Cardinal Points Pan Law

[eraos]

Wow, here I am in a minority of one again .

My problems with the LCR (or LcR, or CPP) approach to mixing are that it a) flies in the face of the "4D" approach to mixing, of which I am a fan almost to the point of evangilizing, and b) tends to lead to mixes that, while they can intrinsically sound perfectly good, tend to get monotonous and uncreative when you put a disc or playlist of LCR-mixed songs together.

And as far as "the experts" liking and using LCR often, for every one who does, one can find another who doesn't (Roger Nichols, Alan Parsons, Paul Hornsby, etc.) It's the old game of you get your expert to testify and I'll get mine, and we'll let the jury decide who's the better public speaker. It's a silly game that's not worth playing.

Let the inspiration and structure of the song and the arrangement determine the mix layout in the four dimensions to create a true stereophonic sound field, and leave the straightjacket of starting with the three artificial and arbitrary cardinal points in the bag, IMHO.

G.

I wouldn't say you're in the minority. It seems like those that have shown support are recognizing, as you have said, that it can make a mix sound perfectly good, that it is another tool for an engineer.

I personally haven't tried it, but I'm not discounting it's possible usefulness to make a clean mix. But I agree that the 3d, 4d mix is a much more creative process. I guess it would all depend on the goal.

 

[masteringhouse]

Wow, here I am in a minority of one again .

My problems with the LCR (or LcR, or CPP) approach to mixing are that it a) flies in the face of the "4D" approach to mixing, of which I am a fan almost to the point of evangilizing, and b) tends to lead to mixes that, while they can intrinsically sound perfectly good, tend to get monotonous and uncreative when you put a disc or playlist of LCR-mixed songs together.

Glen, I think that you may be taking this concept a bit too literally. In the thread I believe that it mentions a few times that you don't have to strictly follow a hard panned approach.

An approach to mixing that I've used is to first turn up all of the tracks and mix them as if it were a live concert. That generally means no panning. The advantage here is that you optimize the sound as a whole rather than as a bunch of pieces and hope that they fit together. After that, start ripping it apart.

I think that rather than panning things all over the place as a starting point, using hard pans as a starting point and making adjustments from there makes sense, but it's nothing Earth shattering. It's just a way of honing a mix from a courser viewpoint.

Geoff Emerick has a "trick" where he divides the frequency spectrum of a mix in a similar way, mixing all of the bass intruments together as a unit, then midrange, and treble. It gives you a bit more focus without getting down to the individual elements. I prefer this approach over soloing out each track and making say "the best X sound" then throwing everything together in the pot.

Everything has to work together. Sometimes you find that when you take Emerick's approach and solo the track later a track may sound f*cking awful, but in the mix sounds great. Likewise the panning approach here may make you leave things a little further to one side than you would normally, but if the entire mix gains greater separation and dimension it's a good thing.

It's funny that everyone is making such a big deal about this. When I asked Emerick why he panned things the way he did on Beatles albums (a decidedly LCR approach) he said there was no reason behind it. They were just required to make stereo versions of the mixes.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Glen, I think that you may be taking this concept a bit too literally. In the thread I believe that it mentions a few times that you don't have to strictly follow a hard panned approach.

True enough on paper, I agree, Tom. But I'll gotta tell you, last night I put my headphones on and listened on a random shuffle to my personal and DJ playlist containing about 400 tracks of virtually every genre of music there is. I did this listening specifically in the light of this thread. There were so many here who's opinions I respect that disagreed with me, that I went back to the raw data to give the topic a fair shake, so to speak; to see why I might have been wrong .

I was absolutely amazed at how often LCR is folowed quite strictly, with the middle "no man's lands" use almost exclusively for reverb. I never realized until last night just how pervasively a farily literal version of this method actually is used. The success and "strictness" of this technique varies from the ultra-strict and pretty lousy (IMHO) sounding such as much of the 60's pop stuff (see: Monkees - Let's Dance On) was done, to some quite impressive, rich, thick mixes that are still pretty strict LCR with reverb smoothing it out a bit (see: Santa Esmerelda - Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.)

Also in listening to these tracks, it reaffirmed for me - with exceptions, of course - just how homogenous and predictable the mixes started sounding after a while, especially when you have the occasional "natural" (I use the term loosely) stereophnic mixes or the 3D/4D mixes thrown in between that, to my ears anyway, when done well sound so much more rich, open, textured and interesting then even the best LCR mixes.

The advantage here is that you optimize the sound as a whole rather than as a bunch of pieces and hope that they fit together. After that, start ripping it apart.

Yeah, I understand that as a slightly fancier version of checking a mix in mono, which is a technique I don't disagree with as being a useful tool when required.

But here again, my honest opinion (and one likey to draw flames here) is that it shouldn't take long before an engineer outgrows the need to check mixes in mono - or in the case of LCR, in "tri-aural" - much as a bike rider soon outgrows the need for training wheels. Sure there are cases where to this day I have to check how some tracks go together when laid on top of each other, but after being at this for a while, I find that it gets much easier to be able to tell with some certainty well beyond just "hope" how well tracks will mesh and balance and how the mix will develop without having to do that.

I think that rather than panning things all over the place as a starting point, using hard pans as a starting point and making adjustments from there makes sense, but it's nothing Earth shattering.

For me, i's not just a matter of randomly "panning things all over the place", it's a matter of developing a specific layout in my head before I even reach for the faders or the pan controls. This layout is inspired (and sometimes even dictated, to a loose degree) by the song and the arrangement. Using the commonly known guidelines for getting the right balance and articulation in each of the "dimensions", and for building the mix from the ground based upon common foundations such as lyrical types and inportance, melodic or structural hooks, and overall arrangement style, the rough mix should be - by this method - already mentally roughed in before one actually starts playing the mix.

By this method, arbitrarily sticking this track hard left, that one hard right, etc, just seems like taking that production plan and throwing it out the window just to start at some arbitrary and artificial starting point.

Geoff Emerick has a "trick" where he divides the frequency spectrum of a mix in a similar way, mixing all of the bass intruments together as a unit, then midrange, and treble. It gives you a bit more focus without getting down to the individual elements.

Now that's not a bad idea. I can see that. I do it slighty different myself in that Itend to break down into groups based upon instrumental function; i.e. rhythm section first (including drums and bass), blending into other rhythm instruments from low rhythm to high rhythm git, accompaniment pieces (keys, horns, etc.), lead pieces (lead gits, lead brass, etc.), and vocals.

But what I just don't personally see that much of a need for is to begin the mix with these instruments stacked in a small handful of arbitrary positions, especially if those positions bear no relation to where I have the actual mix placements planned. Now if I am actually *planning* an LCR-based mix, then that's a different story, of course (and I have done them in the past.) But, unless it's a very dense and tricky soundstage (see Phil Spector or anything by Poi Dog Pondering ) where some mon or stacked comparisons may help fine tune some track EQ somewhat, it just seems to be an inappropriatly arbitrary start for a multi-dimension mix. And one which can bias and inadvertantly straightjacket the engineer if they have not already rough-mixed the production in their head.

I'm not really meaning to make a big deal out of it; just trying to add and explain an alternate, and equally accepted amongst the Big Boys, method that is almost diametrically opposed to LCR in methodology.

G.

 

[masteringhouse]

Glen,

There's certainly nothing wrong with an alternate approach as long as it gets you where you want to be in the final result.

Some of the things that you mentioned though depend on you actually tracking the instruments and having that background knowledge. If you're faced with mixing someone else's tracks you might not know mic positions, so for example initially panning overheads far L/R allows you to hear how much of a spread in the drums you have and make adjustments from there. Likewise if using multiple miking, listening to things in mono or center will raise phasing issues a lot more quickly than if they are panned to opposite speakers no matter how much experience you may have.

Ultimately it's just another technique. Breaking away from old habits sometimes makes you hear things differently and inspires you to try something that ordinarily you might have missed. As an analogy there are guitar players who use alterate tunings for the sole purpose of breaking out of playing with their usual fingerings. When they go back to their usual tuning it completely screws them up and results in something "new". If nothing else this technique might provide the same insight.

As a personal example I was listening to an old Jazz CD by Lee Morgan many years ago and noticed that the reverb on his trumpet was panned to the left while his trumpet was completely to the right. Initially I found this a bit odd, but it created a very cool effect that made him sound "larger" than if it was on both sides with him panned somewhere in the middle. Since hearing that it's a technique that I use fairly often when setting up room reverbs on distorted electric guitars. There's a cool blend that happens when combining the reverb of one guitar over the opposite one, rather than combining them elsewhere or an a more "natural" combination.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Some of the things that you mentioned though depend on you actually tracking the instruments and having that background knowledge. If you're faced with mixing someone else's tracks you might not know mic positions, so for example initially panning overheads far L/R allows you to hear how much of a spread in the drums you have and make adjustments from there. Likewise if using multiple miking, listening to things in mono or center will raise phasing issues a lot more quickly than if they are panned to opposite speakers no matter how much experience you may have.

All true. And I honestly am not meaning to sound narrow-minded. I think you probably know me a bit better than that. It's not like I'm unrehearsed in LCR. Or that I do a lot of tracking. Most of my work is in mixing other people's trackings, and I did a lot of LCR-style mixing before I adapted the 4D technique.

It's just that for me, I just find LCR to be restrictive in instances where a mix is not already rough planned, and counterproductive when it already is. Issues like you mention, which are very true, can be handled fine outside the cardinal points. The OHs will work out fine when working the rhythm section sub-mix without having to stack anything in mono. Similar with multi-miking and doing the rhythm git submix; phase issues can be checked without having to tri-aural everything.

I just get so exasperated with the status quo of mixing these days, pro or amateur. Everybody throwing a million mics into the studio, worried about this or that little sound, and then just throwing it into a predictable mix of doubled and hard-panned guitars, bass, kick, snare and vocals down the middle, with toms and cymbals either spread hard, or lightly sprinkled in stereo from the OHs. Any primate or computer algorithm can do that, and do it wothout having to waste all that tracking detail.

And my listening test last night depressed me even more because I found by my sampling that the more strict interpretations of LCR style are far more common than I suspected; there simply don't seem to be a whole lot of engineers who bother to "bust apart" the tracks after tri-panning them. Some of them get the tri-panning to sound pretty darn good, I agree. But it in many cases is not as good as it could be if they bothered to expand the soundstage after getting the technical details right.

I go back to that Santa Esmerelda cover of the Animals hit as a perfect example. I invite you Tom, to grab a copy of it (I'll give you the $.99 to buy it if you want ). What a nice job they did with the instrumental intro (once you get past the 4/4 disco kick ). A very thick and sophisticated mix with a lot of stuff going on, yet they managed to keep it very clean and sharp even within a failry strict LCR configuration using reverb to fill in the gaping holes in the middle. This is a fine example of one of the best in LCR mixing that I have heard in a while. But listen to it closely, Listen to the hard-pan Spanish guitars come in to be slowly overcome/overlaid by identically hard-panned 70's funk-style rhythm gits. Sounds pretty cool.

But imagine it if the Spanih gits and the funk gits has their own pan space with, say, the Spanards coming just inside of hard pan (maybe 70% hard) and the funk electrics coming in at maybe 45% or so. Not only would that give them their own space so that one would not e stepping on the other, but it would add texture and dimension to the mix, and mostly, it would add movement to the mix. This movement, drawing the listener to the center just in time to hear the horns explode over the top like a mushroom cloud would be a great improvement to an already good sounding mix.

There's way too much *keeping* everything LCR once it starts that way. It's such a waste of soundstage, IMHO. You need to check phase and EQ balance and you're not sure by benefit of experience if you're there yet? Throw the ol' mono switch and check it out. But build your mix from the bottom up according to a preconceived plan that uses the full pallate of space, I say. It can be done very successfully without having to first wedge everything into 0° and 90° each side, just reserving the rest for reverb or a stretched drum kit. Think of it. It's throwing everying in three individual degrees and wasting the remaining 177° for reverb or for just spreading stuff out from an arbitrary starting position.

Just an opinion, of course. But it's one I'm obviously pretty adamant amout. To paraphrase the slogan from Paul Green's School of Rock, I'm just trying to save the fine art of mixing one mix at a time .

G.

 

[Lori]

I am not a mixer but just a plain old music lover and I loved reading this thread.
the insight it gave me on how what we hear became that and the job of the sound tech is amazing.
the ability to listen like you guys do, is obviously a skill developed over years.
I love learning more about creative processes, and have done just that here.
thank you.
I am inspired

 

[chazba]

I'm experimenting with some tracks for the next album . At some points I'm using a male quartet and have found that it sounds really good to spread them out from hard left to center, starting with the highest voice farthest left and progressing toward the center as the parts get lower and lower. The piano is a stereo sample and I have treated it the same way but spread on the other side, Left hand to the center, right hand to about 3-oclock. drums are split in stereo, bass and lvox mono centered, with rygit and lguit wherever they work best. This sounds great in the studio and translates to my livingroom stereo (and 5.1) really well . Of course you have to compensate by lowering the levels as the panned sigs approach center, but the scheme works well to generate a satisfying stereo stage .

chazba

 

[skiz]

Im a bit of a newby here.. And also i didnt get to read thru this entire thread as im reading it from my cell phone at the moment, but glen, could you explain wat 4D Mixing entails? Sounds interesting! I know its probably a chapter long kind of explanation but anything you could explain id love to learn

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Im a bit of a newby here.. And also i didnt get to read thru this entire thread as im reading it from my cell phone at the moment, but glen, could you explain wat 4D Mixing entails? Sounds interesting! I know its probably a chapter long kind of explanation but anything you could explain id love to learn

The short synopsis is that you look at a brand new mix like a painter's empty canvas. Just as a classical painter uses both the physical dimensions of the canvas (up/down, left/right) combined with depth/perspective, and use of color and brightness to create a picture, the audio engineer/producer can approach the audio canvas the same way.

The four virtual "dimensions" (4D) we have to work with are Pan (L/R), depth, frequency and drama (change over time). Whether we want to create a soundstage that is "lifelike" or a totally artificial construct that sounds cool, if we take the approach of working to fill and balance the sonic image on this four dimensional canvas, it can really make it much easier to fit tracks together while at the same time creating something more interesting to listen to.

G.

 

[kats]

Pan pots are the least reliable way to create "space", or "excitement" IMO. A sure bet is using eq and arrangement. And that is what this is really all about. That is why mono is so important - it is the best test of a really well produced recording.

To rely on precise pan locations is to make too many assumptions on how the music will be heard. Night clubs, lounges, restaurants - forget it, mostly mono. College dorm with the speakers 2 feet apart, stereo box at the beach... you get my drift.

Ok, so now you have it working beautifully in mono. It sounds great, the instruments work well together - they all have their "space" and your considering pan placement. The LCR guys would argue (assuming it was tracked properly) , why would you want to limit the width? Go hard! It's not like the instruments will be fighting eachother - we took care of all that. We tracked it properly, it has a great arrangement, we eq'd any problem areas etc. The poor buggers paid for two speakers - give em a thrill!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Pan pots are the least reliable way to create "space", or "excitement" IMO. A sure bet is using eq and arrangement. And that is what this is really all about. That is why mono is so important - it is the best test of a really well produced recording.

To rely on precise pan locations is to make too many assumptions on how the music will be heard. Night clubs, lounges, restaurants - forget it, mostly mono. College dorm with the speakers 2 feet apart, stereo box at the beach... you get my drift.

Ok, so now you have it working beautifully in mono. It sounds great, the instruments work well together - they all have their "space" and your considering pan placement. The LCR guys would argue (assuming it was tracked properly) , why would you want to limit the width? Go hard! It's not like the instruments will be fighting eachother - we took care of all that. We tracked it properly, it has a great arrangement, we eq'd any problem areas etc. The poor buggers paid for two speakers - give em a thrill!

The idea behind 4D is that panning is only one dimension in a 4-dimensional space, and that one can "compose" a mix by treating the dimensions together as an integrated space. It opens up space to be able to fit the arrangement. And you are right, the arrangement is a huge factor. But how many arrangements are made that just so happen to wind up working the best at the cardinal points of the stereo field?

Like loudness, when everything is hard panned, hard panning becomes nothing special. Making every mix the same way is much more limiting IMHO than composing a mix without such limiting preconceptions, and instead letting the arrangement and the song inspire the mix.

As far as night clubs, lounges, restaruants; in those places hard-panning only sounds like hard panning somewhere near the center. People who are stuck near one side or the other won't get that "excitement", they'll just hear one side of the mix much louder than the other. Get too far away from the loudspeakers and it all just reverbs into a mono mash anyway. It is for these reasons (not these only, but they are important ones) why most bands that play those kinds of rooms pump through a mono PA; it actually works better for such environemnts than stereo does.

That's the whole problem with creating a steeophonic mix, regardless of one's panning scheme; the panning scheme only works as an intended stereo image when both listener's ears are located somewhere in-between the two speakers and at a nominal distance back from the line between the two speakers (headphones and potato buds not included on that last one.) So building a stereophonic image that attempts to anticipate playback environment is chasing a fairly wild goose. If one wants to do that, one would probably be best off just leaving the mix in mono.

But very few of us want to actaully leave things mono. So we use stereophony. Most people do listen in environments where there is all sorts of room between the hard pans to put stuff that will still sounds "exciting". Hell, having something only 60° right instead of 90° right still gives 150° of seperation between it and full left. Still pretty "exciting" by that definition. Plus it still leaves just that much more room hard right for other stuff., regadless of EQ balancing.

Get enough stuff going, and there's going to be masking in LCR no matter how you EQ, unless you EQ some tracks to the point where they don't sound how you want them to any more. Who hasn't had an issue in the past of getting the triad of a Strat, a piano and a vocal to cooperate in mono or on one side? You could say, throw one L, one C and the other R. OK. Now you have to add that B3 organ with stereo Leslie, a second rhythm guitar (Tele) and two or three female accompanyment vocals. Throwing them all LCR not only gets busy, but gets kind of boring. And there's so much important stuff going on in shared frequencies that you start getting a logjam around 2-3k that to un-jam with EQ winds up having to take something you want away from at least one of the instruemts.

Of course, arrangement and volume automation go a long way to helping solve that problem; often less is more. But somestimes that's not enough (see; Poi Dog Pondering), and the option of seperating them in pan space as well is just the ticket. Put simply, use *all*of the available dimensions to the mix's advantage. For example, It's extremely difficult to move a piano back in volume and space when it has a louder guitar stacked right on top of it. Seperate them in space a bit, though, and you can give the piano it's own space *and depth* without it being completly masked out.

As a good example, give "Can't You See" from the Marshall Tucker Band another listen. Acoustic guitars, lead electric guitar, bass, drums, flute, piano, organ, reverb and multiple vocal lines, yet the song does not sound cluttered or busy at all, and the use of more of a 5-point-plus-reverb than a 3-point mix sounds IMHO much more interesting and textured in that arrangement than just throwing everything but the bass and the vocals to the sides.

G.

 

[gecko zzed]

being a latent anarchist . . .

I view 'rules' with a high degree of suspicion.

And if someone says, "you should do this", my pavlovian reaction is to say "why, who says?".

I view each mixing project as a blank canvas, and I have that gleaming white rectangle just waiting for me to apply some paint. I'd not heard of this LCR technique, but it would be like me painting a strip on the left edge of my canvas, a strip down the middle and a strip down the right. In my view, there's not a lot to be gained by painting a picture like that.

Of course, there's not a lot to be gained by painting the whole canvas red, or blue, or fill it up with primary colours.

Creating a mix, for me, is creating a sonic landscape using the same techniques used to create a visual landscape, and you use the palette (i.e. recorded tracks and a range of effects) to create depth, space, movement and interest. So you can use purple and green in the sky if that's what helps these aims ("but the sky is blue!" I hear. "Who says, and why?" I ask).

And in a mix, just as in a painting, there are times when you will leave the canvas untouched, for these are the spaces that counterpoint the colours. Just like a painting which draws the eye into it, so should a mix do the same for your ears. And to change the metaphor, I sometimes think of the mix as a diorama, and I try to visualise myself walking around that stage on which the musicians play, each having his or her own space.


I don't claim, though, to be proficient at this. Not all artists are Rembrandts. But that's what I aim for.

I can see, though, how rules can emerge. Even within my limited sphere I find myself repeating things I've done before, because they've worked. And so you find yourself binding yourself with your own tacit rules. When someone asks, "can I have the drums on the left?", I shudder at the heathenish suggestion. Before you realise it, you've developed your own rules (that are hard to break), which you then pass onto others.

But, back to the painting analogy, some landscapes are visually more exciting than others, and one of the reasons is that they display compositional factors that our culture regards as pleasing, and the same applies to mixing. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with having, say, a kit off-centre, but, for me, and for many others, it is generally aurally unappealling, so I avoid that if I can.

In the end, any mix that I do will sound not dissimilar to thousands of others, but I think I have a better chance of creating something innovative and unusual by starting with a clean canvas and the full stereo spectrum, rather than having my options limited by conforming to a predetermined pattern.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I view each mixing project as a blank canvas, and I have that gleaming white rectangle just waiting for me to apply some paint.
...
Creating a mix, for me, is creating a sonic landscape using the same techniques used to create a visual landscape, and you use the palette (i.e. recorded tracks and a range of effects) to create depth, space, movement and interest.
...
In the end, any mix that I do will sound not dissimilar to thousands of others, but I think I have a better chance of creating something innovative and unusual by starting with a clean canvas and the full stereo spectrum, rather than having my options limited by conforming to a predetermined pattern.

Very well said. And thank you for not leaving me alone out there on this one .

Before someone comes in and says that I think that it's my way or the highway on this, I won't go so far to say that mixing something in LCR is "wrong"; my MP3 playlist is filled with famous LCR mixes that sound just fine. I just think it's very limiting to think in those terms and I think that many of those perfectly good sounding LCR mixes could sound even better if the engineer had taken the time to spread things out a bit

Gecko is right that even when you break or ignore the rules, some fundamental rules will always remain. On the canvas, you usually want to put the thicker paints down first with thinner ones on top; if using shadows, they should represent a consistant position for the light source; put lighter shades on top of darker shades and vice versa to create depth; use the rule of thirds for setting the horizon line position; and so forth. Certain fundamental rules will always remain on the sonic canvas as well: higher frequencies have sharper location properties than lower ones, use those to highlight the stereo image; the Haas effect can be used to help set depth of field on two tracks that otherwise might be too similar to stack; balancing frequency usage across the pan space by seperating instruments of similar timbre tends to give a more pleasing balance to the mix; and so forth.

*On a fundamental level* there will always be "rules". Sometimes they can be bent or broken, sometimes not. But the way I see it is that the "rules" are not limiting, but tools to be taken advantage of. To use another different analogy, the game of chess has lots of rules in how you can move your pieces, yet no two games come out the same, because there are plenty of rules to go around for each piece and because the chessboard is large enough to accomidate them. For me, LCR panning is like forcing every piece to move like a bishop and then reducing the size of the board to a 4x4 grid. There's going to be a whole lot of identical-looking - and quite boring to play and watch - games. Opening up the whole pan space is like opening up to a full-sized board, and knowing and using as many of the fundamental "rules" (really the wrong word, but it's too late now) as guidelines rather than restrictions is like adding rooks, knights, pawns and a queen to the number of pieces you have and how they can move.

The fact that a knight can only move the way it does instead of just being albe to gallop anywhere it damn well pleases is one of the "rules" that makes chess so interesting. It's not a restriction, it's a creative and interesting part of the game...*as long as the board is big enough to accomodate it.* Opening up the usable canvas to the fullest possible spread in all 4 dimensions gives you a big board which can fit a very creative use of all the fundamental "rules" of audio that is not resrictive at all.

G.

 

[kats]

I would never assume to argue my point as definitive, it's only a personal opinion - whatever works, right?

But for me, panning is akin to the "size" of a canvass. The texture, richness, depth, and overall impact of a painting should rely the least on the size of the canvass. The size of canvass chosen is very dependant on the wall it will hang on. In comparison, where music will be heard is not static - it's all over the map. This is why I feel arrangement and to a lesser extent eq (although arrangement takes the frequency range of the intrument into consideration) trumps all.

Anyhow, there's more than one way to skin a cat - to that I agree.

 

[chazba]

Breakin' the law....breakin' the law...

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I would never assume to argue my point as definitive, it's only a personal opinion - whatever works, right?

Agreed.

But for me, panning is akin to the "size" of a canvass. The texture, richness, depth, and overall impact of a painting should rely the least on the size of the canvass.

Actually we look at it much the same; I (and others who espouse the 4D approach - this is not my original idea) just look at from a slightly more global or integrated perspective. I look at L/R panning as only one dimension measuring the overal size of the canvas. It is perhaps the most obvious of them, sure, but it is only one dimension that cannot be seperated from the rest any more than width can be seperated from height, depth or time in the four physical dimensions.

What you are referring to as texture, richness and depth I agree are extremely important (I am BIG on texture ), but they are all properties that exist on the four dimensional canvas. Depth is actually one of the dimensions. The frequency spectrum defines the third, the crafty use of which contributes greatly to the richness of the mix, and texture can be seen as the topology across all three.

The 4th dimension is that of drama, or the dynamics of the mix. This is greatly determined by the arrangement and it's level of detail, but these days unless one is working with a classical composition where every 8th note on every instruemnt is documentd and purposeful, and every passage already choreographed as far as volume dynamics, there is often at least some degree of decision made in the CR after all the writing and tracking have alreay been done as to what gets used when in the final mix.

The size of canvass chosen is very dependant on the wall it will hang on.

If it's a comissioned project, sure. The size and shape of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel definitely defined much of what Michaelangelo did there. If one is purposely making something meant to be sold at the local Holiday Inn to be hung above a living room couch, that gives one some guidelines of what size canvas to use.

But what if one is just making a painting with no clue as to where it will end up being displayed? That is pretty much the situation we're in when we're making CDs. Will they be ripped and played on iPods with ear buds the size of an M&M? Or played on SACD on a 5.1 home entertainment system? Or a mix CD for your girlfriend on her car stereo? Or the student's computer speakers in a dorm? Or on the house system of a noisy bar? Or on a radio station with more compression that a steam engine, that is playing on all of those different playback systems simultaneously somewhere in the city?

There is no "right way" to make one ideal mix for all of those contingencies. The intended mix will come out different in each of those situation regardless of the attention paid to the arrangement and to the four dimensions, because those dimensions will all be distorted a different way in each environment. All one can do is make something that sounds the best it can in a way that won't easily fall apart in a stone soup of situations like that. Rembrandt didn't make paintings intended to have the right brightness and contrast regardles sof whether they were displayed in a flattering studio or hung under a florescent light in a garage or in the indirect and subdued lighting of a night club. He made paintings that had their own intrinsic values. We can do no more.

I don't personally see how one can treat one dimension as more or less important than the rest in audio any more than one can treat length or height or depth as more important than the rest when making a painting. They are all part of the same canvas and part of the same composition. And to waste any of that canvas when composing our next painting is to cut down our creative opportunity.

YMMV and all that.

G.

 

[gecko zzed]

straining the analogy

let's not get too carried away with this 'canvas' metaphor, although it seems to have generated some useful discussion. I discussed mixing in terms of a canvas because I rely a lot on visual analogies, but it's possible to get very tangled if you push the analogies beyond their useful boundaries.

Occasionally, a track will be commissioned for a specific purpose, and that commission will provide clues on how the mix should be approached. For the most part though, the mixer has no idea of the final use of the recorded product, and as Glen notes, these uses will vary in quality and sophistication. The canvas that we've been using as an analogy is not the canvas of final use, i.e. it and the 'wall' on which it will be placed, because this is not known (except in a few specialised instances). The 'final use' argument is largely spurious.

Within the studio environment, everything emerges from (roughly) two points, i.e a pair of monitors. This, physically, defines the canvas that I have been using as my analogy, and this is the landscape we should be considering when mixing, not a theoretical landscape somewhere else. It has fixed dimensions, but limitless possibilities, i.e. it is bounded but infinite, not dissimilar to Glen's 'chessboard'.

Given the range of possibilities within this space, I find it hard to be convinced by any agrument that suggests there are benefits in limiting our use of it.

Another argument put forward in this thread postulates the merits of mixing (or, at least, of validating a mix) in mono. If the final use is known to be predominantly in mono, then I conceed the value of this. Otherwise, I'm not convinced. Here's why: For a while I diligently checked the air in my tyres each time I filled up. After a while I stopped doing this, because I discovered I didn't need to; I could tell by the feel of the car on the road when there was a problem with tyre inflation. In the same way, it is possible to identify problems with a mix without needing to check in mono*. You can sense it in the stereo mix that you are working on. In any case, the demand for mono mixes is dwindling daily, so I don't really care any more how it sounds in mono. Freed from that constraint, I can concentrate on assembling the track in stereo the best way I can.

* Similarly, when cleaning up a wave file that's got unwanted noises on it, I can see where the problems are, and know how to differentiate, say, a squeak of a chair from the breath before, or a final consonant after, a phrase. I don't need to listen to it to do this. (Interestingly, when I was working for RCA many years ago, there was an anecdotal story of a guy who used to check the stampers (for making vinyl records) for flaws. It was said that he could identify the music by the patterns of the grooves as seen through his magnifier!)

 

[Guitarer]

Lots of great posts and info in here...Hope I don't sound too ignorant.

But here's my point of view: LCR sounds like it'd be good when listening on speakers, but not as good with headphones. Reason I say this is because if you were to have everything hard panned, with speakers, your other ear will still pick up the sound just as if the sound was live. It comes from one direction, and one direction only, but your other ear will still pick it up. With headphones, if you hard pan, only one ear is going to recieve the sound. For this reason, I will almost never hard pan anything.

 

[madmax25]

I know it was totally unintentional, but this is pretty much how all of the mid-career Beatle stuff turned out(LCR). I was listening to Revolver in the car and it was really weird. vocals and tambourine in the left, everything else in the right. You would think it would totally suck like that, but somehow it's really cool...
I dabble with both. I'll space things at every position imaginable and get a pretty balanced stereo sound, but every now and then throwing in a hard panned guitar riff or vocal snip totally makes it. The canvas doesn't have to be a picture perfect live snapshot, but it doesn't have to be some wacky avant-garde modern paint splatter either. Mix and match. Make it sound cool.
That probably made no sense....

[and sorry about the painting analogy ]

 

[kats]

With headphones, if you hard pan, only one ear is going to recieve the sound. For this reason, I will almost never hard pan anything.

Not really true. For example, if you hard pan an XY stereo config you get a decent center with a good stereo picture - most classic stereo mic techniques achieve this.

One thing to keep in mind is that the placement of an instrument in the stereo field isn't determined soley by the pan position - it is pulled or pushed by the information from the opposite speaker.

So for example I can mic drum OH's tight, hard pan them and the perception may be that they are panned at 10oc and 2oc.

Even a monophonic source can be pulled around the stereo field by effect treatements. A popular example of this that everyone has heard is hard panning a guitar to one side while hard panning it's effect (reverb or delay for eg) to the opposite side. Depending on the level of the effect you can pull the guitar to 10oc if you felt like it.

The point being that just because you pan LCR doesn't mean your limiting your stereo field to LCR. The difference being is that your making choices during the tracking stage with mic placements/techniques or during the mixing stage with effects, eq, and arrangements.