Creating more sonic space?

Muzzaman

Muzzaman

New member
Hi guys,

I'm currently comparing my mixes to a few big bands CD's.

I find the have a bigger space in which all the instruments reside.

mines aint far off but I could do with a little extra for the mix to breath.

Anyone got any ideas how I can do this?

Cheers, Muzza.
 
First, stop comparing your stuff to someone else's. What their stuff sounds like is totally irrelevant; what counts is what your stuff sounds like. Especially when you're trying to compare what your doing in your bedroom with 4-digits-worth of equipment and no experience to those who have dedicated their life to this stuff and put that experience to work with 6-digits-worth of top-shelf gear.

Second, you gotta explain what you mean by "bigger space", because there is no such thing in reality. The "space" is defined and confined by the stereophonic field that your playback system sets up for you. Are you talking about a tighter focus in the positioning of the instruments, or an expansion of the stereo field beyond the "borders" of the left and right speakers, or more apparent depth of field front-to-back, or simply amount of loudness in the mix? Any one of those can be referred to as a "bigger" property to a mix, and they all have entirely different causes and reasons for being.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
First, stop comparing your stuff to someone else's. What their stuff sounds like is totally irrelevant; what counts is what your stuff sounds like. Especially when you're trying to compare what your doing in your bedroom with 4-digits-worth of equipment and no experience to those who have dedicated their life to this stuff and put that experience to work with 6-digits-worth of top-shelf gear.
G.
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I don't agree with this at all. We should be comparing ourselves to the big guys so we have goals, listening to their mixes and our own side by side. How else are we going to get better?? Improve our listening skills?? Determine the results of our experimenting?? No one lives in a vacuum and we shouldn't pretend to mix in one. Why else do we have our lists of reference material??

In every other business or activity, we are comparing ourselves with others, why would it be different in art, music, mixing??

How do we get a bigger space? Yeah, I don't know... besides the usual suspects of panning, eq and time domain.
 
Ok maybe I haven't explained myself properly.

I'm not comparing as such I'm not reaching out for an exact copy of anything else out there.

As a musician I spend a lot of time listening to CD's, I always (by a way of habit) take note of how everything sounds individually and together.

What I think i'm needing to find is more depth to my tracks, I have guitars panned left and right 100% so I can't expect much more from the stereo spectrum I suppose.

But my tracks are a little flat and need more depth so that what I should have said in the first place, am i missing a technique to this?.

I'm using Ozone 4 to master but being very cautious with it as I don't want to compress the life out my music and sound like Lady Ga Ga lol

Muzza.
 
Muzzaman said:
What I think i'm needing to find is more depth to my tracks, I have guitars panned left and right 100% so I can't expect much more from the stereo spectrum I suppose.

But my tracks are a little flat and need more depth so that what I should have said in the first place, am i missing a technique to this?.

.
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Well, this jumps out at me right away. There's more to panning than center, hard right and hard left. You've got all that space in between. Set instruments 40% or 70% as well as 100%. Actually, I rarely set anything all the way out to 100%. I like to duplicate tracks using different tones or guitars. So, I might have two acoustic guitar tracks playing the very same thing and set them at right and left 40% then track two electric guitars playing the very same thing at right and left 80%. I'll keep the electrics much lower so it's mostly an acoustic sound, just nice and big across the sound stage.

But there's more than just panning. Use EQ and time domain effects to move your intruments front and back. An instrument further back on a stage is going to have less high's and lows, a longer reverb and lower overall volume than an instrument closer to the front. You can duplicate this effect by rolling off the high and low freq's, add a larger reverb and pulling down the fader. Conversely, a singer up front will have less reverb and you would be able to hear the subtle details in his voice, so EQ is more critical, compression helps to bring out the details of his voice and not as much reverb.

Experiment a lot and be creative with how you handle each track.

I'm no expert and this is just kind of glossing over what a real expert might do, but at least it'll give you some ideas.

Oh, I also think arrangement has a lot to do with your sound space, what instruments are playing when, and that is something you have to figure out on your own.

hth,
 
NOTHING creates "depth" and "space" in a mix like DEPTH and SPACE.

Mic everything from 6" away and you can expect a mix that sounds 6" deep. Add as much reverb as you want, the source is still going to sound 6" deep with a detached and disjointed reverb wash behind it.

I won't go into what my thoughts are on Ozone, but I can tell you that I'd much rather have a 'flat' sounding mix than something all screwed up from that horrible Haas generator in Ozone... It's one thing to use such tools on a pair of overheads or something - Another thing all together to strap it across the 2-buss.

Sorry - I guess I just got into my thoughts on Ozone...

Anyway - "That 3D sound" generally comes from actually using 3 D's.
 
Chili said:
I don't agree with this at all. We should be comparing ourselves to the big guys so we have goals, listening to their mixes and our own side by side.
...
In every other business or activity, we are comparing ourselves with others, why would it be different in art, music, mixing??
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Well first of all, this isn't about business, it's about art, it's about crafting a sound. And the only thing that matters is how that sound actually sounds, how some other sound sounds has no relevance to that whatsoever. Does that steak you had last night become better or worse tasting, tougher or more tender based upon the steak you had today? Did you have to wait until today to decide how last night's steak rated? Will that color of that that sunset you watched while eating it last night change because of tonight's sunset?

One has to be able to judge their work on it's own merits. That's how the goals are set. I might get inspired by someone else's stuff, but that stuff has nothing to do with whether I should have used better mic placement or different EQ or some such thing on my mix; the only thing that can decide that is my mix and what it sounds like.

Pile on top of that the fact that most of today's commercial stuff is purposely engineered to sound awful, and using that stuff as any kind of bar to surpass is like deciding that you can run fast enough if you can beat a turtle to the finish line.
Muzzaman said:
What I think i'm needing to find is more depth to my tracks, I have guitars panned left and right 100% so I can't expect much more from the stereo spectrum I suppose.

But my tracks are a little flat and need more depth so that what I should have said in the first place, am i missing a technique to this?.

I'm using Ozone 4 to master but being very cautious with it as I don't want to compress the life out my music and sound like Lady Ga Ga lol

Muzza.
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Without hearing what you have, one can only guess at what's going on, but depth comes from dynamics, and dynamics start with a dynamic composition and arrangement (not every instrument acting like it's all lead instrument all the time), continue through a moderation of recording levels (not pushing everything to 0dBFS during tracking), a liberal amount of fader jockeying during mixing (not just setting a track level and laying it on top of the other tracks at a single level, but dynamically shaping the overall mix to support/augment the arrangement), not using mastering to try and make your mix sound good, but making sure your mix sounds good before you move to mastering, and finally, not trying to compete with commercial loudness levels if your mix just does not want to go all the way there. Push it until it starts to sound like you've been pushing it, then back off a dB or two. If it's not as loud as Ga Ga or the Goo Goos, so be it. Better luck nest time.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Without hearing what you have, one can only guess at what's going on...
Click to expand...

Right.


Depth/space is a combination of arrangement & performance, mic/room choices during tracking, and use of panning, levels, delay, reverb and dry processing. If you mix different "layers" of these elements, the mix will usually have depth/space, how much depends on what you chose.

Recording everything in a dry vocal both will sound dry and flat. Of course, you don't want a cavernous vibe either, because while that might sound "deep-n-spacious", it also looses focus.
I'm not a big "dry sound" fan...I like having some "wetness" to the mix, but it's a tightrope getting the right balance of dry/wet for a given song. Some might call for that Big Hall sound, others just work better when they are in your face and "spittin' cotton" dry. :D
 
The guitars seem to be well-tracked. Having them panned to the extremes leaves a big gap in the middle of the image that makes the listener feel something is missing. The rather flat drums would work in a context where they were behind something else and "laying back in the cut", but there's nothing in front of them here.
 
Yes i've panned my guitar tracks maybe a little too wide, i'll try 80% L&R and see what happens, that gap is something i think I had noticed but not linked it to the guitars.

thanks for the great input! :)

Muzza
 
Muzzaman said:
Yes i've panned my guitar tracks maybe a little too wide, i'll try 80% L&R and see what happens, that gap is something i think I had noticed but not linked it to the guitars.

thanks for the great input! :)

Muzza
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The problem isn't the hard panning of the guitars. Everything in the first mix sounds scooped, meaning you've pulled out all that beautiful mid range that we like in our rock music. Your other major problem are the drums, which are way too ambient. Don't get me wrong, I love a big room sound, but you need a cracking snare and punchy kik for this kind of track, and this will probably help with your "depth" issues. There is no depth to sound when you can't pinpoint any part of the sound source.

In a stereo image there are planes of space: panning—left to right; frequency—up to down; balance—front to back; reflectivity—far to near; and contrast (dynamics)—sparse to dense. (I go into this in great detail on this in my book).

There's nothing wrong with using LCR techniques when mixing (Left Center Right in which parts are hard panned). If you don't pan your guitars hard you're not using the full breadth of your stereo image, and if you think about it, that would really be no different than putting an HPF and LPF on the entire mix to reduce how much of the frequency range you use. In either instance you're reducing one of your planes of space. In this particular case, the reason people are even noticing the guitars is because you have no close source information in the middle of the mix. Part of this has to do with no real melody instrument, which would normally take up the middle, the other part of this is the lack of a pinpoint close snare and a pinpoint, hit me in the gut close kik source.

Enjoy,

Mixerman
 
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Mixerman said:
The problem isn't the hard panning of the guitars. Everything in the first mix sounds scooped, meaning you've pulled out all that beautiful mid range that we like in our rock music. Your other major problem are the drums, which are way too ambient. Don't get me wrong, I love a big room sound, but you need a cracking snare and punchy kik for this kind of track, and this will probably help with your "depth" issues. There is no depth to sound when you can't pinpoint any part of the sound source.

In a stereo image there are planes of space: panning—left to right; frequency—up to down; balance—front to back; reflectivity—far to near; and contrast (dynamics)—sparse to dense. (I go into this in great detail on this in my book).

There's nothing wrong with using LCR techniques when mixing (Left Center Right in which parts are hard panned). If you don't pan your guitars hard you're not using the full breadth of your stereo image, and if you think about it, that would really be no different than putting an HPF and LPF on the entire mix to reduce how much of the frequency range you use. In either instance you're reducing one of your planes of space. In this particular case, the reason people are even noticing the guitars is because you have no close source information in the middle of the mix. Part of this has to do with no real melody instrument, which would normally take up the middle, the other part of this is the lack of a pinpoint close snare and a pinpoint, hit me in the gut close kik source.

Enjoy,

Mixerman
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^^^^This^^^^

Seriously. Read it again.
 
Mixerman said:
Your other major problem are the drums, which are way too ambient. Don't get me wrong, I love a big room sound, but you need a cracking snare and punchy kik for this kind of track, and this will probably help with your "depth" issues. There is no depth to sound when you can't pinpoint any part of the sound source.
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Funny...I'm hearing the drums as totally dry, non-ambient and rather thin and too low in level. *shrug*
I would beef them up with a fatter, punchy tone...and actually ADD some ambience to the snare/toms to give them a bigger room sound instead of that boxed/flat/dry sound.
 
Ok guys,

This is definitely becoming confusing at this point.

One hand I have the drums are too ambient, on the other they're too dry?

Then I have the guitars are panned too wide, and that's a problem and now not a problem?

Am I getting personal opinions or factual ones? I understand everyone likes different mixes, sounds etc.

I thought I had more midrange than I'm bein told I have! Ahhhhhhh maybe I should start from scratch re-EQ each track?

I haven't intentionally scooped any mids out should I post a totally flat mix and see what that sounds like?

Thanks, Muzza
 
I didn't say that you scooped your midrange, I said it "sounds" scooped. Part of the reason it sounds scooped is because of the lacking midrange from close mic'ed drums, and the total lack of any melody instrument. Second, I don't know how anyone can listen to those mixes and think the drums sound dry. It's all room mics. Yeah, it's obviously not a huge concrete room or anything, but I'm hearing all distant mics and little-to-no close mics. Let's find out if there's a reason for this.

How many drum channels do you have in your mix? What are they labeled? How were they mic'ed? Here's an example of a drum set up I might use for this kind of production:

Kik - D112 in the kik, maybe a 47 fet outside the kik. Both mics combined to one channel
Snare - 57 on the top skin combined with a 452 (reversed polarity) on the bottom skin
Toms L - 421s close on all the toms and bussed to a stereo pair of tracks with the hi tom far left the lowest tom hard right, and the others panned accordingly in the middle
Toms R
OH L - U87 (or any number of large diaphragm condensers (LDC) depending on what's available)
OH R - U87
Room L - SM69 (stereo mic) (really, this could be just about any pair of LDCs or SDCs depending on what's available, and the challenges of the room).
Room R
Hat - KM84 (or some SDC) (I actually don't usually bother with the hat, but I can understand the argument for recording it, especially when you're new to all of this).

Now, what was YOUR setup for the drums?

Also, what's your favorite record in this genre? Or even better, what is your main reference for your material?

Thanks,

Mixerman
 
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Mixerman said:
Yes, I can see why it might be so confusing.

First, I didn't say that you scooped your midrange, I said it "sounds" scooped. Second, I don't know how anyone can listen to those mixes and think the drums sound dry. It's all room mics. Yeah, it's obviously not a huge concrete room or anything, but I'm hearing all distant mics and little-to-no close mics. This isn't even remotely debatable.

Let's try this. What's your favorite record in this genre? Actually, name me three references to what you're trying to achieve.

Thanks,

Mixerman
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Ok cool I get it now about sounding scooped thanks.

I'm sure I can fix the room mic's on the drum's.

On favourite record of the genre probably by a band called Alter Bridge, The Album I think that sounds close is: ABIII - Isolation (Song).

Three references are difficult, I like the production on all the Alter Bridge albums to be honest, our singer has a clean vocal with a big range as well.

I'm trying to get the music as good as possible mix wise before I record the vocals because I really want to concentrate hard on them next and not have to try and mix everything at once, does that make sense?

Cheers, Muzza
 
Massive Master said:
NOTHING creates "depth" and "space" in a mix like DEPTH and SPACE.

Mic everything from 6" away and you can expect a mix that sounds 6" deep. Add as much reverb as you want, the source is still going to sound 6" deep with a detached and disjointed reverb wash behind it.
...

Anyway - "That 3D sound" generally comes from actually using 3 D's.
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I think MM is giving the key info here. I would add that compression can affect ambience - so be careful.

Mixes with good depth were probably recorded in nice-sounding rooms with careful attention paid to the ratio between direct sound and natural reverb going in to the mics into the first place.

I don't really record pan-potted mono stuff anymore, but if I did I would put a good stereo pair up wherever I could.

My recordings started to get good when I began to really understand how to capture sound with only a stereo pair. Researching all methods, experimenting with all the different patterns, understanding the pros and cons of coincident vs spaced, etc. There is almost nothing I have not tried in searching for great imaging and depth in my recordings.

Now I just need to find decent music to record, but that's another rant.
 
I think what i will have to do is make do with what I have already tracked, fix the drums and next time approach the recording much more differently to capture the depth of sound needed! :)


Muzza.
 
Muzzaman said:
I think what i will have to do is make do with what I have already tracked, fix the drums and next time approach the recording much more differently to capture the depth of sound needed! :)


Muzza.
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Just out of curiosity, do you have any close mics on this recording?

Mixerman
 
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