Proper use of the Haas effect in mixing...

bigwillz24 said:
Try this with a guitar track or any mono track ...

Double it pan one hard left. Put about a 30ms delay on the other and pan it hard right.

Adjust the volume of the track on the right.

Wow. :)
I aint sure what is meant to happen aprart from their being a delay in the right speaker.
I have noticed a slight change in volume when copy and pasting a track and panning (around 70 each way) then nudgin one track a small amount. (nowhere near 30ms) between say 1-15ms.
By changing the delay you can create different tones from the phsaing taking place between the 2 identical sources.

Eck
 
FALKEN said:
First of all, you shouldn't accuse me of sending negative reps under your name. I don't EVER give out negative rep in the first place. Anyway, if I want to call you out, I will. I won't go sneaking around.
Fair enough. I apologize for implying that you have done that, I was wrong to do that.But I get tired of being accused of being a liar by you all the time as well, Castro.
FALKEN said:
Secondly, I don't think I'm over my head on this one. For the past few months I have been mixing on a mixer that I BUILT from scratch. Let me tell you how the panning works. if you pan Left, the signal goes to the left bus. If you pan right, the signal goes to the right bus. If you pan center, the signal goes to both busses.
@ you and chess: There is more to it that just that. I suggest you look up Craig Anderton's and Bobby Owsinski's seperate and unrelated articles on panning where they describe in some detail just how not only can center pan differ from left/right pans, but how center pans on different mixers and even within different DAW software setttings can differ from each other in how they actually affect the signal and the mix. I also suggest that you try my described expieriment for yourself on a couple of different platforms and hear for yourself how the results can differ. Will they always differ? No. Will they sometimes make a very audible difference? Yep. Can I fully explain exactly why that difference does show up? Honestly, no. I don't fully understand the mechanics
of it myself. But I know that it's something I have indeed used in the past and it's a real effect when it does happen, and that it's something I got from someone else who has had far more experience and success at this racket than the three of us put together.
FALKEN said:
Thirdly, The Haas effect has to do with the arrival times of very similar signals (plural). Simply delaying a mono track has nothing to do with the Haas effect. It will only put your track out of sync.
The presedence effect is a psychoacoustic effect that the brain plays based upon it's wiring for interpreting the real world. Because it's wired to instinctively interpret the first of two or more similar sounds in rapid succession (yes, your right, it is plural) as the source sound and the succeeding sounds are reflections or reverberations, it - correctly or not - instinctively interprets the first sound as being closer and therefore (again, interpreted, rightly or wrongly) as louder.

Take that effect and extrapolate it to a pair of panned signals that are close in sound, but one arrives at the ear just milliseconds before the other, and the brain instinctively interprets that earlier signal as the closer and louder source. This interpretation tends to push the interpreted pan location of the binaural tracks in the direction (left or right) of the precedent (earlier) signal. Hence the name "presedence effect" when used in mixing.

Yes, there are phase issues to be considered as well, you're right about that, and those issues are the most extreme when the signals are identical. But there is a fuzzy boundary area in time where the presedence effect and phasing isues trade priority. You and I argued about this very issue, Castro, but in a different context, the last time you tried calling me to the carpet for being a supposed hot air balloon, and I don't feel like rehasing that. Look it up yourself. That's what I did once upon a time; I'm not making this stuff up.

FALKEN said:
Last, if you are going to quote someone and backup your statements with that quote, you ought to cite the source. Like this: Wikipedia
Well, gee, you got me there. My apologies for not being able to remember just who I picked up a piece of information some ten yeard ago give or take. I admitted as much. Obviously that either makes me a downright liar or drug addict. Look up Anderton and Owsinski for starters. That's not where I got the initial tip from, but they do have a lot of relevant stuff to say regarding both panning and presedence.

And also look up one of Time magazine's new words of the year for 2006: "Wikiality". Never mind, that one I'll give you that one...

Its a noun whose roots come from the conjunction of "Wikipedia" and "reality". It's defined as "Truth based upon concensus rather than upon fact."

Look, I'm not going to argue with you two. You have made it well known what your opinions are of me from the very beginning, regardless of my previus reach outs. I don't give a gram of navel lint what you think of me personally, but you've made it obvious that your personal bias' prevent either one of you from having an open debate about any of this stuff while I'm involved. So I'm standing by my posts as they are and backing out of this thread as I can do no more here.

You win. Stick with what works for you. I don't care. That just gives an edge to folks like me, Halion and Tangerine who have those extra tricks in our bags that we use regularly in *reality*, yet are ovbiously impossible in your *wikiality*, and that you guys are not interested in hearing simply because you don't like the messenger.

G.
 
The Haas effect is mainly used to widen, create pseudo stereo, and to position things in a mix. It's basically about playing localization tricks with the ear. I recommend listening to your mix in mono though before comitting to it, there can be phasing issues with it's use.
 
i use this "ghost mono" thing quite often, though not ever calling it that. I usually apply betweed 10-20 ms delay on one side.

it definitely works - i got the idea years ago from reading an article about how van halen recorded his guitar sound.

whatever anyone's subjective observations on the matter, i swear anyone sitting in front of my speakers will hear the difference...
 
lotuscent said:
i use this "ghost mono" thing quite often, though not ever calling it that. I usually apply betweed 10-20 ms delay on one side.

it definitely works - i got the idea years ago from reading an article about how van halen recorded his guitar sound.

whatever anyone's subjective observations on the matter, i swear anyone sitting in front of my speakers will hear the difference...
I think by "Ghost mono" people are meaning that its 2 identical tracks panned hard left and hard right, but not delayed in any way. Ghost mono! lol

Eck
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
This is very similar to another one of my favorite "tricks", and that's the use of centered ghost mono; it's kina a combination of ghost mono and Haas and a great idea.

What I like about ghost mono (hard-panning the identical signal L and R in order to creat a "ghost" mono image up the middle) is that it can be a great way to "fit" more in the middle that you can by just panning down the center. We all know (I hope) that when you stuck too much stuff in the center, it can build a big hairball of mush in the ceter. For reasons I don't fully understand, often times when you have no vacancy left in the center of the mix, ghost mono-ing is a slick way around getting something to fit neatly in the center without the same mudifying effect that you'd get by just sticking the track strainght up.

Adding the delay is a nice way of turning the ghost mono into a ghost pan with the same kind of effect.

G.
I do this all the time. I didn't know I was actually using any type of 'technique'. I just thought it sounded good.
 
From reading the artile above I think ghost mono is just like changing the panning law to 0 so that there is more volume dead centre and less of a wide pan sound.

I like to stick with the 3dB law.
Eck
 
masteringhouse said:
... I recommend listening to your mix in mono though before comitting to it, there can be phasing issues with it's use.
Ok, so here is a situation where long ago I checked out how a delay of one or two ms does a full pan' effect. But I never bothered to use it vs just going for the knob'. (Rack this up to just lazy on my part..
Are there guidelines for when it would be the better choice? I never even considered how big of a hole 1-2 ms could cut out if it were combined back down. I would be huge.
 
I would really like to hear a technical difference on this Ghost Mono panning. Unless some equipment is treating the signal differently, the same signal sent to both stereo channels always results in mono. If the same signal panned L-R results in a perceived difference other than volume to that signal sent to a stereo buss, something else is going on.

I'm ready to learn.
 
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bigwillz24 said:
I'm trying to work on depth perception in my mixes. Can someone break down using the Haas effect to accomplish this?

I would again recommend "The New Stereo Soundbook", Third Edition, by Streicher and Everest. You can study the Haas curve, the law of the first wavefront and just about every other relevant concept in the illusion of stereophonic sound in understandable language with helpful graphs and diagrams and references for further study.

Cheers,

Otto
 
SSG:
so the Ghost mono has to be implemented on a system where the panning rule will make use of the effect. Seems to me though that if your system boosts signals that come right down the middle by 3db, and you raise the volume by ghost mono'ing by 3db, you have done diddle poo.

lotuscent:
Once you move the ghost away from the original's timing, you are no longer using the "ghost mono" technique you are using a "ping pong delay" effect with no repeats.
 
ofajen said:
I would again recommend "The New Stereo Soundbook", Third Edition, by Streicher and Everest. You can study the Haas curve, the law of the first wavefront and just about every other relevant concept in the illusion of stereophonic sound in understandable language with helpful graphs and diagrams and references for further study.

Cheers,

Otto
+1 on the Everest books. Check out the ones on studio construction and acoustics too.
 
Well, I learned it at Berklee from the late (and great) Robin Coxe-Yeldmann. Here is an experiment we did in class:

You send a signal to two channels and pan them out hard left and right and set them both to unity gain. You want them as identical as possible. You send each side to a delay line with no feedback, oscillators, and a 100% signal (in other words, your just delaying the signal). Now, if the delay on both sides is set to zero, so we all no that it will sound exactly the same as having them in one channel up the middle. If they have the same length of delay, they will still sound the same, just a little later.

The trick is when you start adding delay to one side or the other, but leaving the other side alone. Without doing any kind of gain adjustments (which is of course all that a pan pot does), the apparent source will start to move towards the side which is not delayed. This has several really powerful and cool effects. First of all, you can actually place the perceived source OUTSIDE of the stereo speakers. This sounds odd, but try it out. The other part of this which is extremely useful is that this kind of panning effect is perceptible from location outside of the "sweet spot." Anywhere you sit in the room, you will hear the effect. THAT is something you will never get with simple amplitude panning.

The first step in learning to use the Haas effect in mixing is to try this experiment. Once you've tried this, then try using the same idea in you mixes. You don't always need to use two channels, you could pan the dry signal to one side and using an effects send for the other side. You also don't need to use it in isolation. You can use it in combination with both a amplitude panning and other kinds of delay or reverb for atmosphere. The real trick is just to do some experimentation. Find out how to make it work for YOU.



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Light,

I was with you except for:

"The trick is when you start adding delay to one side or the other, but leaving the other side alone. Without doing any kind of gain adjustments (which is of course all that a pan pot does),"

I don't know of any pan pot that implements panning with delay. If you do, I would be interested in hearing more. Otherwise a good explanation of Haas.

Also the delay time for Haas is between 10 to 40 millisecs. Times less than that are percseived as phase shift, times more than that are perceived as delay.

The effect will not work unless you have the same source relative to the delayed version. So just delaying one signal without some other reference (or ambience of the reference) does not produce the same effect. In addition to the pseudo stereo trick, try taking a vocal track and using a stereo delay panned hard L/R. Then adjust the delay time of the L or R side differently to also hear the effect. You can also adjust the volume between either the L or R side of the delay to make it "pan back" to the middle. The result is a wider sounding ambience to the vocal, sometimes helping to give the illusion of bringing the vocal forward in the mix.
 
The 2 post right be fore this one are awesome. :)

Thanks light and masteringhouse.

Ofajen I'll go check out the book tomorrow.
 
masteringhouse said:
I don't know of any pan pot that implements panning with delay. If you do, I would be interested in hearing more. Otherwise a good explanation of Haas.


No, you're right - That's exactly what I was saying. I guess I just phrased it badly. Looking back at it tonight, I see more than a few places where my phrasing doesn't look like I intended. I guess I was either tired or drunk.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Thanks.

I learned something about panning laws from the link.

I enjoyed some of the example applications for the Haas effect, too.

I don't get the ghost mono thing. Hopefully I never will :eek:
 
I think Farview is correct.

All centre information amounts to, is equal level and totally in phase. Period.

As I understand it the only way to create an apparent hole in the middle is to put the left and right channels in question 180 deg out of phase with each other. (Only prob is when someone "mono sums" the mix, those tracks disappear). But whatever, that's not Haas because there's no time differential. The brain just notes the total phase opposition and thinks it's two identical guitars playing in perfect unison at opposite sides of the stage. But the brain soon realizes that cant be true (no two musos can play in perfect unison AND perfect phase relationship, or perfect anti phase relationship either) and so decides it's just an annoying sound, with "phoney" stereo because nothing in our normal reality sounds like that. I suppose if we had to spend our lives listening to that reality long enough, our brains would "relearn" that 180 deg out of phase is actually centre stage, in the sense that it was only one guitar all along.

But also because of the Haas effect it's not simple to moderate the effect to obtain a "mild' hole in the middle. That's because in trying to to moderate it by shifting from 180 degrees out of phase back towards "in phase", the Haas effect kicks in, with one channel having time precedence over the other, or in practice, out of various pairs of frequency bands, one having precedence over the other member of the pair.
The other way is to create level difference (still with 180 deg out of phase) , and at a certain point that creates the illusion of one sound coming from way beyond one speaker.
I guess you can do a combination effect of giving the left channel time precedence (Haas) but lower its level compared to the right, sort of fooling the ear into thinking its closer because of Haas but further away because the level's lower, but I havent tried it myself. I'm not sure the brain will handle that effect too comfortably for too long because it's contradictory information in terms of our normal acoustic reality.

With two channels L and R, all you have is various combinations of level and phase relationship to play with. That's it.

Haas effect is simply the brain working out from experience that the sound arriving earlier is usually closer. It is also usually louder. So Haas and loudness cues working together are our commonsense directional cues. I've noticed cats' directional location abilities are razor sharp compared to mine.
But again, level and phase relationship, just more highly tuned perhaps.

In a real 3D environment it might be more complex but with 2 channel stereo that's all we have.

Anyway, the test is easy. Pan the same two identical tracks to centre. Now pan one hard left and the other hard right. What do you get? You might get a net level decrease because what was sent to both bus channels at equal level is now only sent to one, and the same for the other, but that's all you'll get.
For sure there's a MIXER REALITY that there really are two separate tracks (though identical copies) being sent to a left and a right bus separately, but the bottom line is the ACOUSTIC REALITY, which is what we hear, and process. Try it and tell me if I've got it wrong.

my 2 cent's worth.

Tim
 
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