Bob's Mods said:
How relelvant is this really? If you look at pictures of the Beatles in the studio you see those U47s right in front of the amps and gear. Those same pictures show them singing within inches of the mics. Those mixes sound excellant. As close as those mics were, I don't think much room ambience got in.
Bob
A) It's a U47
B) The room will always make the difference. In fact, in extreme cases when you can't hear the difference, you can feel the difference.
I'll bet my life that if that album was recorded anywhere else, it would of sounded completely different.
So it's extremely relevant.
But for all:
To generalize this topic and to hopefully nudge some souls in the right direction: (after Im done with this, it'll probably do me good to stay away from the internet for a while).
One thing that's extremely over looked is how to truly achieve the 3 dimensions in recording. Most people are half there. But before I can elaborate on that, some very basic concepts.
1) When you record something, it is inherently 2 dimensional in nature the moment it's captured on it's medium. (Analog tape, Harddrive, whatever). In the same way you draw something on paper, it will be flat and undefined in space.
So the question you should ask yourself before you even touch the faders is:
"So how do I get it to 3D?"
Good question...
2) In mixing, an engineer has to be familiar with the terms "
Height, Width and Depth". This is how you will place your instruments effectively in thier space. Professionally called the
sound stage.
Height is achieved through EQ. Higher frequencies tend to feel higher on the plane than lower freqs. I beleive that was already answered.
Width is a tricky one. Because there are many things that can effect how wide something actually is or might feel like. For example "The width of analog" is an expression that discribes the properties of 2inch analog tape.
Stereo expansion is another method, however not usually advisable. By stretching out the stereo image you risk putting it out of phase. That translates into a very funky and unsolidified mix.
You can achieve width by simply panning, and/or in combination with delay or something along the lines of a stereo delay.
Depth is probably the second hardest to achieve next to height. Traditionally, you achieve this through intricate use of delay, reverb and EQ (not in a normal fashion). These are the tools that start you off to replicating the real source in it's real space.
Also, how you mic your source and how much air you put between the source and the mic makes a difference.
3) There is a big difference in what we call "powerpot panning" and virtual panning.
As I once stated before,
Powerpot panning is the act of physically panning something left or right
Virtual Panning is the act of panning something with an effect to create the illusion of a certain location.
Thats why you can't do brunt mixwork with headphones. Not because some asshole said so, but because our ears and brains behave differently with headphones.
4) If you're going to mix truly in depth, then you cannot hope to do so effectively until you understand how the human brain
and ears perceive sound.
So the huge difference between pro mixing and undefined mixing is the expert use of the
binaural effect. This will mean you'll have to understand 3 major things: The Haas Effect, the masking effect and the physics behind reverberation and how the ear perceives sound based on reflections. It's more complex than just a "source and then reverb" relationship.
So consequently, simply panning shit left and right and dabbing some reverb on it isn't enough. Not with a 500 dollar system and not with a multimillion dollar SSL equipped studio. These concepts are still true anywhere because of these basic principles.
It's like shading in your 2D drawing. It might look 3d, but it's still 2D.
It's the difference between drawing two identical objects on paper and drawing to identical objects, but then being able to cut them out and manipulate them.
So I won't go in detail, but I will leave you with these questions:
-What about delay, delay settings, aux panning to that delay and the amount of level set to that delay?
-What about good quality reverb, reverb settings, aux panning to that reverb and the amount of level set to that reverb?
-What relationship does reverb and delay have with each other?
-Do you think if you recorded something thats not too far off EQ wise, that you *have* to attack it with EQ first? Or is there another and more effective method to try before EQing? *hint*
-How about phase relationships?
-Is Lee
Rosario full of shit? (damn right he is)
. But is he right? (I'll leave that up to you)
If you already know this, ignore it. It's review at best.
Good day Gentlemen
.