Is this "wrong?"

B

Bigus Dickus

New member
I was unsatisfied with the stereo field I was getting on my X/Y recordings of my piano. Wide spaced mics sounded "artificial" and X/Y sounded too centered, even with hard L/R panning.

This afternoon I ripped several clips from classical piano works I have to use as a reference, and began a serious attempt at establishing a baseline for compression, reverb, and EQ to get as close as possible to the "great" sounds on my favorite professional recordings. I made a lot of progress.

During the EQ process I stumbled on something I hadn't thought of before; cutting most low frequency information from the right channel and most high frequency information from the left channel.

??

I recorded a passage that I had two nice professional records of. Using parametric EQ and my ears, I was able to bring my sound much closer to the professional recordings. But still, my stereo placement was much more "centered" than the pro recordings. That's when it struck me to simply remove bass from right channel and highs from left channel. Amazingly, the stereo field opened waaaay up. To figure out the proper EQ (and it was difficult), I summed the tracks to mono and used a spectrum analysis, comparing it to the spectrum analysis for the summed-to-mono pro recording. After a couple of hours, I was able to keep the summed spectrum looking like the pro recording's spectrum, and simultaneously having a bass/treble accentuated L/R separate EQ settings.

The final left EQ curve starts with a +3db boost on the bass shelf, keeps steady until about 100 Hz, and starts curving downward until at 20000 Hz it's down about -12db. The final right EQ curve starts with about a -12db cut on the bass shelf, curves up until it's a +3db boost around 800 Hz, and then tapers back down to around -4db at 20000 Hz (my original tracks had much more high frequency content than any of the professional recordings I have).

I know the usual saying is "if it sounds good, it is good" but I was just curious if this was a proven technique, or if it might cause unforseen problems that I'm not familiar with.
 
Big:

Much of the time classical piano is not recorded using close mic'ing techniques. That's what gives it that natural "in the concert hall" sound.

Of course, most of us don't have nice concert halls to record in, so we often use close mic'ing. The problem with close mic'ing is that if you pan them wide, you sometimes end up with a 20' wide sounding piano. The trick to getting a more realistic stereo field is to move your mic's closer together. For instance, if your mic's are 4" off the strings, using the 3:1 rule, you can put them as close to 12" from eachother. Having the mics 12-24" apart will definitely give you a more realistic piano size than if they are 3-4 feet apart.

The drawback that occurs to me with your method is that it seems to be playing into the misconception that we want to hear the treble end of the piano with our right ear and the bass with our left. The only person who even remotely hears a piano that way is the performing pianist. The audience never hears a piano that way. And most classical recordings try to duplicate the audience perspective, not the pianist's.

BUT... you seem to be very pleased with the results, and in the end, that's all that counts!

Of course, if your main problem is the panning sounds too wide, you can always reduce the panning positions from fully wide to a narrower postion.
 
you are in effect nudging along, and exaggerating what is already there, and not making it something different...we WANT to hear more hi's on the higher keys side. I do the same thing many times. Wrong or not, it really makes it more " real " to me
 
Well, I disagree, so i guess it's a matter of personal taste. Maybe I'm more picky, being a professional pianist for almost 30 years. Hearing the highs on the right and the lows on the left sounds unrealistic and annoying. When was the last time you heard a live piano performance? What reality are you nudging where you are hearing the highs with your right ear and lows with your left? People sit usually facing the open lid - performer on left, toe of piano on right. There is no treble-bass panning of the real stereo field.

So if you like treble/bass panning, why stop with piano? Why not do the same thing to a guitar track or a sax track?

On the other hand, I probably would like it on a marimba...
 
Interesting. Well littledog, that's why I didn't like the wide micing... just sounded too artificial. Way too wide, and when the panning was narrowed the two channels had some funky interaction going on.

At least the X/Y has a smooth sound whether panned or not. However, one reference CD I was using was a Phillips CD (known for classical recording quality) "Best Of," so I tended to think it was a pretty good reference. I noticed on a couple of pieces a very distinct bass/treble panning. Not exaggerated, but not exactly subtle either. Well... it probably is subtle, but I spent about 12 hours today listening to references and my tracks to try and establish my baseline settings, so I'm sure the effect became much more pronounced to me than it normally would have seemed.

Anyway, by cutting a little in the bass/treble in the L/R channels, it just opens up the stereo field, but it's not like you hear the notes walking from left to right. Hard to explain, but it really just seems more natural.

Tell you what... tomorrow morning I'll put the EQ's and non-EQ'd versions of my "mixing test" on nowhereradio and put the link in this thread. Then you guys can tell me what you think.
 
You might also try some other stereo micing patterns. MS is nice, and allows you to control the "width" of the image. I am very fond of ORTF on pianos, for myself. I have never really liked XY for much of anything, and certainly not for piano. Check out DPA's web site for more info on stereo micing patterns.

http://www.dpamicrophones.com/eng_pub/MicUni/131.html


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Reflections coming off the lid do not distinguish between left and right. It would sound un-natural to pan the left and right channels. The piano is usually fairly centered on a solo performance.

In an ensemble, you can move both the left and right to one side or the other without totally collapsing the stereo field.

When I was performing, that was the only time I ever heard the difference in where the bass and treble was coming from. From an audience perspective, it pretty much sounds like it's all coming from the same point in space. Especially if the piano is set up on stage in the traditional position.

Not many piano recordings are from the performers perspective of "up close and personal".

FWIW.
 
I've never tried it but a close Jeklin disc might be interesting. I'm with Littledog on the piano thing. I prefer the stereo ambience of the space over bass left, treble right but "it's all good".:D
 
I don't know, but your fff chords about blew my head off!!:mad: and maybe a little clipping on them too.

First off, I thought I was hearing an image kinda skewed off to the left a little, and the separation was still minimal to me. I liked the EQ version best if I was choosing. But my ears aren't the best, and they sounded pretty similar to me. My guess is the average person would not be able to tell the difference.
 
mixmkr said:
I don't know, but your fff chords about blew my head off!!:mad: and maybe a little clipping on them too.
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lol, sorry about that. "Clipping" could be a few things: almost all of my EQ was cuts, and I adjusted faders based on the EQ'd version. When I exported the version with no EQ I just turned off the EQ on the inserts, but I didn't think to compensate for increased levels on the faders. Could have been too hot for that reason. Another possibility is the compression... I'll have to do some more listening with only the compression on to see if that's responsible. I wanted to tame the hammer attacks a bit. Third possibility was that I was using some of the "drive" gain on my dbx386, which is the tube front end, and might be adding some nasty distortion at high input levels. Thanks for pointing it out... I'll find out what the culprit is.

First off, I thought I was hearing an image kinda skewed off to the left a little, and the separation was still minimal to me. I liked the EQ version best if I was choosing. But my ears aren't the best, and they sounded pretty similar to me. My guess is the average person would not be able to tell the difference.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm relieved to hear that they sounded similar to you and the stereo seperation was not unnatural. I do want it to remain mostly centered, and after a while even a slight panning effect became very obvious to me.


I think I got the verb about where I like it.
 
I prefere the EQ'd piano. The unEQ'd version was a bit left heavy and that also looked that way in Soundforge. The EQ'd version sounded more symetrical. Also I could see no clipping in the wave form.
 
I liked the EQ'ed version better too.

It sounds as though the eighth note that was played was out of tune. Was that just my ears?
 
Thanks for taking the time to listen guys. That's 4 - 0 in favor of the EQ'd version, which gives me some peace of mind. I may fiddle with it just a bit more to fine tune it (I think there might be just a tad of muddiness in the mid-bass region that could be cleaned up), but it looks like I'm in the right direction. Glad you didn't think it was too artificial sounding.

Sennheiser said:
It sounds as though the eighth note that was played was out of tune. Was that just my ears?
Click to expand...
I don't think so, just a quirk of the recording. Probably just uneven weight in my playing of the arpeggio. That is one of the notes that I need to do some subtle voicing on, so maybe you were just hearing a slight difference in tonality. I hear it too, but only on the first two sustained arpeggios... after that it seems fine.

Dunno. My POS piano sounds better than I expected anyway. lol.
 
this kinda stuff is why i dont really like to use stereo pairs of mics that much. they seem really sterile and close.....id much rather use 2 different mics. i usually use an AKG C391 and an AKG C535. similar sounding,but not the same. seems to work for me.
 
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