Panning and phase

[peopleperson]

Just curious on this one.

A lot of times, I can't resist the temptation to hard pan certain things in my mixes. The only problem though is that I've noticed that when I do that, and flip the mix in mono, the mix falls apart (especially with tracks that are doubled, not by DAW, but two actual performances). It seems that when I pull things in towards the center, the phase oddities clear up, and the stereo mix winds up sounding a lot better to me. My waves analyzer says so, and so do my ears. When I do this though, even with what I originally thought to be a pretty extreme exodus towards the center of the mix, in stereo the mix will still retain all the seperation that's needed.

Can any of you verify this? I've grown into the tendicy to mix a lot in mono, and it's helped immensely. Just want to know that I'm still on the right track.

 

[timboZ]

I mix in mono first then pan last......But my mixes still suck

 

[LRosario]

I personally don't mix in mono at any point. Maybe only for the same reason you'd listen to your mix with headphones: just for reference from time to time.

What you're experiencing has to do with perceived location of two sources. Naturally, our ears listen to the sources and sum them up into a sort of mono image. Of course we listen in stereo. It just depends on how seperated the sources are and in what position they are in relation to your ears.

For example, if you sit directly in front of your TV, your ears perceive simply one sound source. The speakers are so close together, you can't really distinguish a great stereo image. That triangle between the center of your head and the speakers is either far too narrow or out of wack.

Thats why you setup your studio speakers a certain way (isoceles triangle anybody?), thats why you rig up concert speakers a certain way. Have you ever noticed a ghost speaker sort of magically shows up between speakers?

Likewise, that concept of perceived location can be used in mixing. Which is why the practice of spreading stereo pairs wide apart is probably unfavorable to the correlation in your mix.

You can monitor that with a correlation meter. You can either find that installed on the console or you can buy it as a seperate unit (plug in or hardware). Dorrough's 12-A is not a bad addition to your rig. Although technically it's not a correlation metter. It's a stereo loudness meter.

The technical definiton is defined as, "...the correlation meter provides information about mutual phase-frequency relations
between the signal of the left and right channel..."

Accurate metering means more precise relationships, monitoring of phase issues, which of course means a more natural and "centered mix". I was always advised never to apply stereo widing to a whole mix for that reason, it throws your entire mix out of wack.

Anyway, I'd hate to tell you, but some storage mediums just naturally have wider stereo imaging and bigness to them. When you hear people talk about the "2inch sound", they refer to the characteristics of analog tape. It naturally achieves a wide and wonderful sound. Besides, we can never hope to achieve the 2nd and 3rd harmonics of analog with digital. That's why analog has digital set back 10 years.

After a while you can sort of feel things that are out of phase. You end up sort of tilting your head sideways trying to listen to it. The same reason I can instantly tell if speakers are wired out of phase.

I visualize phasing issues in a mix as a streching of a stereo pair or like having roger rabbit in your hands. Both sources centered on zero being like a starting point (or like a roger rabbit smooshed up into a closed accordion position). Spreading the sources apart being like scretching out roger rabbit until he's either back to his normal size or you've scretched him out too far. You can tell you've scretched him out too far when the stereo pair sounds too thin, too wide or otherwise unatural and unappealing.



I'm sorry, but I have weird ways of relating things.