My Ultimate problem...Dead Center and squeezed?

[bozmillar]

The problem does not seem to be in the audio file itself; give his sample a listen and test, it seems just fine to me in regards to the described problem.

G.

Oh sorry, I didn't see that he posted a link.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Oh sorry, I didn't see that he posted a link.

Check it out, boz. I gave it a listen in phones and monitors, in SoundForge as well as a consumer player (Winamp), and nothing sounds out of the ordinary stereo spread-wise or frequency balance-wise to me. But maybe you can spot something I missed. I also ran a phase analysis on it and that looks pretty normal, so I don't think it's a phasing issue.

All that said, though, I don't claim to know why Sonar would or should be causing such a symptom. The only thing that would even come close that I could think of would be the panning laws, but that doesn't seem to quite fit the description either.

G.

 

[bozmillar]

Check it out, boz. I gave it a listen in phones and monitors, in SoundForge as well as a consumer player (Winamp), and nothing sounds out of the ordinary stereo spread-wise or frequency balance-wise to me. But maybe you can spot something I missed. I also ran a phase analysis on it and that looks pretty normal, so I don't think it's a phasing issue.

All that said, though, I don't claim to know why Sonar would or should be causing such a symptom. The only thing that would even come close that I could think of would be the panning laws, but that doesn't seem to quite fit the description either.

G.

yeah, i listened, and it sounds as wide as can be to me. One thing I would try is just take a mono track and pan it around to see where it goes. Do the meters show that it is all the way left/right? Does it sound all the way left/right by itself? It could be possible that you have a routing issue where you are sending it out 2 busses on not realizing it. I've never used the firepod, so I don't know if it has a matrix mixer or anything, but I've run into similar problems with a fireface and it was because I had some wrong settings in the matrix mixer. Ended up being a pretty embarrassing screw up that caused a lot of people a lot of headaches.

 

[miroslav]

I have people complain about that once in a while. I'm not sure why that happens because every time I click on them they work. Try this: http://www.bozrecords.com/mp3s/demos.php

It's ugly, but should work.

Nope....same error.

I've tried them from home and work...same errors.

I see that your ISP is GoDaddy.
You may want to have them check their DNS servers...maybe your records are messed up.
There shouldn't be errors like that...it's like your domain doesn't exist.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

yeah, i listened, and it sounds as wide as can be to me

Wow, I don't get that. The centered stuff - the drums and bass - would probably be showing something on the phase correlation meter if their image was being spread, but I'm getting a rock solid line right down the middle.

Yeah the guitars are hard panned to each side, in that sense the *mix* is wide, but as far as the focus of the individual tracks, when I pan the playback L/R balance. I get zero of the left guitar in the right channel, and vice versa, meaning that my playback has them rock solid hard-panned and un-spread.


P.S. Both your downloads and streaming page work fine for me using bothFireFox 3.0.5 and IE 6.0.28.

G.

 

[bozmillar]

Wow, I don't get that. The centered stuff - the drums and bass - would probably be showing something on the phase correlation meter if their image was being spread, but I'm getting a rock solid line right down the middle.

Yeah the guitars are hard panned to each side, in that sense the *mix* is wide, but as far as the focus of the individual tracks, when I pan the playback L/R balance. I get zero of the left guitar in the right channel, and vice versa, meaning that my playback has them rock solid hard-panned and un-spread.

G.

sorry, I think my wording was bad. I meant that the individual tracks didn't sound spread and that each guitar was about as far out to the side as it could have been, more like the second picture in the original post.

I can't think of any reason why the export from sonar would sound different that the playback unless you accidentally mixing downstream in the monitoring chain without realizing it.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

sorry, I think my wording was bad. I meant that the individual tracks didn't sound spread and that each guitar was about as far out to the side as it could have been, more like the second picture in the original post.

*Whew*, OK. I thought for a minute that I was going even crazier than normal Yeah, it sounds like we're hearing the same thing after all.

BTW, I added an edit to my last post, just letting you know that your pages work fine for me in two different browsers.

G.

 

[jerberson12]

Hi guys,

Sorry, I was busy and have not replied immediately.

Hi Glen,
Recently I just learned something, a trick in mixing, ofcourse, so that your mix sounds good. By experiencing that, I also learned, that trick fixes my problem here. I cant believe it, I got it right.
Especially, rythm distortion that are hard panned left and right, I applied that trick to those LR distortion, and if you can do it right, whatevers on the center will sound more centered and squeezed even you didnt squeezed or EQ it.
I know you already probably know that trick. Just wet those distortion with short reverbs to smoothen it out, panned hard R and L, EQ a little bit, again whatevers on the center especially kick and snare, leave it as is maybe EQ a little with no compression. With those LR distortion on, those drums will get squeezed by those guitar and will sound more centered
In short, its me that had the problem, not the faulty software. I still lack the skills in making music sound good.
BTW, also the panning law helps a little bit. I switch to -3db center.

Now I learned that trick, I did a short mix and it sounded like this

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=21832

Thnx!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I know you already probably know that trick. Just wet those distortion with short reverbs to smoothen it out, panned hard R and L, EQ a little bit, again whatevers on the center especially kick and snare, leave it as is maybe EQ a little with no compression. With those LR distortion on, those drums will get squeezed by those guitar and will sound more centered

All you're really doing there is making the guitar sound thicker and more dense. Yeah it can draw the listener's attention away from the center by thickening up the sound of the sides, but you gotta be careful not to over-do that. I could probably make a cottage industry out of the number of newbs that have contacted me with a mix they couldn't "get right" and the problem was that they simply had so much going on with hard-panned guitars that everything else in-between them receeded into the background no matter how hot they boosted it.

In short, its me that had the problem, not the faulty software. I still lack the skills in making music sound good.

And that's because you're still working on getting the ears. I don't mean that in a mean fashion, j, just as constructive analysis. The underdeveloped critical skills led to an inaccurate description of the symptoms, which frankly led us on a bit of a wild goose chase looking for the solution.

That's OK. It'll come . A tip in the meantime: Try other panning schemes once in a while. Hard-panning the guitars is not the only play in the playbook.

G.