mixing with headphones

JMarcomb

JMarcomb

New member
Ok... been mixing around with my headphones and doing some comparisons.
First thing I noticed is you cant mix in the same room as you recorded your ac guitar. Esp. my little box.
So Ive been listening to commercial CDs and comparing their bottom/mid/high end and translating from what I hear in the phones to the way I mix. Then I keep going back and forth to the monitors to make sure its not too far off mark. Ive been finding that this works pretty good.
Also, im isolationg different groups of freqencies to make sure i dont have too big a mess in different ranges... seems to help also because im dealing with 40 something tracks as in my music example.
This headphone mixing does seems to be harder to do because it seems you have a false image of the sound, but using them with the monitors is effective for me anyways.
I dont have any acoustic treatment, so that cant help with the monitors.

So a little input from anybody would be good to hear if the mix sounds good in all freqencies ...
remix sample ..

song at top of the page

Remix song
 
Not bad... but a couple of things.....

I find the mix leans somewhat to the right and there is a strange lack of cohesion in the imaging - as if it's not clear exactly where in the space a sound is centered or focused. Also there is littel sense of ambience or air around the tracks. Incidently, this could be another artifact from of using headphones - reverb shows up more prominently in cans so it's easy to misjudge an appropriate level.

There's also something funky-sounding in the mids.... a bit of excess stridency, maybe......

In any case, good effort and performance....!
 
hey thanks for the feedback blue bear

Ill go back and see where I need to balance the image out.

I might be building up that funkiness in the mids from too many tracks with a strong midrange. I hate to start going in there and eq'ing away because the life starts to slip away from the tracks.

I might have to eliminate tracks or cut some dbs offs those tracks..

ill go check on that now.

thanks!


Hey.... I could be going for a Asymmetrical mix :)
 
Jeff...what ear are you deaf in??(as I seem to recall you mentioning that in the past)

it does lean to the right (meterwise for sure) but doesn't sound too heavy to that side. If I wasn't looking at meters, I probably wouldn't have noticed...plus bears comments.

It IS dryer than some of your past stuff... but I am not sure if that is just a lack of air or not....or just a dryer mix than you usually do!
I think that some stuff is not wiiiiiide panned has to do with the placement of stuff too.

overall, your stuff is a real joy to listen to...even if you mix with a carrot up your ass. It sounds great!!
 
hey mix

I have less than 10% hearing in my left ear...(good old ear infections when I was 3 yrs old) so I have to keep switching the headphones around on my head :( I forgot to mention that

Im compairing this to a few of my other songs right now and it is pretty dry...


I'll have to figure it out right now..


thanks a bunch guys!
 
Question for bear, john, mix or whoever :)


Ok.. I found a couple lopsided panned tracks that i fixed, (thanks for the ears :) ) but im starting to question the way i have the tracks panned.

Is it standard good practice to record a lead acoustic guitar in mono? because mine are all stereo

In one spot in the song I have 7 stereo tracks and when Im mixing them down they are panned full left and right on my mixer, but in my software (Sonar) I pan the tracks also, but not full right or left... just enough to separate them from the other tracks.

i guess im just a stereo nut :(

thanks for any tips!
 
The only reason to ever record anything in stereo is to capture the dimensionality of the source playing in that particular space.

There's absolutely no point in capturing a source in stereo but then panning both channel to center and placed left or right.

And you'll get ZERO imaging from "wide mono".... which is a composite of many "stereo" tracks panned left/right, on top of each other.

What you want to do is decide what point in the "mixspace" a particular track will occupy - then localize it there.
 
my synth tracks seem to sound alot better when panned hard right and left... coming from my synth (the sounds i used are in stereo)

I dont have any of my stereo tracks panned to the center?? they are hard right and left on my hardware mixer... but say on a rythm acoustic track I'll have my stereo track with 30% pan to the right going into a hard right/left pan on my hardware mixer? is this bad to shift the image before a hard pan?

should a stereo track be left with no pan... and then pan hard left/right at the mixer?

i thought i read somewhere that to get a sound bigger you can stretch it across the stereo field?

:confused:
 
You can certainly put a stereo signal anywhere in the sound field. The widest image (hard left/right) is NOT always the best option.

It's about creating a "soundscape" with your mix, observing a proper and reasonable perspective.

Let's say you create a song made up entirely of stereo tracks, all produced by a single keyboard.

And let's say you have a stereo drum part, a stereo bass track, stereo faux guitars, and a stereo synth track.

They're all stereo, and so you pan them each hard right/left for maximum stereo width.

What do you end up with? A big freaking mess with no directionality to anything! Stereo tracks, panned hard, placed on top of each other results in wide mono (not literally, of course, they're still stereo) but they sound more like mono because any sense of depth, imaging or dimension is completely lost.

Why is this? Well, for one thing, many of a keyboard's patches are "faux stereo" - effects or phase tricks that make the patch sound bigger/wider than it is. Many times you'll get better results if you turn of the built-in effect and use only a single channel for the patch.

The bigger reason though is because in layering stereo tracks on top of each other, you've not created any sort of space or soundscape with the mix.

Perspective and dimension are very important in creating an exciting and dynamic mix. You've done your job if people hear it and feel like there's a miniture band playing in between their two speakers.

When we hear a sound, we hear it at a specific point in the space around us (our brain works with our ears to localize sound sources). So in a mix, you want to choose specific points in space to place each track.

Perspective comes into it when determining width -- if you're recreating the way the instruments might appear on a concert stage in front of you, it would make no sense for a stereo piano track (as an example) to be panned hard left/rght -- if the speakers are ends of the stage you can't really have a piano spread across it (which hard panning would mimic) - when was the last time you saw a 50 foot piano??

Many times, even if you're not going for a natural-sounding mix, it's a good starting point to place each track as you'd like to see it occur on-stage... once you've defined that perspective for yourself, you can then pplay with the elements to creatively shape the mix. If you don't define your placement and leave the tracks to "fall where they may" you're almost guaranteed a mushy, undefined mix....
 
If I am not mistaken, you are talking about placing a signal more to one side in a stereo track, BEFORE you put it in a mix..with the L/R panned hard right and left once in the mix. (therefore you may have 15 stereo tracks all panned hard in the mix, but the sound in those stereo tracks allready gives a perception of left or right)

So... to sum up, if you have a stereo track with some ambience, but the sound sounds like it is coming from the left side, the right side probably contains more an ambience sound VS direct sound.

I am not talking about a faux synth string sound with a chorus or whatever at this point....just an stereo "realistic" track.

I would say this is fine to do...IF that is what you are doing. But also becomes MUCH more complex(or difficult) to mix, as you are making decisions on placements as you track and NOT as you mix.

I tend to think IF that is what you are doing, and able to do so without problems, CAN create a very realistic image, as the tracks are more "realistic" to start with.
However, that said, I tend to think some tracks in mono are much easier to deal with, and then put a reverb opposite the mono track to give it more "space."

But then..in a faux soundstage.... condencing a synth stereo patch...or leaning it to one side... is certainly "legal."

...and of course, mono signals with reverbs sent to opposite sides certainly is a faux soundstage..

that said, I tend to think about 99% of the popular music recorded today has a unrealistic sound stage... generally in attempts to get things sounding "larger than life"
 
The thing is, MOST keyboard patches do not have a realistic stereo image - it is a faux image created by phase tricks and effects.

Also - as I pointed out - you don't have to stick with the realistic soundscape... it simply makes a good starting point for fleshing out mix ideas.

YMMV......
 
bbear... I think we are in agreement here. However, sampling keyboards are a different animal, and not nec. just your sawtooth wave form with a phase shift/chorus on them to create a wider image. Many of your upper end keyboards are infact stereo samples and not just quasi-stereo.

additionally, you said; "Also - as I pointed out - you don't have to stick with the realistic soundscape... it simply makes a good starting point for fleshing out mix ideas."

I agreed 1000% with my followup statement of; "I tend to think about 99% of the popular music recorded today has a unrealistic sound stage... generally in attempts to get things sounding "larger than life"

I think we both agree on all these points.... you just speak Canadian and I speak United Statesian!:cool:
 
Im starting to see the sun through the clouds here.

I went back last night and bounced several stereo tracks into mono (including lead acoustic and ac. rythm and I notice they are alot easier to place... simply because they're localized. easier to hear :)
Seems kinds weird having a mono track with stereo information in it... but it sounds better i think.

I made two different clips.. one is the original and the other with the monos. I also added a little bit of air around the lead and rythm... but I still have to finish mixing the rest of the song cuz i was tweaking some pan and level settings
http://www.jeffmarcomb.com/example.htm

The intro synth is still in stereo... and other synth sounds like this one . .. the pan information is moving back and forth in the stereo field, so it sounds much better as a stereo track.

Thanks again and now I'll have to go back (once again :) ) and deal with all my stereo tracks in my other songs
 
ha...!! I've looped your "stereo synth noise" for hours now....and have only salivated about a 1/2 gallon so far. :cool:

Why don't you just mix for AM radio and screw the bandwidth too:D

But seriously... keep that "impotent" (aka important!) stuff in stereo... if it was me. No need to trash a lead guitar line down to mono, just because you "should"!!
 
Hey Jeff, you're like me, only I'm 100% deaf (no connection to the brain) in the left ear, and only have 25% hearing in the right... I made custom phones a while back with a switch on them, so I could pop back and forth easier! They got stolen with the rest of my gear years ago though, so I gotta do that again...

Since I don't hear stereo, and never have, I tend to stay away from stereo effects, but can usually nail placement...

Anywho, keep cranking them out dude, if you could give me the talent in the tip of your right pinky, I'd be 300x better.

W.
 
aw shit...your airwaves are filled with smoke!!!:D


there was some thread asking about you in another forum around here.. asking if you still had your nowhere account.
 
mixmkr

maybe i should make a song with just the synth sample.. hah! :)

ive always liked the sound of synths... i can see myself using them 50 years from now

im not sure if youve heard of the band deep forest..i like listening to them before i mix stuff to get an idea of levels and instrument relationships. its two guys that do tons of sampling and programming. i love their bass sound... i think its a minimoog... at least sounds like one. lots of panning fun in their tunes :) heres a little sneak peak of one of there tunes... educational example
no acoustic guitar in the songs though... what were they thinking?! :)

waldo

I made custom phones a while back with a switch on them
Click to expand...

hey thats a fantastic idea!... im going to do that. time to pull out the soldering iron. Thanks!

It does stink not being able to hear what stereo truely sounds like... but I think you learn to adjust over the years.
I remember my mom taking me to those hearing test places and the testing people would always get mad because I kept raising my hand when there wasnt even a beep... hey I couldnt tell :)
maybe there'll be some sort of computer we can put in our ears soon... its soo hard though because nerves dont like to grow back once their dead.

B.SABBATH

thanks man.... :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top