A cool m/s effect in mastering

pcstudios

Member
Second in my mastering chain is my equalizer, the RS56 from Waves audio. I always experiment with mid/side EQ. One thing you can always try is putting a blunt curve setting at about 250 hz on the sides, and increase the gain at this setting. It widens the lows without adding muddiness to the middle. It seems like I’m applying this technique with much that I do.
 
Funny... I tend to narrow the image below 300Hz because in real life you can't really detect much directionality below that frequency. The natural crossbleed in that range is essentially 100% and the wavelengths are too long relative to the distance between the ears for arrival time to affect the image. Since hearing a difference in LF between right and left doesn't happen in a natural acoustic environment (i.e. the entire 100 million year history of mammalian ears up until a few decades ago) it's especially uncomfortable to have panned LF in headphones/earbuds.
 
Since hearing a difference in LF between right and left doesn't happen in a natural acoustic environment (i.e. the entire 100 million year history of mammalian ears up until a few decades ago) it's especially uncomfortable to have panned LF in headphones/earbuds
If that means we don't like bass and bass drums and very low thudding instruments panned hard to one side or close by, I concur !
 
If that means we don't like bass and bass drums and very low thudding instruments panned hard to one side or close by, I concur !

Well, I don't like it in headphones. On speakers it's not so bad because it's just not that apparent.

Back in the days of vinyl, it was never a problem. Due to the technical limitations of the medium it was necessary to center the bass frequencies. If you didn't, you risked propelling the stylus laterally out of the groove. So all vinyl was inherently headphone compatible.

But I won't tell people they "can't" do it. To each their own. I just might not want to listen to it on headphones or earbuds.
 
I'm in the "low end sounds weird when wide" club. I've used MS to add "air" to the top, but anything on the sides under - probably 2k - is most likely going to be a cut. But as BSG says, to each their own. And if that's what the mix is asking for, there you go.
 
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