Out of Speaker trick

  • Thread starter Thread starter starbuck26
  • Start date Start date
starbuck26

starbuck26

New member
So I've been reading a textbook on mixing, and it's sort of opening up a lot of trains of thought that are all driven by midget coke addicts. I had an idea yesterday, but perhaps it's bananas.

The out of speaker trick... you know... You record a mono source... say my guitar... you copy the track, pan one hard left and one hard right, and then invert the phase of one of the signals. Creates a really cool sound similar to the Haas effect.

So I wonder why we have all these cool tricks when recording, and then when I play live I plug my guitar into my amp and play with no effects and just try to melt face without any gimmicks.

Here's my idea:

Put two sm57s in front of my Hot Rod Deville, two identical mic preamps with one phase inverted, and send both to the sound guy, put one through the left and one through the right of the house sound system...

Of course.... it just occurred to me that my guitar will be absent from the monitor... after the mix gets folded to mono. But I guess I can turn my amp up to like... 12...

sigh.
 
you are taking into consideration that the foh is always going to be stereo...... not always the case. and you are also taking into consideration that anyone in the audience is going to give a shit and is it really worth the sordid outcome. 99% of the general listening public probably wouldn't even notice anything cool about it at all they would just wonder why it was so loud or why the drummer stopped cuz he dropped a stick and thats about it. But don't let me rain on your parade. I just think it would not give you the same result as you are looking for
 
petermiller said:
you are taking into consideration that the foh is always going to be stereo...... not always the case. and you are also taking into consideration that anyone in the audience is going to give a shit and is it really worth the sordid outcome. 99% of the general listening public probably wouldn't even notice anything cool about it at all they would just wonder why it was so loud or why the drummer stopped cuz he dropped a stick and thats about it. But don't let me rain on your parade. I just think it would not give you the same result as you are looking for
Click to expand...

But wouldn't we feel really smart?
 
I think you are making one important mistake, I just don't know whether it's in termonology or understanding. You would want to put a delay between the two channels, not a phase inversion. If you pan your two leads hard L and R and phase invert one of them, the same thing will happen as in your wedge; they'll just cancel.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I think you are making one important mistake, I just don't know whether it's in termonology or understanding. You would want to put a delay between the two channels, not a phase inversion. If you pan your two leads hard L and R and phase invert one of them, the same thing will happen as in your wedge; they'll just cancel.

G.
Click to expand...

I got this Out of Speakers trick from a book called "Mixing Audio" by Roey Izhaki. What you are talking about there is the Haas effect, no?

I've tried it a few times recorded and like the effect. So long as you're listening in Stereo there's no cancellation if panned to extremes. But when you fold the mix to mono it disappears.

He says... "With the Haas trick we delay the ghost copy. With the out-of-speakers trick we keep it time-aligned to the original signal, but we invert its phase. This means that the sound arriving to one ear is phase-inverted with the sound arriving to the other. In nature, this happens (for specific frequencies only) when the sound source is located to one side of te head. The two phase-inverted signals emitted from each speaker first travel to the near-ear, but shortly after both will arrive at the far ear. The outcome of this is sound that seems to arrive from both sides of the head at the same time. Since different frequencies are localized slightly more forward or backward, the final effect is more of sound coming from around you, rather than simply from your left and right.

"The out-of-speakers trick can make some people overwhelmingly excited when heard for the first time--not only that sound seems to arrive from outside-the-speakers, it also seems to surround you in a hallucinative fashion. To add to the excitement, an instrument on which the out-of-speakers trick is applied will disappear completely when the mix is folded to mono (provided they are at exactly the same level, like they mostly do with this trick. While there is no problem setting exactly the same levels on a digital systel, analog heads will have to put slightly more effort here... usually when listening in mono.

The trick, however, only has its full effect when the listener's head is on the central plan between the two speakers.Also, our ears only localize sounds coming from the sides based on low-frequency content. The wavelength of high frequencies is too short compared to the distance between our ears. High frequencies can easily change their phase a few times while traveling the istance between our ears. (below 1khz)

And then he goes on to say that you never do this when cutting to vinyl.


Whatchoo think mang?

t
 
"Hallucinative" is the key word here. Doing this with a main rhythm instrument will take away any punch or impact it had. The people sitting in line with either the right or left speaker stack will not hear the effect, only the people in the center. And after about 20 minutes of it, the people in the middle will get a headache.

You can solve the problem with the monitors by only sending one mic to the monitors, not both.

This is a crappy sounding effect on a CD, it would be even worse live.

God help you if a CD with this effect gets played on the radio, TV, or anyplace else that may or may not be stereo.


BTW. Club PA systems aren't always run in stereo.
 
starbuck26 said:
What you are talking about there is the Haas effect, no?
Click to expand...
Well, there's all sorts of different imaging tracks that can be done with phase and delay (look up Carver Sonic Holography). Most of them fall to the problem that Farview mentions, and that is that they only work well in headphones or if situated right in the middle of your stereo speaker positions.

The Haas effect, known more generically as the "presedence effect", simply referrs to the natural phychoacoustic effect that when two sounds of fairly similar frequency and energy occur somehwere around 5-10ms apart (if I remember the numbers correctly), that the brain tends to "believe" that the first sound is the closer one. But there are lots of other manipulations outside of that that are possible as well.

Also, consider this: a mono signal coming out of a binaural source such as two speakers, is nothing more than the identical signal split and hard-panned left and right. Send your guitar that way and all you have is a mono signal. Invert one side, and they cancel. Try it in headphones or earbuds.

What he's talking about - if I understand you correctly - is simply playing upon the delay caused by the distance between the ears, and counts upon not only being in the middle of the speakers, but also facing them. Go play that effect from the driver's seat of your four-speaker stereo system in your car and I'll be you won't find it anywhere near as pleasing...or at least not the same.

As a more subjective aside: You may like the "k3wl" effect, and that's fine, you have every right to. More power to ya. And all effects have their use and place. But after a while you may find that such special effects wind up like playing "schoolgirl and the principal" with your girlfriend. The first couple of times it's exciting and fun, but after a while the role playing gets kinda silly and extraneous. Either you guys got chemestry or ya don't, and all the plaid and ponytails in the world isn't going to make up for it if ya don't, and won't be necessary if you do.

G.
 
i'm really intrested in what this effect sounds like can you post a sample of you playing with it on?
 
gdavi1 said:
i'm really intrested in what this effect sounds like can you post a sample of you playing with it on?
Click to expand...

I'm out of town right now... but yes, I'll post one likely tomorrow night.
 
Creamyapples1 said:
....or not.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I got all excited after Glen's post with that bit about playing principal and schoolgirl with my girlfriend, and i forgot to post the eventual, unsuccessful, application of the out of speakers trick.

Now. This is an imperfect sample because there is a slight difference between the two channels. Don't even bother listening to it on your computer speakers... needs to be in stereo. but go ahead and listen to it in mono and watch it disappear *nearly*. When i first loaded the tracks into cubase it disappeared completely, but now its all fucked up but its one am and i can't be bothered. you'll get the picture. run it through a ghetto blaster and it doesn't sound like the guitar is even coming out of the speakers.

It's unsuccessful because it's impossible to tell what someone will listen to the song on... most people just pop your myspace onto their laptop, which will surely annihilate it. so for IMPORTANT instruments this little trick... quite unlike playing principal with your girlfriend.... is... useless.

But... there is one place where I thought it would have a use... I'm going to try it on another song where during a particulaly crazy guitar solo i want like wall of sound guitars coming at you from every angle panning back and forth sweeping in and out. But I thought it might be cool to have all the small lines disappear when played in mono and you can hear just a down home, dirty nasty guitar solo without all the modern bojangles.

without further ado...

http://www.reverbnation.com/redquiet

it's the one called.......... out of speakers. duh.

you can also listen to a recording we did of stand back by stevie nicks as a goof one summer afternoon.

for the record Lindsey Buckingham is a sicko. :cool:
 
Maybe not as tiring as I thought......

The out of speaker trick as described earlier.

G.
 

Attachments

  • out_of_speaker_effect.webp
    out_of_speaker_effect.webp
    11.1 KB · Views: 145
There's another aspect to consider weighing in the pluses and minuses here.
Even if FOH is stereo, and one of the same reasons 'stereo' is problematic for a lot of live applications, is twofold; Most people in a audience don't 'hear' both sides of the PA. 'Hear in quotes because even if you're getting sound from both sides, because of the distances Hass' has already stepped into the equation-
So, in any of these applications with any few feet offset distance -or delay (1 or 2 ms is all it takes) a) precedence effect is already in there, and b) even with a mono signal, you already have the faux stereo/delay effect going.

Around and around you go now. :D
 
Anyone know of a way to make a signal appear in Mono but disappear in stereo?

I thought that it might be fun to have two completely different guitar parts in the same song... and depending on what you listened with it would change.

I explained my idea to the bass player in my band, who said it's likely impossible before he got a nosebleed.

Which made me think of David Bowie in the Prestige... "What you are asking for is not impossible... it is merely expensive."
 
starbuck26 said:
Anyone know of a way to make a signal appear in Mono but disappear in stereo?
Click to expand...
Off the top of my head, you would need to have one guitar part 180 degrees out of phase between both speakers. The other guitar part in mono turned down in the mix so you don't notice it in stereo. When listened to in mono, the 'stereo' guitar would disappear and the mono one would be left. When listened to in stereo, the mono guitar would be masked by the other stuff in the mix.
 
I guess it would be possible, but someone earlier made the point that probably 99% of people wouldn't notice. It definitely wouldn't work live... the environment just isn't controlled enough. Depending on who your sound guy is live, it probably is best to not make it too complicated. I'm a big believer in making the guitar sound good coming out of the speakers... and just get a good mic in front of it positioned properly. Even then a horrible sound guy can screw it up for you, or even the venue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top