stereo vs mono.

[eraos]

this isn't meant to be a stupid question:

why is doubling a track, panning one, say, 75% right and one 75% left, different than just plain mono?

i admittedly don't know much, besides the basics, about stereo and mono, but to me it doesn't completely make sense that separating a track through panning makes the sound wider.

if you had a mono track, it would come out both speakers. if you had a track doubled and panned, it would still come out both speakers.

what is the separating factor between the stereo speakers if they're both playing the same sound, same audio?

can someone give me a nice, beefy explanation?

 

[Track Rat]

Well, if you have a mono track, copy it and past it, pan the two left and right, you still just have mono, just 3 dB louder as the two tracks essentially double in loudness. No stereo, just louder mono. Where you get into "stereo" is some time delay. If you delay one of these tracks by some amount of time and pan them out, you start getting a sense of left and right. Even though both tracks could be the same volume level, the earlier track would give you its the impression of where it's coming from (early track panned left, delayed track panned right, you would hear the track as panned left with the delayed track giving you the feeling of "space"). Double tracking (playing the exact same thing twice) can give you the impression of width since even though you may double very closly, it'll never be a perfect copy. These little "imperfections" are what makes the tracks distinguishable from each other. Panning that out left and right can make things feel wide and thicker.

 

[eraos]

ah, okay.

one more question. why 3db louder? why does doubling equal that specific decibel increase?

 

[Farview]

When people talk about double tracking, they mean that it was performed twice, then panned

 

[punkin]

Disclaimer---IN A NUT SHELL, AVOIDING TECHNICAL DEPTH---End Disclaimer​

Power doubles for every 3 dB increase...it's a crazy scale used for dealing with changes or ratios in power measurement in a mind bending non-linear fashion. You'll need to hit the electronics/mathematics 101 books if you really want to get deep into it.

In a nutshell...100 watts increased by 100 watts = 200 watts or 3 dB increase, 2 watts add 6 watts = 8 watts or 6 dB increase. Bump the total up to 16 watts you've had a 9 dB change.

BTW...dB is different than dBm. dB is a scale of change or ratios where dBm is an actual measured value.

 

[eraos]

Disclaimer---IN A NUT SHELL, AVOIDING TECHNICAL DEPTH---End Disclaimer​

Power doubles for every 3 dB increase...it's a crazy scale used for dealing with changes or ratios in power measurement in a mind bending non-linear fashion. You'll need to hit the electronics/mathematics 101 books if you really want to get deep into it.

In a nutshell...100 watts increased by 100 watts = 200 watts or 3 dB increase, 2 watts add 6 watts = 8 watts or 6 dB increase. Bump the total up to 16 watts you've had a 12 dB change.

BTW...dB is different than dBm. dB is a scale of change or ratios where dBm is an actual measured value.

sounds like i am going to need to read up on this.

about the ratio thing: it's based on the initial wattage? you said "2 watts add 6 watts = 6 dB increase" that makes sense because you double 2 twice...or just cube it. so it's all exponential?

but you said if you did it one more time, from 8 watts to 16 watts (2 raised to the 4th), that that would be a 12 dB increase. why not just 9 dB? since 6 + 3 = 9. (the three being the 3 dB increase for every doubling in power.)

thanks

 

[punkin]

oops...my bad...thinking and type at the same time not my strong suit. Good catch btw.

back to the first line in my response...power doubled for every 3 dB...you've got the hang of it.

When you get into it a little deeper there are current, voltage and impedance implications that get even more interesting but for the purposes of these posts,...watts, dB, dBm and believe it or not VU seem to be most relevant.

I've edited the post.

 

[eraos]

oops...my bad...thinking and type at the same time not my strong suit. Good catch btw.

back to the first line in my response...power doubled for every 3 dB...you've got the hang of it.

When you get into it a little deeper there are current, voltage and impedance implications that get even more interesting but for the purposes of these posts,...watts, dB, dBm and believe it or not VU seem to be most relevant.

I've edited the post.

phew, at least all the math classes i'm in and have taken have paid off somewhere.

i don't know what VU is though, though i've seen it mentioned a lot (VU meters and all)...

should i ask that now? or save that for another thread?

 

[punkin]

If you've got VU meters and intend to use them...you should do some reading up. Again they're just scales of measure.

dBm references 1 milliwatt in a 600 termination, VU aka Volume Unit kind of an old broadcast radio left over but still hangs on. It was used to measure modulation percentage. 100 VU was 100% allowable modulation. You'll have to dig for this one.


Checkout these links;

http://www.tonmeister.ca/main/textbook/electronics/03.html

http://yarchive.net/phone/decibels.html


Good luck.

 

[punkin]

Here's a link that goes into further detail about VU...see the bottom of the article.

http://arts.ucsc.edu/EMS/Music/tech_background/TE-06/teces_06.html

 

[eraos]

thanks a bunch

 

[eraos]

i'm sure i'll have some more questions after i've finished reading.

give me a day or two.

 

[six]

hey, I thought lower the volume by 6db will give you a volume of 50%... at least that's what I figured out reading the meters in wavelab.

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.... I'm confused

 

[mattamatta]

Excellent... My plan is working!