Mixing down for that stereo sound

S

stmon

New member
How do you get a good sounding stereo mix? All my stuff sounds flat. Oh, maybe the guitars are to the left, bass to the right, vocals a little off center--but there's no depth. It doesn't sound like stereo.

I'm using Digital Orchestrator Pro (although it's a 16 bit app, it's pretty nice) and a SoundBlaster Live Value card. I'll either plug my guitar into a SansAmp box or mic my Crate VC 508. For reverb I use an old Alesis Microverb. I use midi for the bass and drums. Only the drums, of course, sound like they're in stereo. Everything else I record (guitars and vocals) doesn't. Any hints?
 
Try using two different bass patches on separate MIDI channels playing the same stuff (or slightly delayed stuff) and panning <them> left and right.
 
If you have a stereo delay or reverb try running a few of the instruments dry to the left and wet to the right and vice versa for the others. This gives each instrument it's own space in the mix, but allows it to be heard from both speakers.

Dom Franco
 
Along the same line as what drstawl mentioned, I like to record two rhythm guitar tracks and pan one hard right and one hard left.
 
Hey Stmon: Mon, here what you do.

Follow all other advice given; however, make sure that you set all your tweaks while listening to you final cut ON GOOD MONITOR SPEAKERS. If you listen to your final cut via good headphones, what you hear there will not be what you get in the final mix. Headphones are a great environment and wonderful to use when your girlfriend wants to sleep; but, set-up your final mix as you hear it in the monitors and I do believe you will get better results.

Green Hornet
 
Try adding something that moves back and forth through the stereo field. It doesn't have to be a main instrument line, maybe just a quietly mixed copy (flanged, reverbed, etc.) of one. Keep it fairly close to center when panning and mixed way back unless you want a really excessive result. For complex mixes, I recomend creating a numbered pan chart (from 1-128 with 1 as full left, 64 as center, 128 as full right, etc.) that shows you at a glance where all your sounds are in the stereo mix. This will allow you to easily experiment with different arrangements.
Instead of running one track right down the center, try splitting it into two tracks placed equidistant from the middle. This leaves room to push something in later.
Oh yeah, change up volume levels for different tracks (pans) at appropriate places in the song. ie... have widely panned rhythm guitars whose volumes drop slightly while the lead vocal or guitar closer to center comes up slightly.
 
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