Two Track Mixing

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Alexbt

Alexbt

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Hello all,

I've got an interesting project, Mixing some live recordings of my band for a possible future low-budget Live release.

I have two channels to work with.
Channel One is recorded direct from the sound board
Channel Two is a room recording.

The recordings sound suprisingly good, all things aside.
The problem is, I can't seem to figure out a good way to mix the tracks so they don't sound like dead Mono, (which they do when i have them panned dead center, of course).

What I hope to do is make use of the room recording for ambience and warmth and all that good stuff, because the sound board recording, while has the clear vocals that the room recording doesn't, and the room recording has the ambience and proper lead guitar levels that the sound board doesn't.

I also don't want the recording to have the Ch. 1 L and Ch. 2 right in the stereo image.


Ideas, tips, suggestions?
 
Well, I think the only way to do this would be to mix in the room sound with the soundboard and mix them both into a stereo mixdown (aka, the two tracks panned left and right). Sine you only have two tracks, and stereo is two tracks, your not gonna be able to do two stereo mixes together.

It'll be pretty tough, but if your mixer can handle it, do the soundboard mix, then mix in two room mics on the soundboard as well, left and right, all into the two tracks. Just take your time and do a lot of test runs to determine levels and how the dynamics need to be played.

Good luck.
 
4-Man Takedown said:
Well, I think the only way to do this would be to mix in the room sound with the soundboard and mix them both into a stereo mixdown (aka, the two tracks panned left and right). Sine you only have two tracks, and stereo is two tracks, your not gonna be able to do two stereo mixes together.
Click to expand...

Two mixes? I don't understand... I mean, I have tried are having SB hard left, and Room hard right, but it just sounds weird.

It'll be pretty tough, but if your mixer can handle it, do the soundboard mix, then mix in two room mics on the soundboard as well, left and right, all into the two tracks. Just take your time and do a lot of test runs to determine levels and how the dynamics need to be played.
Good luck.
Click to expand...

What do you mean, 'do' the mix?
The mix is done--one channel (actually two, but there is no difference between the two except that the second drops out in certain songs--a fault of the live engineer)

My goal is almost to make the SB centered and then have the room mic made into some kind of stereo image for ambience...

Pretty pathetic and stupid request, but anyone know of any Mac VST plugins or tips that can help? I am using Deck 3 for Mac--it doesn't come with much.
 
I didn't word that last post to well at all.

Basically, you can't really do this how your describing with what you have. The best way to do a stereo live mix is to set up a bunch of mics into your mixer then pan and mix levels of certain tracks to taste and start recording. Then, see what sounds bad and try to fix it.

It's pretty much gonna be counter productive to attempt to do what you are trying...IMO... but someone else may have better advice.
 
Well, I've been creative, with some recent success!

Here's what I've done:

Sound Board dead center
Room hard right, a few milliseconds ahead
Room hard left, a few milliseconds behind

The simulates a pretty pleasing stereo ambience. I'm also going to try and add some stereo reverb to the room mix, and also take another room mix EQed different to bring up in the mix when the lead guitar solos (since it didn't get picked up well in the SB mix.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd like to heard them!
 
:D Yo Alexander the Mixer:

You "might" try this. Record your tracks into a DAW, like a 2816, Korg 16 or whatever. This would put your two tracks onto ONE [or more if you want to try] track .

Now do a stereo track of your tracks which YOU need to make a CDR.

Fidget with the FX or dynamics if you want to while doing the stereo track.

Voila: Now you will have a stereo track and you can burn your CD.

Green Hornet :eek: :D :cool:
 
Well, that would help, if I had a DAW. :P

But I don't... have a computer with pretty good software... and I've pretty much done just that!

But yeah, if the room mic hadn't sucked, this would be much easier, but what I have now is much better than what I started with.
 
How about reproducing the live situation and re-recording in stereo?

Run the board mix and live tracks through a PA system, mix to taste. Setup a pair of stereo mics and there ya go.

Doing the delay tricks can work, just be careful about mono compatibility, or your mixes can have phasing issues.
 
Try mixing the two signals together while panning each signal about 5-8% in either direction. Not enough to sound like two different signals, but enough to give a little tiny bit of stereo image. That's about the best you're going to get without drastically changing the sound of the recording.

Also, maybe try adding a very tiny bit of reverb to the final mixed recording. Say, 5% of a reverb type that sounds natual for the room.
 
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