moreso as it increases yet the sigal is the same level in each side. Directional mixer lets you take stereo sources and increase or decrease whatever non-centre signal is present by similar means. There are dozens of other plugs that do this in clever ways, some isolate mids or tops to apply the spread while leaving the remainder intact.

There's another idea I like to use which is totally mono safe and can be found on many motown and vintage productions. Its just a hard pan with mono reverb panned to the same side, works really well in minimal mixes. With this idea, letting a tiny bit of the reverb bleed into the centre can work wonders too. But as already said, contrast is the most important thing, so a single super-wide element in an otherwise mono or hard-panned mix will have great definition, the more of these you add, the more cloudy your stereo field becomes.

mjau · Post by **mjau** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:42 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:i actually kinda feel like ITB is TOO WIDE sometimes. like the hard panned stuff is kinda hanging out on its own way out on the edges, and doesn't always gel with the rest of the track the way i think it ought to.

Amen to that.

Message Board

a perception of extreme WIDTH in a mix (stereo tracks=mono)

a perception of extreme WIDTH in a mix (stereo tracks=mono)

Who is online