Pan Issues When Mixing

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Damian227

New member
Ok I used my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 for the first time yesterday and noticed the mixdowns sound... well odd. It reminds me of when I mix a file to play left pan and a seperate one to play right pan... like the sound is slightly distant.

My card's input does have a manual pan setting, the Left is set L50 and the right is set R50, so I'm guessing that is causing the bizarre playback? I never fiddled with it as I assumed that is how I should leave it? You can central them, but I can push it to L2 and R2, as close to central as possible?

I have the audio file if anybody wishes to hear what I mean, in comparision I can show a track recorded previously on a Soundblaster were the vocals are more central and sound a lot of more 'full' as a result.

Hope somebody can help out, thanks
 
It's hard to tell just what you're talking about because "distant" is not something that's usually associated with a panning issue. Posting a before/after file might help.

But just a guess in the meantime: You may be hearing a difference in software panning laws, especially if you switched software or software configuration when you switched sound cards.

G.
 
Damian227 said:
Ok I used my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 for the first time yesterday and noticed the mixdowns sound... well odd. It reminds me of when I mix a file to play left pan and a seperate one to play right pan... like the sound is slightly distant.
Click to expand...

It could be that something inadvertently got wired out of phase when you were hooking stuff back up.

I would check by playing a commercial track through your sound card and see if it still sounds weird. Pop it in mono and see if the low end disappears.
 
No anything else sounds fine, my panning-laws remain the same and everything. It just sounds like anything recorded is no longer central to the speakers. Sounds just like when I set the pan directly to one speaker

I've uploaded the bare vocals of Old (Soundblaster) and New (Audiophile 2496) and a version on the instrumentals (mixed with ad libs and backing vocals).

They've been mixed the same way in the same program but as you can hear, the Old one is more central, sounding like any other professional recording... the new one just sounds strange on the instrumental, like it's seperate from the beat and playing beside it, than with it. Even if volume is boosted, it just sounds louder and defines how each channel plays too far to either side.

Really hope somebody can help as the Audiophile gives nearly zero noise when set up to my gear and I'm loving it, apart from this issue.

Link to the files - http://www.zshare.net/download/73383475a788577c/
 
OK, I put your Old and New raw vocal samples up on the table and ran some tests on them, and found a few things, but one is the killer.

First of all, there is obviously a difference because the old and the new are from two different songs with differing volume/RMS levels and differing amount of reverb added. But that's probably not what you're talking about. This is:

Tom W. was on the right track. You are recording your vocals in stereo (which is quite unnecessary, BTW), and for some reason the L and R tracks on the "new" vocal are polarity inverted, giving you a fake wide stereo effect due to the phase difference. Here is a close up of one small part of the file showing the inversion clearly:

inverted_sample.jpg


You can correct this in your current recordings by highlighting just one side of your stereo file and inverting it; you'll instantly hear the focus snap back to the center like on your old recordings.

As to why that's happening to begin with, I'm not sure. It could be some setting in the card's driver, it could be bad wiring on the card itself. But I'd try first of all to record your mono vocals in actual mono and see if that avoids the problem.

HTH,

G.
 
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Actually that looks more like a DC offset.

Usually there are plugs that can undo this or a hpf set at 10 hz would also work, but the more important thing would be to find out what is causing your converter to act that way.

The main cause is usually inaccuracies in the A/D converter or conversion subsystem that produce a slight output offset voltage.

There are some phase issue's going on as well because usually the wave forms would not be a mirror image.

This is usually a problem that stems from the converter, which is why it showed up when you switched converters.
 
Damian227 said:
My card's input does have a manual pan setting, the Left is set L50 and the right is set R50,
Click to expand...

OK, I don't know anything about your card, so I may be way off here. But, just a guess: Could it be that they should be set L100 and R100. L50 and R50 sounds to me that they're both only halfway panned.
 
Waltz Mastering said:
Actually that looks more like a DC offset
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Nope, there's no offset in that file, I checked already. It's a simple inversion between the L and R sides.
RAMI said:
OK, I don't know anything about your card, so I may be way off here. But, just a guess: Could it be that they should be set L100 and R100. L50 and R50 sounds to me that they're both only halfway panned.
Click to expand...
That should not be an issue, at least not one related to the actual inversion problem. Panning the two sides by an equal amount would still result in a mono image down the center, just as 100% panning would. The only potential difference might be in the amplitude of the resulting signal, if the DAWs panning laws were still causing some gain reduction at 50% pan.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
That should not be an issue, at least not one related to the actual inversion problem. Panning the two sides by an equal amount would still result in a mono image down the center, just as 100% panning would.
Click to expand...

I see. I didn't listen to his file, but I'm assuming it's a mono file, going by what you say above.

In his OP, he did say his "Mixdowns sound....well odd". So, I'm wondering if (aside from the inversion issue), he's also not getting full stereo when he's mixing down a stereo file, which is why it sounds....well odd, to him.:eek:
 
RAMI said:
OK, I don't know anything about your card, so I may be way off here. But, just a guess: Could it be that they should be set L100 and R100. L50 and R50 sounds to me that they're both only halfway panned.
Click to expand...

That'd be my guess to but 50 is the max and 2 is the minimum... Not a clue why lol.

Southside Glen: Thanks for spotting that, I hadn't noticed til now. I've checked all my settings, so I'm guessing it's a bad feature on the new card. Quite strange though. Also to note the different reverb used, that's surprising too as I'd used the very same preset I designed. Is Mono normal for recording, I was always lead to believe stereo was what I should record in? (though I'm guessing my previous soundcard had a single input, meaning it was recording mono anyway?)
 
RAMI said:
I agree. Now I have to go into Reaper and check out what law I've been working with all these years. :D
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Haha yeah that's exactly what i thought too. Considering how 'sensible' Reaper is i'm guessing it'll be 3.
 
saads said:
Haha yeah that's exactly what i thought too. Considering how 'sensible' Reaper is i'm guessing it'll be 3.
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Yeah, probably. Though, it probably doesn't matter much in my case since I do everything out of the box, and then only bring in my left and right master tracks. So, either way, I have to pan them hard right and left. But I wonder if a panning law that increased the volume of hard panned stuff would give me more sort of "natural" volume on those 2 tracks.
 
RAMI said:
I see. I didn't listen to his file, but I'm assuming it's a mono file, going by what you say above.
Click to expand...
It's just a single vocal into a single mic, but he's tracking it to a stereo file on his DAW.

The problem is his card is inverting one of the sides as compared to the other, which is the basis for an old "phase" trick for synthetically "widening" a stereo image. The result when you do that to an essentially mono signal is a weird kind of "defocusing" of the image.

If you want to have just a little bit of fun, Rami, go ahead and download the file. It's actually a zip file with several MP3 inside of it. Just grab the "New Plain Vocal" file and load it into Reaper. Then highlight just a section out of the middle of just the right side, and then invert that highlighted section. Then play back the whole thing,in stereo. When you get to the section that you inverted, you'll hear the vocals suddenly snap to the middle, and then ambiguate again when you get past the inverted part. It's a very graphic and apparent way to hear just what the inversion does.
Damian227 said:
I've checked all my settings, so I'm guessing it's a bad feature on the new card.
...
Mono normal for recording, I was always lead to believe stereo was what I should record in? (though I'm guessing my previous soundcard had a single input, meaning it was recording mono anyway?)
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I'd agree that you might have a defect on that card. It only takes an accidental reversal of two leads or traces (or the electronic equivalent thereof) for that to happen. I'm hoping that it's a new enough card where it's still under exchange or at least warranty so you can try another one.

If/when you're recording a mono signal like a single microphone like your vocal track, unless you actually plan on doing something different to the left and right sides of the signal, there's really no reason to record it to a stereo track.

G.
 
RAMI said:
But I wonder if a panning law that increased the volume of hard panned stuff would give me more sort of "natural" volume on those 2 tracks.
Click to expand...
Reading this back, I just realized how stupid it was. I never care what the volume of my pre-mastered track is. Why start now. :eek:

SouthSIDE Glen said:
If you want to jave just a little bit of fun, Rami, go ahead and download the file. It's actually a zip file with several MP3 inside of it. Just grab the "New Plain Vocal" file and load it into Reaper. Then highlight just a section out of the middle of just the right side, and then invert that highlighted section. Then play back the whole thing,in stereo. When you get to the section that you inverted, you'll hear the vocals suddenly snap to the middle, and then ambiguate again when you get past the inverted part. .
Click to expand...

Cool. I will play with it to actually hear what's happening.
 
saads said:
I liked the panning laws link, very informative. Thanks.
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I didn't want to make it look like I was ignoring you, saads. Thanks.:) Yeah, the panning laws thing is something not a lot of people know about; I first learned of it when I read that article myself a few years ago.

G.
 
Damien,

Something I forgot to explain further, which could be important. Before you try to return the card itself, you probably would want to check the mAudio website and make sure there's not an updated version of the software driver for that card. It's possible that there may be a bug in the driver software causing the inversion, and that it's not a problem with the hardware itself.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Damien,

Something I forgot to explain further, which could be important. Before you try to return the card itself, you probably would want to check the mAudio website and make sure there's not an updated version of the software driver for that card. It's possible that there may be a bug in the driver software causing the inversion, and that it's not a problem with the hardware itself.

G.
Click to expand...

Ok will do. Just a quick couple of questions;

1. I'm going to switch to mono for recording, will I get the exact same quality still yeah?

2. Being that song is already recorded would just inverting the messed up right channel be fine. Or should I load up the raw file (no compression, eq, reverb) invert it then and re mix it down? Just want the best sound possible and from then I'll try record in Mono.

I doubt I'll get an exchange, bought it in a clearance batch on ebay (now I know why) but I did get it at a bargain and that tiny issue wont effect me in mono anyway =D

Thanks ALOT for helping me out though :D
 
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