depth of field how to's?

D

Diverdown

New member
Im wondering how you achieve that depth in the recoring mix that some of you have got down very well?
I listen to my and some others recordings and the instrument track and vocal track seem to be vying for the same placement depth wise where as some recordings really have a wonderfull distinction,I feel as though the singer is 1 foot in frontof me with the band 10 ft back and this to me makes the recording sound so much more proffessional. Is it just equipment ? or can someone achieve this with relatively standard gear? Is this perhaps the difference between a 200$ mic and a 1000$
I dont know if im expressing this correctly but its how I hear it
thanks
DD
 
Heavy compression can bring something forward.

The dryer it is, the more forward, again very generally speaking.

Reverb can push things back; depending on the type of reverb and the amount of pre-delay (the shorter the pre-delay and the longer the decay, the further back it will be pushed, theoretically).

Mic'ing distance; close-mic'ing will generally bring it forward. If you think about it, it makes sense; the further away something is from the mic, the further away it will sound. Kind of a "duh" moment there, but it bears mentioning. :D

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Mic further away for a further sound (sounds crazy I know :p)

Think about where that track will be in the mix when deciding on where to place the mic...

If you can't get it far back enough before it sounds bad, then treat your room.
 
Good equipment is def. a help but (assuming you have good tracks) in the end it's comes down to...

EQ
Reverb
Panning
Compression

IMO they go in that order from most important down. Master these things and you can accomplish anything.
 
danny.guitar said:
Mic further away for a further sound (sounds crazy I know :p)
Click to expand...
That's my favorite... Things don't sound the same up close as they farther away. This is where great sounding rooms come into play as well... The home-studio method is frequently to have the source right up on the mic - And not surprisingly, the recordings may sound very "2-dimensional" in the end. When adding those distant mic'd sources, the room has to be in pretty good shape...

Otherwise, you're going to pick up "the room" more than the source.
 
Massive Master said:
That's my favorite... Things don't sound the same up close as they farther away. This is where great sounding rooms come into play as well... The home-studio method is frequently to have the source right up on the mic - And not surprisingly, the recordings may sound very "2-dimensional" in the end. When adding those distant mic'd sources, the room has to be in pretty good shape...

Otherwise, you're going to pick up "the room" more than the source.
Click to expand...

That's probably because a lot of home studios of awful acoustics...
 
I agree with everything that's been said so far, and would like throw two more considerations into the pot:

The farther away an object, the more the higher frequencies tend to wash out or weaken (ever wonder why distant thunder tends to be more of a low frequency roll whereas close up it's more of a sharper clap?). On top of everything else already mentioned, sometimes just a bit of HF rolloff can help enhance the distance effect.

Also, suprisingly, nobody has mentioned volume level itself yet. Distance lowers volume. Just like with the HF rolloff, while this doesn't necessarily mean the lowering the volume itself will make something sound further, in combination with the other stuff, it can help enhance the overall effect.

Also, relative volume to other tracks in the mix can be very important in more ways than the obvious. I had one guy come to me a while back with a mix where he couldn't get his vocals to stand out to save his life; they sounded "behind" the band, just the opposite of what this OP is looking for. His problem was that he had typical rhythm electric gits hard panned L/R that sounded good, but they were just too powerful. The hard panning combined with the high RMS of just those tracks alone created a "frame" around the rest of the stereo image that was right in the listener's face. This made everything inside that frame sound like they were further back, behind the frame. Pulling back on the gits just a few DB in the mix pulled that "frame" back a bit and not only allowed the vocal to come naturally forward, but also left a few extra dB of headroom in the mix to allow him to boost the vocals even more, if desired, or at leat play with the rest of the mix to get even more texture in the depth.

G.
 
You can mask a bad room sound with reverb if you get the settings right. This helps keep it further back (naturally, which a lot of reverb plugins just can't do well) and gives it a better sound. Depending on how much room sound there is, you may end up with a very wet/reverby mix. This works really good for acoustic songs, but I'm not sure about rock, and probably definitely not metal.
 
Thanx for all the replys
Im sure this is pretty basic theory for alot of you but fo a fellow starting out it is a struggle to know thw basic how to's to get a decent recording \
thanks again
DD
 
danny.guitar said:
You can mask a bad room sound with reverb if you get the settings right. This helps keep it further back (naturally, which a lot of reverb plugins just can't do well) and gives it a better sound. Depending on how much room sound there is, you may end up with a very wet/reverby mix. This works really good for acoustic songs, but I'm not sure about rock, and probably definitely not metal.
Click to expand...

If you have an acoustically bad room I find one way of artificially adding 'depth' to a close mic'd source is to use convolution. Convolution is basically multiplying the audio track (for example a stereo mix down of the drums or just the bass drum) with an impulse response which is a clap or shot recorded in a particular space. There are many programs for doing convolution and also a lot of places online where you can find impulse response audio files for free. I use Soundhack ( www.soundhack.com ) on a mac (not too sure if it is windows compatible) and just search for impulse responses in google. When the convolution is done, bring the track back into your DAW and mix it up against the original track until you get a reverb level you desire. This way is generally better than most reverb plug-ins and probably even some cheaper reverb effect units.
 
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