Stereo Width

[The Audio Cave]

I'm mixing and "home-mastering" song that will appear on a demo CD with other songs that were recorded and mixed elsewhere. Listening to some of the other songs that will be on the disc I notice a - relatively - narrow stereo width.

Does anyone else find that as opposed to songs you mix yourself? It's irratating because in order to make it fit the project more and not stand out I have to narrow the mix which to me sounds noticably worse, not bad but not nearly as good.

Rookie (or just bad?) engineers seem to have an issue with placing a percussive sound or counter-melodic musical line 80-90% left or right or more. When you listen to great mixes you'll find (depending on genre) some intermittent things appearing in, for all practical purposes, one speaker. With maybe a hint of space (verb/delay) across to the middle of the soundstage. You'll also find wideness that helps the illusion of depth and space.

I also spread the entire finished mix out "beyond the speakers" a bit. It really does help the soundstage along with the proper depth. I might use 4 Waves S1's on a mix on individual tracks and another on the mix bus when "home mastering".

What's up with that? I don't get it. Part of our job when mixing is to "create an illusion". S1 is your best friend.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Does anyone else find that as opposed to songs you mix yourself?
...
Rookie (or just bad?) engineers seem to have an issue with placing a percussive sound or counter-melodic musical line 80-90% left or right or more.

AC,

Up until this thread, I have been pretty much with you all the way in your original round of posts, I gotta respectfully disagree with your thesis pretty much all the way around on this one.

First off, there's a lot of genre-specific stuff your intimating there. There's a whole lot of music out there - especially in the non-metallic genres of music - where having percussive sounds on the edges of the stage is not (by conventional wisdom, FWTW) considered appropriate. There's a whole lot of classic jazz, blues, country, classical, reggae, zydeco, punk, fusion, rock, new wave, world beat, doo wop, hip hop, bebop, pop - and just about any other "-op" you can think of - where hard panning of drums or other syncopation is really not the norm and in some genres, rarely done at all.

Heck, there's a signifigant number of mix engineers from as lowly as me to as loftly as Roger Nichols who leave hard-panning of anything other than room reverb in the bag as much as we do any other technique.

Yeah there's a lot of CPP (Cardinal Point Panning), a.k.a. LCR (Left- Center-Right) mixes out there in pop and rock, that's true (we just got through with a thread talking about that just a few days ago); and the harder and more metallic the rock, the more folks dig the trippy "k3wl" hard panning of doubled guitars and drum kits the size of the entire soundstage. But there's a few reasons - good and bad - for that that frankly have little to do with engineer experience or creative mixing technique.

I also think - based upon the past two years of listening to rookie home reccers in these forums - to say that those who do not regularly hard pan that stuff are rookies flies right in the face of the evidence. Stick around here for a while, AC. Every newcomer, their brother, and the mule they rode in on wants to follow one mixing pattern and one mixing pattern only:

1. Double the guitars and hard pan them.
2. Throw Guitar Center's entire stockroom inventory of microphones on every square inch of drum kit they can, wind up replacing those tracks with Drumagog anyway, and then pan the results across the entire soundstage.
3. Throw the kick, bass and vocals up the middle.
4. Fill the remining no man's land with reverb.
5. Keyboards, horns, etc. do not exist in their musical orbit.

BO-Ring!

And finally, if the recording are made for demo purposes mainly to get club gigs, that can go a long way to explaining the structure of those other mixes. Many booking agents and club managers prefer to hear how the band is actually going to sound, and not a bunch of studio tricks that'll never occur live. A good and experienced engineer will recognize that need if he knows going in that's the purpose of the recording.

G.

P.S. This thread is probably more appropriate for the "Mixing/Mastering" forum as it has to do with mix technique and not recording technique. No biggie, just an FYI for future consideration .

 

[RAMI]

2. Throw Guitar Center's entire stockroom inventory of microphones on every square inch of drum kit they can, wind up replacing those tracks with Drumagog anyway

Classic!

Stop it, man. You're killing me.

 

[cusebassman]

Just because I went and bought one of each MXL mic, and am now using them on the various drums and cymbals on my drumset, doesn't mean, that, uhh

shut up!

I don't think I've heard much in the way of hard panned audio in professional releases in a while... but who knows.

As for drum mic'ing, the post above just reminded me of a thread recently where the kid had something like 2 bass drums, 6 toms, 2 snares, a bunch of misc percussion and things, and he wanted to mic everything individually, and refused to take pretty much everyone'se advice at "mic the snares and basses and use overheads". Just an entertaining thread, but I couldn't seem to find it in searching... aww

 

[The Audio Cave]

... I gotta respectfully disagree with your thesis pretty much all the way around on this one.

First off, there's a lot of genre-specific stuff your intimating there. There's a whole lot of music out there - especially in the non-metallic genres of music - where having percussive sounds on the edges of the stage is not (by conventional wisdom, FWTW) considered appropriate.

Very true. I did say "depending on the genre". I don't mix rock so that may not be appropriate. Some of the R&B or even some jazz *may* benefit from the odd, not very busy, sound "near" (not at) the edge of the soundstage.

ymmv...

There's a whole lot of classic jazz, blues, country, classical, reggae, zydeco, punk, fusion, rock, new wave, world beat, doo wop, hip hop, bebop, pop - and just about any other "-op" you can think of - where hard panning of drums or other syncopation is really not the norm and in some genres, rarely done at all.

True again. I wasn't taking drums, per se but ... more percussive or musical things that don't happen often in a mix.

Heck, there's a signifigant number of mix engineers from as lowly as me to as loftly as Roger Nichols who leave hard-panning of anything other than room reverb in the bag as much as we do any other technique.

I agree. Don't focus so much on the hard panning part of my post though which was (while sometimes effective) was not the real point. And yes, you should not reach in the bag unless there's a need or a creative purpose.

Yeah there's a lot of CPP (Cardinal Point Panning), a.k.a. LCR (Left- Center-Right) mixes out there in pop and rock, that's true (we just got through with a thread talking about that just a few days ago); and the harder and more metallic the rock, the more folks dig the trippy "k3wl" hard panning of doubled guitars and drum kits the size of the entire soundstage. But there's a few reasons - good and bad - for that that frankly have little to do with engineer experience or creative mixing technique.

I agree in most cases. But many ineperienced mixers that I see (generalizing here) tend to focus more on eq and compression and other stuff when manipulating the soundstage can often have a similar effect. Another tool in the bag.

Take stereo backing vox in an R&B song. Layered harmonies of 4 parts wth 12 tracks or whatever. You pan them around to make them sound good. Fine.

I may find during the mix that there are parts of the backing vox are occasionally masking the lead vocal on the chorus or something. One way that often works is spreading the stereo field a bit on the bgvox group with an S1. That's why it's there. I may bring 4 of those indiviual tracks more back towards the center after spreading the entire group. Or not... it depends.

It's will sound tottally different from if I would've used eq to help solve that problem, often better. Sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes spreading the field of a stereo signal in the mix can help "make a hole".

I also think - based upon the past two years of listening to rookie home reccers in these forums - to say that those who do not regularly hard pan that stuff are rookies flies right in the face of the evidence. Stick around here for a while, AC. Every newcomer, their brother, and the mule they rode in on wants to follow one mixing pattern and one mixing pattern only:

True. The "stereo width" I was talking about has more to do with the width of the soundstage as a whole (and creating space) and less to do with hard panning of indiviual occasional mono items.

You will hear occasionaly guitar licks and percussive sounds (not busy ones) near the edge of the soundstage in some jazz recordings Obviously a mono and busy sound at 95% left would be very distracting in most cases. Level and space are critical for the right effect.

1. Double the guitars and hard pan them.
2. Throw Guitar Center's entire stockroom inventory of microphones on every square inch of drum kit they can, wind up replacing those tracks with Drumagog anyway, and then pan the results across the entire soundstage.
[\QUOTE]

That is funny!

And finally, if the recording are made for demo purposes mainly to get club gigs, that can go a long way to explaining the structure of those other mixes. Many booking agents and club managers prefer to hear how the band is actually going to sound, and not a bunch of studio tricks that'll never occur live. A good and experienced engineer will recognize that need if he knows going in that's the purpose of the recording.

True again. It depends on the purpose. Most of my clients are making demo's trying to get noticed by a label or whatever. The want their recordings to sound really good on home stereo speakers, IPODS or whatever.

Let me add that as far as the use of the S1 obviosuly I'm talking about stereo sources, since using a S1 on a mono source wouldn't make sense. With that said all I'm doing (for instance) is speading a stereo signal (strings?) out farther on the soundstage. It's a technique that many pro engineers use.

The "hard-panned" stuff are things that are rarely even in the mix. Normal players and instruments are panned in a conventional way (to taste) across the spectrum, depending. Don't focus too much on my saying a sound might pop in at 90% right.

I do spread the field a bit on certain types of songs, like R&B ballads, certain jazz recordings and things like that with an S1 on the master bus. I don't consider it a "studio trick" any more than parallel compression or digital delay.

I'm not very good at explaining myself sometimes.

 

[The Audio Cave]

I don't think I've heard much in the way of hard panned audio in professional releases in a while... but who knows.

I give up.

I never said "hard panned" a 100% left or right mono sound. I was talking about an unexpected musical ping of a mono percussive part or a quick guitar lick that is close the edge of the stage, and gives (with proper depth) a certain feel for width. Or a short musical melody or counter melody that...

"... for all practical puposes.."

...(like when driving in the car) appears in the left speaker momentarily.

I obviously can't properly express what I'm trying to say on this subject. It went sideways real quick. As they say in the mob...

fuggitaboutit...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Don't focus so much on the hard panning part of my post though which was (while sometimes effective) was not the real point.

I guess I totally misunderstood the thrust of your post. I did see your reference to the S1, but I got the overall interpretation wrong. Apologies.

So you're talking about using phase to expand the stereo image beyond the speakers? Well, two questions I would have in response is, 1) how many rookies do you expect to have - let alone know who to use proplerly - something like the Waves S1? and 2) Why skip hard panning and go right to image phasing? It would seem to me that you'd want to use up your non-phased soundstage first before artifically expanding it even further.

I agree in most cases. But many ineperienced mixers that I see (generalizing here) tend to focus more on eq and compression and other stuff when manipulating the soundstage can often have a similar effect.

That I do agree with completly.

I'd like to take it even a bit further; IMHO they do think about panning to a degree (pun incedental ) as well as other signal processing, but they tend not to integrate them with the intention of imagining and creating a true 4D soundscape, rather they treat them as discrete parameters without a view of the overall mix picture.

I don't consider it a "studio trick" any more than parallel compression or digital delay.

Agreed. I was using that phrase in the context of creating a demo for the purpose of getting live gigs. In such cases, most bookies are interested in knowing what the band will sound like in their club, not how many buttons they can push in the studio.

But I still fall back on two ideas: that a "narrow" mix is not necessarily the sign of a rookie engineer, and that one should get the 4D mix right first, long before they try seasoning it with phychoacoustic phase tricks. Products like the S1 or the BBE shuold not be used to mix, they should be used (if at all) only to fine tune an already great mix.

G.

 

[brendandwyer]

I guess I totally misunderstood the thrust of your post. I did see your reference to the S1, but I got the overall interpretation wrong. Apologies.

So you're talking about using phase to expand the stereo image beyond the speakers? Well, two questions I would have in response is, 1) how many rookies do you expect to have - let alone know who to use proplerly - something like the Waves S1? and 2) Why skip hard panning and go right to image phasing? It would seem to me that you'd want to use up your non-phased soundstage first before artifically expanding it even further.That I do agree with completly.

I'd like to take it even a bit further; IMHO they do think about panning to a degree (pun incedental ) as well as other signal processing, but they tend not to integrate them with the intention of imagining and creating a true 4D soundscape, rather they treat them as discrete parameters without a view of the overall mix picture.Agreed. I was using that phrase in the context of creating a demo for the purpose of getting live gigs. In such cases, most bookies are interested in knowing what the band will sound like in their club, not how many buttons they can push in the studio.

But I still fall back on two ideas: that a "narrow" mix is not necessarily the sign of a rookie engineer, and that one should get the 4D mix right first, long before they try seasoning it with phychoacoustic phase tricks. Products like the S1 or the BBE shuold not be used to mix, they should be used (if at all) only to fine tune an already great mix.

G.

i think there is a lot to be learned by mixing in mono.

 

[eraos]

but they tend not to integrate them with the intention of imagining and creating a true 4D soundscape, rather they treat them as discrete parameters without a view of the overall mix picture.


G.

Can you elaborate on this?

What exactly do you mean by "true 4D soundscape?"

I know what 3D is, I think -- front and back (levels and effects); left and right (panning); and up and down (frequency).

What's the fourth dimension?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Can you elaborate on this?

What exactly do you mean by "true 4D soundscape?"

I know what 3D is, I think -- front and back (levels and effects); left and right (panning); and up and down (frequency).

What's the fourth dimension?

Time. Sometimes referred to by some engineers as "drama". Basically its how the mix changes over time; how to mix the verses different than bridge, different than the chorus, etc., building intros, crescendos and fadeaways, mixing in some tension and release, call and response mixing, solo showcasing, movement of sonic focus, etc. in order to manipulate listener interest and emotion.

G.

 

[stash98]

Here's a good way to get depth and not screw up your image:"

USe a stereo delay hard panned to each side.

EQ it with a HP filter to taste.

Put the S1 in at the end and widen the delay.

I would never put an S1 on my 2 buss. But when you put it on a hard panned FX send, you can get a super wide mix.

 

[The Audio Cave]

Glen makes a great point about mixing in some "drama". I like that reference to the "4th dimension"... never heard it put quite that way. That's pretty cool.

Kinda on topic to that... even in midi-based production you can inject a some drama or urgency at that early stage with Glen's 4th in mind (before the mix) by ever-so-slightly rasing the tempo during a chrous or bridge, or pushing a part a little ahead/earlier.

In the mix you might play with the effects a bit or use slightly different eq and levels depending on where you were going with it. Or time shift a part to drive the track a little more on the chorus. All kinds of stuff... like those huge snare reverb explosions (back in the day) on the last upbeat coming out of the bridge of a ballad.

Great observation Glen... SouthSide ... dude.

 

[The Audio Cave]

I would never put an S1 on my 2 buss.

I use the S1 on the 2-bus on just about every R&B ballad I mix. I don't find that it screws up the imaging at all when used correctly, that is, after the mix is done. I wouldn't mix into it the way I do a RenComp sometimes.

Faster tempo songs in the genres I work in tend to be dryer and harder hitting so it's a case by case decision on whether I think the soundstage could use just a tiny bit of S1 or none as it will soften the entire mix a bit at times. That softening can be just the thing on some songs in some genre's.

Here's a mix where I think I went to 140% on the S1, not sure. This is a demo that never went to mastering, straight to 192k mp3 from Cubase.

I regret I didn't double mic the sax as I never got the growl this song deserves.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

you can inject a some drama or urgency at that early stage ... by ever-so-slightly rasing the tempo during a chrous or bridge, or pushing a part a little ahead/earlier.

Yeah that reminds me of a couple of other techniques; one I like and one that I personally consider kind of a cheap trick - though to the best of my knowledge Cheap Trick never actually used it :

The first, which is kinda related to what you describe is the slight sliding back and forth of the bass in relation to the main beat. Getting the bass to play just a little taste ahead or behind the beat can really change the feel or groove of the song. Though it's something that I'd much rather have the bass player do themselves, sometimes a slight nudge in the mix here or there can have a nice effect.

The second, and the one I personally don't care much for, but has become quite popular of late, is rather than (or maybe sometimes in addition to) nudging the tempo during the chorus, is to raise the overall volume of the chorus by 2 or 3 dB. I guess there's nothing really *wrong* with that; I'd just prefer to play with the track arrangemnt via individual track automation and let the volume fall where it wants to as a result of that dynamic, instead of just leaving the mix static and boosting the envelope. But it is another valid example of that kind of mix "drama" that does work.

G.

 

[LeeRosario]

I'm mixing and "home-mastering" song that will appear on a demo CD with other songs that were recorded and mixed elsewhere. Listening to some of the other songs that will be on the disc I notice a - relatively - narrow stereo width.

Does anyone else find that as opposed to songs you mix yourself? It's irratating because in order to make it fit the project more and not stand out I have to narrow the mix which to me sounds noticably worse, not bad but not nearly as good.

Rookie (or just bad?) engineers seem to have an issue with placing a percussive sound or counter-melodic musical line 80-90% left or right or more. When you listen to great mixes you'll find (depending on genre) some intermittent things appearing in, for all practical purposes, one speaker. With maybe a hint of space (verb/delay) across to the middle of the soundstage. You'll also find wideness that helps the illusion of depth and space.

I also spread the entire finished mix out "beyond the speakers" a bit. It really does help the soundstage along with the proper depth. I might use 4 Waves S1's on a mix on individual tracks and another on the mix bus when "home mastering".

What's up with that? I don't get it. Part of our job when mixing is to "create an illusion". S1 is your best friend.

well I can sort of understand where you're comming from, and I think all that was said needed to be said.

In matter of just personal opinions, it really depends on what genre and what discography you're trying to conform to. Whatever it was, you can't be totally at fault there, but you do have a choice not to be involved.

Myself personally, in matter of albums with multiple engineers, I try not to get stuck on the flaws or benefits of the others. I try to think about what I should contribute, if I even have to contribute, and what can I do to lift up the weak points to improve the overall. Don't get pissed at the rookie, get pissed at the guy who contracts the rookie.

The person(s) putting this thing together would have benefited in knowing a thing or two about putting together an album like this. He could of requested unprocessed mixes to be handled under one capable mastering engineer. Not that they where in the wrong, but don't expect stellar results.

So in the end, not only do you have a CD varying wildly from each song, you have a CD that's going to be potentially hard to listen to. If that's going to detract from or benefit your cause, that's the chance you choose to make.

I mean, if you think about it, in the end people are not really going to think about how good your mix was against the others, but rather if they're going to listen to this demo more than a few times or not.