a panning theory for your debate

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crosstudio

crosstudio

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for my first hip-hop band track (which i'm sure will be a classic) i'm trying the following instrument placement:

C lead vocal
5% L kick , R bass
10% L hat, R snare
15% L cym, R cym
20% L other perc, R other perc
25% L piano, R organ
50% L orch, R orch
75% L guitar, R guitar ghost
100% L back vocal, R back vocal

so the lead rapper, bass, and percussion instruments take up 40% of the central stereo field, with the instrumentation and back vocals using the remaing outer spectrum.
 
In his book, The Art of Mixing, David Gibson describes an interesting Hip Hop mix as a pretty busy mix with an 808 boom loud and out front. Fattening (panning an original signal to the left and then panning a delayed duplicate signal to the right (or visa-versa), which creates an oblong sphere, or "line" of sound) on the bass and doubling on the keys. Delay on the synth and hi-hat. Especially unique is the doubling on the high synth with another instrument. High strings are flanged for a subtle, spacey effect. The snare is not very loud (in this particular mix).

His picture shows the kick, bass, and boom straight down the middle, with the bass fattened wide across the sound field. The kick sits center and slightly higher in the mix. The snare sits slightly higher than the kick and slightly to the right (12:30). The synth and the synth delay are ever so slightly higher than the snare and panned 10 and 2. Keys are fattened and sit just behind and above the synths (the keys are fattened in the left stereo field and the right stereo field but not across the entire sound field). Hi-hats sit higher and are panned 9 and 3. Above all this is a sprinkling of high synths and percussion filling out the top end of the mix. Finally, at the top, sits the flanged strings fattened across the sound field.

More on fattening and doubling: Doubling is a duplicate part delayed about 30 to 60 ms with the duplicate part panned opposite the original part. This makes it sound like the part was played twice, and you can hear two separate parts. Fattening is a duplicate part delayed about 1-30 ms also with the duplicate part panned opposite the original part. But instead of sounding like an instrument part played twice, it sounds like a single instrument only "fatter" (wider, with more presence). It's useful when you are trying to create that "wall of sound."

Perhaps this will give you some more ideas.
 
tdukex,

Is this bass fattening technique used over the full spectrum?

It seem to me you would run into phase cancellation problems at the lowest frequencies. Wouldn't it make more sense to just fatten the bass harmonics and leave the very low end on center? This way you would avoid the subs working against one another at certain frequencies.

barefoot
 
Youre giving away all the secrets, tdukex. I have long maintained that smart panning will have more of an effect on the quality of your mix than a new pre/mic/setofconverters/etc. Also, I worked on a record last year where I slightly flanged the strings extensively to smoothen and fatten them and to make them stand out less in terms of their high tonality and it was so effective that its become part of my sound. I guess I didnt invent that though. :) Anyway, doubling is a critical part of getting things out of Ntrack-home-studio territory and into pro-land.
 
Barefoot

First of all, I am no expert. I was just quoting an expert, and he spoke about the bass parts as a whole. Of course, you can eq any way that sounds good to you and even alter the bass sounds. I've actually used two different bass sounds together one punchy and one open with a fuller bottom end) and achieved a fattened sound I was very happy with. I've also used this fattening technique on vox parts, acoustic guitar parts, and bass parts (Country/Pop mixes). These don't go as low as Hip Hop, but I never encountered any phase problems.

You can play around with the eq, panning, and delay on each individual part (or mix) to achieve the sound you want. Not all mixes, of course, will benefit from fattening or doubling.
 
I try to picture the stage where the recording was made. I do live recordings so this is easy for me. Then I try to translate the picture in my mind to panning levels. Then I listen to the mix and usually end up moving things a little more to the middle.

For things like horn sections, I'll route them all to a stereo bus and then use the Waves Stereo Imager to place the section in a sound field that replicate the placement of the group of people playing in the section.
 
as far as live sound is concerned do you have a seperate mic for the hat and snare or do you mic them together?

now concerning recording: how does it really translate to live sound? most drummer have the hat/snare next to each other, but if you listen to most CD's they aren't panned that way at all. many pan them on opposite sides of the kick. from the hip-hop CD's i've been listening to they often pan the hat half way to one side then double it to the other side while leaving the kick and snare pretty much down the middle.

i've never understood the correlation between live and studio.
 
It largely depends on the situation. I try to always mic the snare and Hi Hat seperately. Here is an example:



I had kick, floor tom, snare, Hi Hat, and 2 overhead mics. It can be pretty hard to keep the snare out of the Hi Hat so I alway end up gating it. The panning in the mix was my attempt at putting all the mics in the mix, where they were located on stage. This is pretty much what I am going to do everytime.

When a band wants to get involved with producing, they can tell me to do different.
 
The way I've been thinking about this lately is not so much trying to recreate a stage type setting with panning but verying amounts of stereo width of individual instruments. Kick, snare and bass down the center but things like hat, toms and cymbals panned left and right a bit ; guitar centered with delays of 20 to 50 ms on it panned left and right at 10:00 and 2:00; keys at 9:00 and 3:00 etc. Everything pretty much centered, just making individual instrumts wider or narrower with time based effects.
 
change in my original panning scheme

when i first started this panning scheme thread, i had the background vocals split 100% L and R. i tried a couple of my tunes that way but i didn't like it. the background vocals sound much better closer to center with the keys, horns, and guitar filling the stereo field outside of them.

jgourd, i like your blues tune. your having put the harmonica down the middle and the bass and guitar on opposite sides really lends a live feel to the sound and spreads things out.

i think you would have gotten even more feel if the whole drum kit was not panned dead center.

another thing that was great was when the blazing guitar came in, you added more fx to the opposite stereo field to fill out the sound since the harmonica wasn't playing. then when the harmonica came back and you pulled the fx away it really made the sound move.

damn good mix.
 
dug this thread up while searching for more info on panning and delays...

...recent experiments on stereo channels has led me to re-think panning each side hard, all the time. I just thought you had to do that to avoid comb-filtering in the center of the mix. Any real info on this? Don't part of the left & right sides of the track "overlap" in the middle when panned anything except hard L/R?

...also discovered the "ancient Chinese secret" (:D) of delaying one side of the stereo pair anywhere from 1 to 5 ms to move the sound away from the center, toward the "edges". Also found that by rolling off more lows on the un-delayed side, the "odd", lopsided feel was lessened.

...experimented with the delay/dry percentage, and found that 100% definitely introduced comb filtering (the overall volume was lowered :eek: ) -- and it also sucked all highs and lows right out. By lowering the percentage and tweaking the level of dry-to-processed sound, the highs, lows, and overall level came back to optimal levels.

---

Anybody with more enlightenment on this, or somebody wish to straighten this info out? IMO this much overlooked part of mixing is the elusive "hump" many home recordists are looking to get over, to make their stuff sound much, much better. (Then again, the elusive "hump" may be that girlfriend that never put out, and made you want to write those hateful songs in the first place :p :D)

Any good information, insight, or thoughts about panning & delay details are very welcome... please confirm or totally shoot down what I've proposed at will :p (looking in littledog, Harvey, chessrock, Blue Bear, knightfly, and everyone else's direction :)

Thanks


Chad
 
Sorry, Chad... you're wasting your time looking in my direction. I'm just in the old "try whatever it takes to make it sound good" school of mixing... I don't know squat about theories or formulas to mix by...

It's like when I see those articles in magazines, like "10 great EQ settings for the new millenium", or "my favorite compression attack and release times"... I don't even read them. For better or worse, I just gotta go with my ears. It's the only way I know how to work.

Theorizing about where and how far to pan stuff before even hearing the track seems a lot like planning a road tour before you even form a band.
 
littledog said:
Sorry, Chad... you're wasting your time looking in my direction. I'm just in the old "try whatever it takes to make it sound good" school of mixing... I don't know squat about theories or formulas to mix by...

It's like when I see those articles in magazines, like "10 great EQ settings for the new millenium", or "my favorite compression attack and release times"... I don't even read them. For better or worse, I just gotta go with my ears. It's the only way I know how to work.

Theorizing about where and how far to pan stuff before even hearing the track seems a lot like planning a road tour before you even form a band.
Click to expand...

amen....the only numbers I like are on brassiere tags....
 
okay...

...maybe I asked the wrong question, guys :)

I guess it's more along the lines of "does this make sense" or "have you done something similar"? It's just to legitimize what I think my ears are learning. I can't be the only one who's tried this... and I have to wonder if it has made people's mixes work in the past.

Or is it just a red herring?

So the question of "is comb filtering happening when you pan two sides of a stereo track closer to the middle" isn't a good question? :)

Thanks ld and mix.


Chad
 
Chad, you're correct to a degree about comb filtering and mono with delays. When you combine a mono signal with a delay, there'll always be combing to some degree. The severity depends on the program material and the time delay of the delayed signal. Depending where the peaks line up, the filtering can either work for you of against you. I have to use my ears and decide for myself. No time to do the math when I'm mixing.
 
Track Rat said:
...When you combine a mono signal with a delay, there'll always be combing to some degree....
Click to expand...
Comb filtering can happen with panned stereo delayed signals as well. Generally speaking, the longer the delay the more this effect will be shifted to just the low frequencies. It’s usually a good idea to roll off the bass in short "spatial effect" delays.

The exception is for continuous sounds like pads. In this case you may get comb filtering no matter how long your delay time is. Better to use a stereo chorus or a Qsound type processor to spatially enhance these kinds of sounds.

barefoot
 
hey participant:

if you record a piano in stereo with a mic at the low end and a mic at the high end, then pan the mix, it sounds right because it is right.

if you record two separate guitar tracks and pan them away from center it gives you a thicker sound because the dueling guitars don't play the same note at exactly the same time.

if you take a mono recording and dupe it then delay the dupe and pan them away from center, the track sounds thicker because the delay between the two tracks gives you a sense of space.

everything you've said is correct.

it's been a year since i started this thread, and my panning technique is working well for me. i've never used it exactly the same on any song, but it has proven to be a great starting point for me.
 
Thanks for all the replies fellas. :)

Track Rat: Yeah, comb filtering with mono delays... maybe some phase cancellation too? If the peaks line up exactly with the valleys (same amplitude and phase), the sound could disappear completely :) Maybe that's desireable, though, just in the center of the mix where the two tracks would overlap?

barefoot: Yeah, that makes sense about the lower frequencies... longer waveforms, longer delays... guess it was dumb luck that said "roll off the lows" on either the L or R (it sounded better, anyway) I'll keep that stuff about chorus in mind for synth pads... good tip.

Tex: Thanks for the link man. I'll definitely check that out.

crosstudio: What you're saying is that how you mic will determine where in the mix your instrument will sit... mic high/mic low on piano, pan each side 100% and the piano will "appear" in the mix where it was miced. Guess it's also a matter of thinking about the mix before mic'ing.

If you want the acoustic guitar 25% left, you stereo mic it that way... hmmm...

Cool that your technique works well for you. Thanks for your response.

Thanks again guys... wasn't looking for any type of "recipe"... more along the lines of seeing if I wasn't doing something boneheaded when something else would get the same result, more easily.


Chad

EDIT: Just like to add that in general, I'm talking about recording myself, one instrument at a time... so maybe this would make more sense now :) Understandibly, if you're recording an entire performance at once, stereo micing will set your instruments panning/depth pretty much automatically. My question comes from wanting to keep options open on where the instrument will sit... a lot of mind-changing goes on :D
 
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participant said:
crosstudio: What you're saying is that how you mic will determine where in the mix your instrument will sit... mic high/mic low on piano, pan each side 100% and the piano will "appear" in the mix where it was miced. Guess it's also a matter of thinking about the mix before mic'ing.

[/B]
Click to expand...

I know a little bit about mic'ing pianos, and I disagree strongly with that statement, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean.

If you are looking for a natural piano sound, the only time hard panning will give you that result is if the mics are in some sort of close stereo configuration, like a coincident pair, for instance. Then hard panning should sound right.

However, most of the time, if you mic the top and bottom of a piano and pan hard, you will end up with a piano that sounds 20 feet wide. You may like that effect, but it won't sound like any piano you will ever hear in real life.

There are many strategies for mic'ing a piano. The first one most people try (for stereo) is one mic on the treble strings and one mic on the bass. Then they pan treble right and bass left. But remember, the only person that actually hears a piano from that perspective is the piano player, not the audience. The sound that is projected out to the audience has almost no pitch-to-panning relationship.

While I enjoy hearing tom fills move from one speaker to the other, most of the time (speaking as both an engineer and a piano player) i find it distracting and completely unnatural to hear a piano glissando or arpeggio traveling from left to right (or visa versa) in my speakers, except as a special effect.

Just something to consider.
 
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