Regarding the human voice ....what is stereo? What is panning? What's the difference?

miroslav said:
There is no such thing as a "stereo source".
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It's pretty obvious that what people mean by "stereo source" is a source large enough from a listener's perspective to be worthwhile recording or mixing in stereo. Maybe it's not technically correct to call it a stereo source, but it's definitely not worth three pages of argument.
 
A sound source with width has the capability of being recorded using techniques capable of reproducing this width on replay. Is this sufficient to satisfy the absolutists. However, for people to understand basic concepts, it is in my humble view, sometimes easier to reduce absolutes to broader, more understandable text.

What help is it to somebody struggling to understand to insist on 100% accuracy if it prevents learning?

An instrument could be considered as having an infinite number of individual sound sources contributing to the sound. To record an instrument with width requires at least two channels - at least this we can agree on, I hope. I should not have used the S word, I apologise!
 
Sorry BSG...but when people call something a "mono source" and other things "stereo sources"....that's how misconceptions and misinformation permeates the audio interwebs….regardless if you know what they really mean or are trying to say, they are still explaining stereo the wrong way.

A week ago that guy MusicWater was tasked by a bunch of folks here for using weird audio terms and explanations.....so which way are we now going to go..?

Whatever....I know what stereo means.
People can make it up as they go along....no problem....and there's only two pages to the thread. ;)

rob aylestone said:
What help is it to somebody struggling to understand to insist on 100% accuracy if it prevents learning?
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Well...IMO...it's much worse when people insist on NOT being accurate or caring to be, because that then surely doesn’t help learning. :)

Anyway....the definition of stereo is pretty simple, and IMO, rather easy to understand once you consider it.
If folks find it easier to invent their own terms for "stereo"....I'm not going to stop them or lose sleep, but IMHO....there is a BIG difference in viewing stereo as a "source" event VS a "recording" event.
That's not something to just shove aside....but YMMV.

Like I said....I'll post up my clips later tonight since I said I would, for those that want to hear how a "point" source can also be a stereo recording.

I've seen longer debates about shit like 192 kHz sampling rates....so I would think something as fundamental as "stereo" deserves an accurate perspective....but hey, shooting the messenger on audio forums often makes for easier responses than discussing facts of the topic! :p
 
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Greg_L said:
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.

There is clearly such thing as a stereo source.
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yep ..... I'd call a grand piano a stereo source ..... it's big enough that if you're standing close some of it will go more in your left ear and some will mostly go in your right ear........ a single mic will contract the size of the instrument into a point but it wouldn't give you an accurate recording of what one sounds like in person.
 
Lt. Bob said:
....some of it will go more in your left ear and some will mostly go in your right ear....
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True.....but that happens with ANY source....doesn't it. :)
If someone is singing, some of the vocal goes more in one ear than the other.
Same thing will happen with a stereo mic configuration...it works on any source.

I certainly do get why some people here are tossing the term "stereo source" around....they are basically trying to describe the type of recording one might do with one kind of sound VS another...but the term "stereo source" is a home rec invention, and taken at face value by someone reading it (like newbs)...it becomes misleading.

There's nothing wrong with saying a grand piano can make for a bigger/wider stereo recording than a single voice can....but differentiating some live sounds as "stereo sources" and others as "mono sources" has no basis in any acoustics fact or in the science of sound.
The term stereo is purely used to describe a recording or playback system process....and not really how any sound sources behave.

That may all be an insignificant point for some....but then here we seem to pick and choose when to expect correct terminology and definitions and when to allow home rec inventions.
Anyway...people can choose whatever terminology they like, if they have no concern about accurate meaning.
Like when that guy MusicWater said "signal-to-ear" among a bunch of other meaningless audio terms that he invented....:D

...................................................................

On another note (and nothing to do with the audio terminology discussion above).....below are a couple of audio clips like I said I would post.
This is from a new song I've been working on, still haven't done the final mix, but it's good enough for this purpose. One clip has the lead guitar as the original stereo recording I did, and the other clip has it converted to a pure mono track....everything else is identical in both clips.

As I said earlier...with something like a lead guitar or a vocal or other more narrow focused sources, when using a stereo recording technique, there will never be huge L/R differences or really wide stereo images that are noticible....however, they are still stereo recordings.

With a quick listen....one might think there is no difference in the clips, but when you really listen and compare, it's there.
Like mentioned, even though the lead is in the center, the difference is most noticed in the greater depth/height and 3-D quality of the stereo recording compared to the mono track. The attack and tails bloom out more, and you can feel the lead almost lift vertically in the mix, and become more natural....where the mono version is tighter, smaller and decays quicker in the tails and feels like it sits lower in the track with a slightly drier quality.

These are subtle differences, but in the right production, they could make enough of a difference to a discerning ear...and the better the monitoring, the more obvious the effect of the stereo recording.
Like Bruce Swedien said about his stereo recording - "These true stereo images add much to the depth and clarity of the final production."

Stereo Lead Clip

Mono Lead Clip
 
I bet the OP didn't realise what he was going to start!

Don't forget the listener's position has a lot to do with the perceived "stereo source". When Greg is playing his drums, he definitely hears them in stereo. However, when he hits it big and does a stadium tour, from my seats at the back it would be hard to discern any stereo information. The same would hold true for a grand piano--the pianist has a very different stereo image from what the person at the back of the hall hears.

Just to be contentious, it can be argued that the only "true" stereo is what you get with a binaural recording technique and a dummy head. Done this way, the information (not just side to side but front to back and up and down) can be stunning to listen to on headphones.

All the other stereo techniques--X-Y, spaced pair, Mid-Side, panned mono, etc. etc. are just ways to simulate the spatial information you want to get across. As such, (and like every other recording technique) you can go with what sounds good to you--there's no right or wrong.

If you haven't heard a binaural recording before, have a listen to THIS. Use your best headphones and close your eyes to help the "fool the brain" illusion. There's even a drum kit from the drummer's position at the end.
 
Lt. Bob said:
that sucks ...... mono for you I suppose.

Sorry you have to deal with that.
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It's not too bad as I was born deaf in one ear, so it's all I've ever known. I've learned to make a pretty good stereo mix with just the one ear but obviously mono is the natural way for me.
 
Mr Clean said:
It's not too bad as I was born deaf in one ear, so it's all I've ever known. I've learned to make a pretty good stereo mix with just the one ear but obviously mono is the natural way for me.
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Hey it didn't stop Brian Wilson from being a bad ass. :thumbs up:
 
I guess there are no stereo sources, there are just sources worth recording in stereo, while others aren't

most of the stuff we record in stereo is done so in an attempt to create an exagerated stereo image of the instrument. For example, micing an acoustic guitar from 6 inches away with a mic at the 12th fret and another on the body will capture the real image of the instrument, but no listener is ever really sitting with their head a few inches away from the body. Close miking a grand piano sounds cool, but to get that same image in real life, the listener would have to stick their head in the piano. A more realistic stereo image of a piano would come from miking the room. But then the piano becomes esentially a mono point source surrounded by the sound of the room.
 
Here's a rather simple way to get some 'space' around your voice..... During mixdown, pan the voice slightly to the left (or whatever), now add some amount of reverb and pan that return signal (just the reverb) slightly to the right.....you can even mix a very short delay into/with the reverb effect.....say 45ms as a staring point. This will give a voice presence over both channels. Hope this helps
 
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The OP, Welssey, is obviously a beginner to recording, and he was basically asking a troubleshooting question. And I think he got his answer way back at reply #12, from Gecko. That's why he hasn't returned to reply. It's funny how detailed and serious and analytical everyone with loads of experience can be. But that didn't help Welssey. Just remember how it was when you first began multitrack recording.
 
There is a difference between recording a live performance in stereo and attempting to create that sound in a studio. Any single sound source when recorded with mics placed out in front and far apart will give you a stereo recording. But with a single sound source, you might not think it is the kind of stereo you get using stereo effects. In the studio all you need is enough room to place the mics and you will get a stereo recording. Everything you hear (assuming that both ears work equally well) is in stereo. More and more recordings are being done in mono only because your position relative to the speakers is what gives you that "stereo" effect. Listening with headphones should also do it.
Rod Norman
Engineer

Weissey said:
So are you guys saying it's basically useless to record in stereo a singer/acoustic guitarist playing live? It seems so.

I've visited a few musicians sites where they tell people to record their live vocal/guitar in stereo, in order to get that spacious stereo sound. And they give lots of info about using 2 mics at once, in certain positions, in order to achieve stereo. I've tried it, but for some reason I get results that are no more stereo sounding than mono. But I'm told here on this site that stereo for a voice (and presumably acoustic guitar) is no good.

I'm confused.
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Orkinous said:
The OP, Welssey, is obviously a beginner to recording, and he was basically asking a troubleshooting question. And I think he got his answer way back at reply #12, from Gecko. That's why he hasn't returned to reply. It's funny how detailed and serious and analytical everyone with loads of experience can be. But that didn't help Welssey. Just remember how it was when you first began multitrack recording.
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Sure...Gecko was spot-on, though he basically just told the OP that if he couldn't hear a difference, he was doing something wrong. ;)
Newbs often have a hard time with small details and subtleties of recording, and they can also be overwhelmed by them.....but that's usually where a lot of the answers are found. You have to get detailed to see the differences in some things....like why mic A works better than mix B on something. That's the point of the discussion, to flush out all those details so they can understand why/where the subtleties exist.

Anyway, it was late last night and I forgot to mention one more key detail about the two audio clips.
To properly compare the same source recorded in stereo and in mono, you would really want to use a stereo mic configuration for the former, and a single mic for the latter.
In my clips, since the original was only recorded with a Blumlein stereo configuration, the only way for me to provide a mono version of the lead guitar was to collapse the stereo recording to mono.....and it generally works for the demonstration. However, even thought the stereo recording was collapsed to mono, it was still done with a pair of figure-8 mics, which would provide a lot more sonic detail and room sound even when summed to mono, compared to say....sticking a single 57 or some other dynamic with a cardioid pattern in front of a cab.
Point being, if you actually use a single mic for the mono recording, the differences between that and something like a Blumlein stereo recording would be even more pronouced....and then the single mic mono recording would appear even smaller than the stereo recording of the same source.

Folks should really try out stereo recording other sources besides the more common ones. It's just a little more work, but it might capture that sound you are hearing with your ears. It might also solve some of the "how can I get my ________to sit better in the mix and sound bigger and not feel so boxed in" .....etc.
 
Rod Norman said:
....with mics placed out in front and far apart ....
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It's not the "far apart" that makes things "stereo".
It seems that's also how some people are hung up on this notion that there are "stereo sources" just because they are wide sound sources....but that's not it.

While a spaced pair has it's uses....coincident pairs give stereo and are placed very close to each other.
Even more so, M/S and Blumlein array are two of the better stereo mic configurations and they are not configured "far appart"....but rather very close to each other. With them, the farther out front you place them, the more you lose the stereo recording width. In the clips, the Blumlein pair was 18" from my cab....when I tried them out about 4', it just didn't sound right, I was getting all room and not as much cab.
 
Miro ..... stereo by definition means having some sounds that go into one ear only and other sounds that go into the other ear only.
A grand piano meets that qualification if you're up close to it.

Further ....... people are here stating what they consider to be stereo sources and in this context it means things that need to be recorded in stereo to capture them.


I'm indifferent as to what your definition is nor am I interested in your usual circular arguments where you will never concede the slightest thing and continue to bludgeon everyone with your opinion until they accept it in exhaustion.

Have fun with your self perceived 100% knowledge of everything.

:laughings:
 
Bob....I already said that I know how/why some people are using the term "stereo source"....not sure what other "concession" you need...???

Also it's not about MY definition of stereo....it's about the accurate definition of stereo, and those same ^^^ people who insist it's something different or refuse to accept what's real.
You wanna roll with fudging definitions and perspectives and with your indifference....hey, I don't need to "bludgeon" you for that, you do that on your own.

I tried to have a normal, civil exchange with you. I said nothing rude to you, made no derogatory comments, didn't attack in any way....but you and some others just seem to have a problem with carrying on a civil open discussion, and it always comes down to making it personal when you have nothing else to add or a valid point to make.....is that what you mean by "knowledge"? :rolleyes:

Look....don't respond....don't quote me.....don't engage in the exchange if it's that bothersome to you. :facepalm:
 
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