Proper use of the Haas effect in mixing...

bigwillz24

New member
I'm trying to work on depth perception in my mixes. Can someone break down using the Haas effect to accomplish this?
 
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well, its like this. if I were in the room talking to you right now, my voice would be bounching off the floor and the walls and the ceiling and arriving at your ears as well as the direct sound. now, if I were standing behind you your brain would use those cues to determine where in the room I am. so in this case, the reflections compute to a single location, or a single source.

if we were in a much larger room, or out in the forest or something, you might hear my voice as well as the reflection coming from a different place. this happens when the brain hears the reflection as a separately distinct sound.

whether your brain perceives the reflections as part of the source or as a separate entity, has to do with the length of time before the reflection is heard. at least this has come to be my understanding of the Haas effect.
 
I dont think you can. it has to do with delay effects. a quick delay will give locational information. a longer one the brain discards because it could lead to false directional information...it hears it as a separate delay.

so..you can pan delays and room mics to give the brain a sense of space...beyond that I wish I knew more myself on specific tricks and stuff. but I think this is where a very quick delay can make something sound fatter but the length of that delay and its panning will have different effects on the brains sense of location. just a guess.
 
The Haas effect - or the proximity effect - stated in relation to depth of field says that if you have two consecutive sounds that are of equal volume level and come close enough togther in time (typically in the range of a few ms), the brain will perceive the first sound as being closer, even though the volumes are not different.

It's common to use this effect in mixing to help create texture where there otherwise may not be a lot of room or flexibiliy in the mix to do so. One familiar example may be the common competition between bass and kick. If you want to pull the kick out a little from the bass, but you don't nedcessarily want it any higher in the mix, you might slid the kick forward in time (or the bass back) by a few ms and let Hass trick you into thinking that the kick is louder than the bass.

Similar effects can be done with doubled guitar lines to make one line more dominant than the other.

The caveat to watch out for in those examples, however, is that playing with the timing of the rhythm relations can change the feel of the beat itself if your not careful. But done right, Haas is a nice tool to use to create some mixing space where it night not otherwise exist.

G.
 
Hey Southside...

So if 1ms is equal to approximately 1 ft. applying -1ms of delay move a bass foward/behind a kick 1 foot as if on a stage?
 
It's a technique we use in theatre so the audience percieve the sound to be coming from the stage as apposed to the speakers. We usually delay oneside of the pa by about 2 ms, this fools the audiences brains into thinking the sound came from the stage in front of them. The size of room and position dictates how much to delay to apply, and if you are using extra sound reinforcement from the front, through the sides and to the back of the auditorium the calculations have to be precise for each speaker otherwise phasing can occur.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
The Haas effect - or the proximity effect - stated in relation to depth of field says that if you have two consecutive sounds that are of equal volume level and come close enough togther in time (typically in the range of a few ms), the brain will perceive the first sound as being closer, even though the volumes are not different.

It's common to use this effect in mixing to help create texture where there otherwise may not be a lot of room or flexibiliy in the mix to do so. One familiar example may be the common competition between bass and kick. If you want to pull the kick out a little from the bass, but you don't nedcessarily want it any higher in the mix, you might slid the kick forward in time (or the bass back) by a few ms and let Hass trick you into thinking that the kick is louder than the bass.

Similar effects can be done with doubled guitar lines to make one line more dominant than the other.

The caveat to watch out for in those examples, however, is that playing with the timing of the rhythm relations can change the feel of the beat itself if your not careful. But done right, Haas is a nice tool to use to create some mixing space where it night not otherwise exist.

G.


COOOOOOOOOOOL! :D

Thanks for that.

F.S.
 
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. :)
 
bigwillz24 said:
Hey Southside...

So if 1ms is equal to approximately 1 ft. applying -1ms of delay move a bass foward/behind a kick 1 foot as if on a stage?
I don't know if there's that direct or simple of a measured relatinship or not. I'd tend to think that it's not quite that straightforward; how wide and how far away does the stage sound to begin with? There's a lot of factors involved there.

For example, if the kick and bass sound like they are only 3 feet in front of you, a 3ms difference is not going to put one on top of you and leave the other 3ft away. Also, as falken implied, when you get too much of a delay in there the effect disappears because the brain no longer considers the two sounds as "related".

Haas, to me, anyway, is more of a subtle (but effective) pshchoacoutic effect that falls apart and disappears if you try examine it too hard with your ears. If you just let it happen, it works. Also because of it's subtly, it can sometimes get buried by other more prominent things happening. It works best on more transient sounds; heavier sustain or reverb can wash it right out, for example. And if both sounds that your trying to relate are already buried too deep in a mix, don't expect Haas to magically bring the early sound several dB forward to the front of the mix or anything like that.

It's more of a way - for me anyway - of subtly seperating sounds in an already pretty solid mix to add a little more "texture" and "room" without having to break the current mix. It can make a good mix sound better, but it can't make a bad mix sound good.

G.
 
I use the Haas effect as a sort of super panner. Generally, if you take a mono track and pan in somewhere in the stereo image, it will still sound like a mono source coming from somewhere in between your speakers. If you use a small delay to create the Haas effect, it will sound (to me) like you are panning the mono track somewhere behind, and in between the speakers, with a much bigger difference three dimentionally. It doesn't actually sound like it's somewhere on the straight line between your speakers, more "out there".
 
Halion said:
I use the Haas effect as a sort of super panner. Generally, if you take a mono track and pan in somewhere in the stereo image, it will still sound like a mono source coming from somewhere in between your speakers. If you use a small delay to create the Haas effect, it will sound (to me) like you are panning the mono track somewhere behind, and in between the speakers, with a much bigger difference three dimentionally. It doesn't actually sound like it's somewhere on the straight line between your speakers, more "out there".
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.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
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.

WHHHAAAAAATTT???????

Glen. I think this piece is your highest accomplishment of mis-information to date. I give it 5/5.
 
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FALKEN said:
WHHHAAAAAATTT???????

Glen. I think this piece is your highest accomplishment of mis-information to date. I give it 5/5.
Don't blame me if you've never heard of ghost monoing, my communist friend; it's a common technique that many engineers have been using for a long time.

I first found out about it years ago reading an interview with an A-list engineer, I forget which one, and have pulled it out of my tool kit and used it successfully several times since then. I think (but I'm not sure) that it's even talked about in Owsinski's mixing handbook.

You have very liitle room to throw the misinformaton stone after your initial replys to this thread which only peripherally had anything to do with the Haas effect at all, and gave complete misinformation as to what it actually was and was required to recreate it.

I suppose you're now going to give someone some negative rep under my name.

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mixsit said:
'Precedence' effect would be the word we're looking for there..
Yeah, that IS correct. Thanks for that correction, a bad slip of the vocabulary on my part. :eek:

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
EDIT:
Yeah, that IS correct. Thanks for that correction, a bad slip of the vocabulary on my part. :eek:

G.
Yes, yes. Or otherwise known in professional circles as a Boo boo.

It's a technical term.
 
Too many "P" effects! :p

As far as the ghost image thing, I'm not sure exactly wht the deal is in the mechanics behind it, but it has something to do with the distribution of energy in the pan space, and how there is a difference in the way the energy is distributed in that space in a mixer or in a DAW between if you have a single mono track center panned and dual mono tracks hard panned.

Typically had panning mono is a Bozo no-no, to be sure. But when it comes to having to stack a lot of stuff in a limited pan space, using different pan methods - with delays like BW and Halion describe for an off-center ghost pan or without delays for a center ghost pan - can give the apparent effect of more "virtual headroom" to put stuff at that location in the L/R pan.

Try it out. Create a stereo mix with a lot of stuff happening at the center line. Keep adding tracks, one at a time, until you reach a point where you say, OK, that's just too much at that location, it's starting to sound like a hair ball even if you do try adjusting (non automated) faders accordingly to get it all to fit. Then back off that track that broke the center's back and replace it with dual mono tracks hard-panned L/R to synthesize a "false mono" image in the center. If done right - and if the previous tracks are not a bunch of mud anyway - you can find that the new synthed mono seems to "fit" easier with less of a hair ball effect than if you simply tried cramming the single mono track right down the center.

Same thing for using Haas presedence (NOT proximity ;) ) to ghost pan left or right by throwing a slight delay on one side of the false mono to "pull" the apparent domination of the sound to one side or the other like Halion said. This is a handy trick when you need to "squeeze" or "fit" a sound into a location somewhere in the pan space other than center that might otherwise seem too crowded when you try doing it via standard mono track panning.

Like every other such "trick" in the engineering toolbag, there's a right time and right place to use them, and like I mention in previous posts about basic Haas, they don't always work as described, depending upon the conditions of the rest of the mix and the rest of the project. But when you find yourself in painted in just the right corner, the use of these sonic "slight of hand" tricks can give a great feeling of satisfaction and even sometimes a bit of a "wow" factor.

If you want to ride my ass because I tripped across this tip from someone more experienced than I before you did, Castro, go right ahead. But you had REALLY better know that you are standing on solid ground before you do. I'm not always right, and I do make mistakes (as mixsit has just shown :) ), and I'm glad when someone does correct me (like you have rightly done on occasion in the past). But I'm tired of your relatively inexperienced ass calling me a bullshitter every time I say something that's new to you or over your head.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Too many "P" effects! :p

As far as the ghost image thing, I'm not sure exactly wht the deal is in the mechanics behind it, but it has something to do with the distribution of energy in the pan space, and how there is a difference in the way the energy is distributed in that space in a mixer or in a DAW between if you have a single mono track center panned and dual mono tracks hard panned.

Typically had panning mono is a Bozo no-no, to be sure. But when it comes to having to stack a lot of stuff in a limited pan space, using different pan methods - with delays like BW and Halion describe for an off-center ghost pan or without delays for a center ghost pan - can give the apparent effect of more "virtual headroom" to put stuff at that location in the L/R pan.

Try it out. Create a stereo mix with a lot of stuff happening at the center line. Keep adding tracks, one at a time, until you reach a point where you say, OK, that's just too much at that location, it's starting to sound like a hair ball even if you do try adjusting (non automated) faders accordingly to get it all to fit. Then back off that track that broke the center's back and replace it with dual mono tracks hard-panned L/R to synthesize a "false mono" image in the center. If done right - and if the previous tracks are not a bunch of mud anyway - you can find that the new synthed mono seems to "fit" easier with less of a hair ball effect than if you simply tried cramming the single mono track right down the center.

Same thing for using Haas presedence (NOT proximity ;) ) to ghost pan left or right by throwing a slight delay on one side of the false mono to "pull" the apparent domination of the sound to one side or the other like Halion said. This is a handy trick when you need to "squeeze" or "fit" a sound into a location somewhere in the pan space other than center that might otherwise seem too crowded when you try doing it via standard mono track panning.

Like every other such "trick" in the engineering toolbag, there's a right time and right place to use them, and like I mention in previous posts about basic Haas, they don't always work as described, depending upon the conditions of the rest of the mix and the rest of the project. But when you find yourself in painted in just the right corner, the use of these sonic "slight of hand" tricks can give a great feeling of satisfaction and even sometimes a bit of a "wow" factor.

If you want to ride my ass because I tripped across this tip from someone more experienced than I before you did, Castro, go right ahead. But you had REALLY better know that you are standing on solid ground before you do. I'm not always right, and I do make mistakes (as mixsit has just shown :) ), and I'm glad when someone does correct me (like you have rightly done on occasion in the past). But I'm tired of your relatively inexperienced ass calling me a bullshitter every time I say something that's new to you or over your head.

G.

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.

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. There is ABSOLUTELY no difference between panning center and having two tracks panned L and R.

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.

Last, if you are going to quote someone and backup your statements with that quote, you ought to cite the source. Like this: Wikipedia
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
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.


It's the same exact thing as center-panning. From that perspective, everything is "ghost mono."

This is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen you post. Do you need Walters to give you a refresher on stereo and panning? :D

.
 
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