What's your technique for recording stereo sources?

Slouching Raymond

Slouching Raymond

Well-known member
Most keyboards have stereo left and right outputs.
For my stage piano, the lower notes come mainly out of the left channel, and the high notes mainly from the right channel.
When playing the piano, this gives a very realistic user experience, but that is from the perspective of the player.
An audience listening to a real grand piano performance, does not hear that same perspective, although the piano has a physical size in the room space, and
higher and lower notes would originate from different points in that space.
A simple recording method would be to record the piano's stereo outputs as a stereo track, but you would be projecting the player's prospective at the
listener, with low notes from the left, and high notes from the right.
An alternative method would be to record the piano as a mono track, where the keyboard itself just averages the left and right outputs.
With a mono recording, you lose any stereo effects, such as auto-panning.
I can think of an alternative technique of recording the two keyboard outputs as separate mono tracks. This allows you to place each source at any point in the
listener's stereo space, with maybe the lower notes coming from the right. The two sources could be close together, somewhere in the stereo space.
What do you do?
 
It depends on the pianos job in the mix. If it is the only instrument, I tend to leave it wide.
If it is being used for its percussiveness, I will mono it and place it where it needs to go in the mix. Also, if it is a dense mix, I will mono it.

The perspective (player vs audience) doesn't matter to the listener. The instrument just needs to fit the context of the overall mix.

When micing a piano in theater, I would mic it in stereo, but run it through the PA essentially in mono. The stereo mic technique had more to do with capturing the whole instrument with close mics to avoid feedback.
 
The 'player's perspective' you reference is only if the player's back is to the audience! I record to 2 separate mono tracks, and if the piano is the sole or main instrument, pan each about 20-25% left and right. If its one of many supporting instruments, I will pan to one side or the other (but never a hard pan), but keep 5-10% between the two tracks.
 
mjbphotos said:
The 'player's perspective' you reference is only if the player's back is to the audience! I record to 2 separate mono tracks, and if the piano is the sole or main instrument, pan each about 20-25% left and right. If its one of many supporting instruments, I will pan to one side or the other (but never a hard pan), but keep 5-10% between the two tracks.
Click to expand...
I was about to say.
From the audience's perspective, the piano is much more likely to function as a single point sound source and be shaped by the room.

I guess with grand pianos, the shape of the lid probably affects the panning of someone standing close to the instrument's side, but the audience is gonna be far enough away for that to not matter.

Regardless, Fairview is right that the perspective of audience vs performer doesn't really matter so long as the mix holds together consistently. I think the only instrument that audiences are likely to notice how you panned it vs how they would hear it it is a drum kit, but even that is just because that specific instrument has been debated and retried both ways a lot over the years.
 
In an orchestral setting the piano is side on to the audience and about central on stage, thus the audience get a more or less 'mono' impression.

Jus' sayin'?

Dave.
 
Yep - and also beware that so many stereo pianos and keyboards also have onboard reverb generation, so a mbit of left hand and right hand bias, plus reverb means the mono output is often thin and weedy. I'd simply record the two channels and then adjust to taste in the mix/inside the DAW. Audience or players perspective is a twist of the pan knobs. Virtually all piano synthesis and sampling has the player/audience choice to be made a some point - but recording a summed output is always a bad idea because is rareloy improves the audio and usually messes it up with odd phasing and unusual sounds. If you have two outputs you always are recording two mono outputs, in this example, this is the same as 'stereo', so the comments about tweaking are the way to go.
 
I tend to mix from audience perspective. On drums that means high hats to the right and floor tom to the left etc. For a piano I most likely would pan it as if the player is facing the audience, but narrowed down quite a bit and off to whatever side of stage I'm picturing the piano. One reason I do audience perspective is that I also do a lot of video, and it looks odd to see something on the right but hear it on the left.
 
I usually record in stereo though all of my keyboards will send mono out through the left jack if there is nothing plugged into the right. The piano perspective has come up in forums before. It turns out that in pop music if it is panned at all it's almost always the pianist perspective and it is hard to find the opposite. As opposed to drums where perspective is probably a lot more evenly distributed as far as toms .

I rarely pan them hard LR though. Usually pretty narrow and if it's in the same range as another part panned mostly opposite that part.
 
From the perspective of the audience stereo instruments seems weird to me because even big instruments like a piano will sound mono in real life when heard from a distance. This is just a philosophical comment though.
 
That's the trouble, instruments either have width, or they don't. So a trumpet is a point source. A saxophone is not. Pianos absolutely not - but then you are on the right lines when you mention distance, but the actual recording distance is not usually far enough for the angles to be that narrow. Recording a piano in a church isn't likely to be a long distance between mics and instrument because the acoustics would be a real mess, so a typical coincident pair do hear some width - just enough to be noticed. If you sit in the audience in the front few rows your ears do hear a 'big' instrument. Brain and ears really hear it. Recording it is much harder. Synthesised stereo is just an effect really. Like those horrible clavinovas, that just never sound real with two small left and right speakers.
 
A lot of interesting opinions posted.
I thought I'd try some ear testing of my MP11 piano played through a mixer, and studio monitors.
Normally I play it as stereo, with central balance, and it sounds great.
I tried playing it into two mono mixer channels, with various pan combinations, and it sounded all flat and un-natural.
Back to stereo, and it sounded nice again, and adjusting the balance knob moved it around some, but it stayed good.
All of that was with the piano's stereo width setting at 127 (max).
I tried different stereo width settings, all the way down to 10, which made it close, but still remained nice sounding, and the balance knob moved that nice sound around.
I thought that dual mono might have been best, but now I think I prefer the stereo option better.
 
There shouldn't be any difference between dual mono panned hard and stereo panned center.

There are different ways a stereo signal left-right balance can be handled. One is to simply turn down one side. Another is to add one side to the other, i.e. when panning right you're turning the left down on the left but turning it up on the right. You might want to find out which yours is set to. In my DAW, Vegas Pro, the pan function is selectable via a right-click.
 
WTGR to everyone here but, there is one big difference between 'panned mono sources to make "stereo"' and a a stereo recording in a real room.
The latter contains information about the room's acoustics, information that can be extracted if you wish. Google "Hafler".

Dave.
 
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