zig zagging home stereo

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agentl

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Hi
I am one step away from going completely insane.

When I listen to my "final mix"(I have about 25 final mixes trying fix this problem) on my home stereo, the portions of the sound jump from left to right. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I actually get dizzy on some tunes.
This problem does not exist on my monitors or my car stereo. It seems obvious to me that my tunes do not work with my surround sound stereo. Obviously, professional recordings sound great(zig zag free) on the 5 channels.
Somebody help me please! I am starting to talk to myself and I think that a side effect of this problem is me coming down with a case of turrets.
 
How do you record and mix? What kind of equipement I mean? This may help someone to give you info in the right direction. And your home stereo. Some specs would be helpful.
 
I guess it would make sense to include the details. I am kinda new at these forums.
I use Sonar 9 on a PC to record the raw tracks. Here are the instruments/tools I use;
Guitar - Strat with POD 2.0. I record the guitar direct using the POD.
Piano/bass/synh/strings etc. - Roland XP-30
Drums - Pintech v drums
Vocals - I use T.C. Helicon voiceworks.

The Helicon unit provides the S/PDIF input to my soundcard (MIA Layla).
Everything but the vocals are usually recorded into my MIA sound card via unbalanced 1/4" jacks.

I mixdown using Sonar but I frequently use Adobe Audition on the final mix because it does an outstanding job on noise reduction and sibilance removal.

I thought that the problem may have been related to my vst plugins but I tried a completley dry mix and the problem was still present.
Those plugins are Izotope (used for compression, Parametric EQ, stereo widening) and BBE Maximizer (harmonics exciter).

Any tips?
 
This problem does not exist on my monitors or my car stereo. It seems obvious to me that my tunes do not work with my surround sound stereo.
Click to expand...

I thought that the problem may have been related to my vst plugins but I tried a completley dry mix and the problem was still present.
Click to expand...

Well I think we know that its not plugins or anything like that if it sounds OK in the car. Have you tried a boombox or a "normal" stereo? I would suggest doing that before you have more "tourettes" ( correct spelling) outbreaks :D

Somehow the commercial CD is telling the 5.1 box that it is "stereo" and yours is not. Again, isolate the problem by trying other systems. If you dont have any others take it to Circuit city and pretend you are trying out stereo systems. Try a "stereo" one and a 5.1 and you will find out what direction to go.
 
My first suspect would be your surround processor on your home system. I'm not sure what capabilities or settings you might have, but if you have it set to som setting meant to synthesize surround from a stereo signal or meant to "expand" the stereo image or anything like that, my bet woul dbe it's that fake processing that is performing some weird interpretations on your mix. hat happens if you just try playing back normal stereo?

What file format are you playing back on that system? Are they MP3? If so, try playing back pure WAV or CDA (your MP3 encoder might be jazzing up the surround.)

If none of that gives ou any leads, then the question for me would be what's going on in the mixes themselves. This would take a pretty in-depth analysis, but if you're trying to do something funky with your soundstage, mixing a lot of information to both channels, heavy use of reverbs or choruses, particular use of delay in line doubling, etc. you could be getting a whole bunch of wandering phase cancellations happening in surround.

G.
 
This is one of the most interesting dilemma's I've read on here in months! I am very interested to see how this one plays out.

What are you using to burn the CD? Is it redbook?
 
Thanks for all the help including the spelling error correction.

When I change my stereo to 2ch mode, it sounds fine.

SouthSide Glen wrote - "wandering phase cancellations". This term describes the problem perfectly. I could not figure out how to phrase it myself.

I never thought about trying different software to burn the CD. That is an interesting idea. I currently use Nero 6. I do not burn the cd as MP3. I always burn to cda format.I have never done any research on burning software. Any suggestions are appreciated.

One more detail that might help- I tried taking a mix and converting it to mono. I then converted it back to stereo. However, I did not even bother burning it to CD because the final stereo file sounded like crap compared to the original stereo file on my monitors and headphones.
Maybe someone knows of another way to do that without major quality degradation.

I will also try the circuit city test. My main fear is that I will distribute the cd only to find out that it has caused epileptic seizures on the two people who will actually listen to it (Mainly my Mom and Dad).
 
agentl said:
SouthSide Glen wrote - "wandering phase cancellations". This term describes the problem perfectly. I could not figure out how to phrase it myself.
Click to expand...
This is kind of what I suspected. I don't think different burning software will make a difference; as long as you're going to CDA and not to MP3 was all I was concerned about because Ithought there might have been something funky in your MP3 encoder, but even that was a longshot.

My money is on there's something conflicting going on in the soundstage mix that may not be as apparent in stereo but comes out in false surround. It could be the way you're mixing similar parts or using a delay on certain parts where there's no apparent problem in two channels, but when you add in the surround processing (which is really mostly just sophisticated delay), you're getting those parts to cancel out on you. Or it might not be so much your mix, but that you have excessive bleed between instruments somewhwere in the tracking, and the natural delay in that bleed is exascerbating the problem in surround mode.

Is the swirling happening only to particular instruments or to particular frequencies? Take note of just what it is that's swirling and see of you can track down a problem source track or tracks that might be a culprit based upon the above theory.

G.
 
Thanks for the help.

You triggered a revelation here.
I read a tip recently stating that one could achieve a better sounding rythm guitar by recording the same guitar part twice to two different tracks mono and then hard panning both tracks L+ R to create stereo. I tried this and I must say I was very pleased with the results. However, I was extremely pleased with the results on my monitors and headphones. Based on your last post, I am questioning this method now. Honestly though, to me, it sounded way better than 1 stereo track.
What are your thoughts?

I really need to take your advice on carefully listening to the frequencies/instruments that cause the crazinesss. It isn't easy though. Although the zig zag is apparent it will take concentration and tedious playing and rewinding, playing and rewinding, etc. to isolate the exact problem areas.
I was hoping that someone had a quick solution because I have been working on this cd for a full year. I am tired of it but I want to get it out the door. All of the parts were written and recorded four months ago. I have basically been working on the mixdown for those four months. By the time I am done, I will hate my own music.

Anyways Thanks again. You have been helpful.
 
agentl said:
I read a tip recently stating that one could achieve a better sounding rythm guitar by recording the same guitar part twice to two different tracks mono and then hard panning both tracks L+ R to create stereo. I tried this and I must say I was very pleased with the results. However, I was extremely pleased with the results on my monitors and headphones. Based on your last post, I am questioning this method now. Honestly though, to me, it sounded way better than 1 stereo track.
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...
That is a very common technique, especially among the metallic crowd, and there is noting intrinsically wrong with it. If you listen to a lot of metal, you have most likely heard that technique used more than once (sometimes even tripling or quadrupling the lines when they really go for the wall) and have probably played it on that surround system without problem. So I'd have to say that no, it's not the technique itself. Beyond that I could only speculate.

I was hoping that you might be able to say it was a particular instrument like the guitars or the drums that were going hallucinogenic on you because then you might be able to narrow it down to a particular track or combo of tracks in your mix. If that's not the case, then I could only sugget that you continue to try and isolate just which sounds it is happening to and try and work backwards into your mix from there. I'm not sure what else to say.

[EDIT: You might want to try making a test recording with just one git track on it or just one drum track, etc. and see if the absence of any of those get the swirling to stop or at least change character. That might help isolate where a culprit or culprits might be hiding.]
G.
 
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agentl said:
By the time I am done, I will hate my own music.
Click to expand...

I have been in your shoes and its not fun. If you live with your girlfriend or something she's probably starting to hate your music too. Are you getting this mix professionally mastered? If so, I would stop worrying about it and just send it off; let the ME know about the problem and let them fix it.
 
Getting mixes to sound good through a surround processor isn't easy. They use phase differences to seperate the tracks so any phase problems will definately cause weirdness. I can't say I've ever heard a mix bounce back and forth like that though.

Are you using any stereo compression? If you are and don't have it set to "stereo link" that can cause imaging problems that the decoder could be making worse.
 
This goes to say that all this surround stuff is shite IMHO.
Good for movies, but unuseable for music.
 
TexRoadkill said:
Getting mixes to sound good through a surround processor isn't easy. They use phase differences to seperate the tracks so any phase problems will definately cause weirdness. I can't say I've ever heard a mix bounce back and forth like that though.

Are you using any stereo compression? If you are and don't have it set to "stereo link" that can cause imaging problems that the decoder could be making worse.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I do in fact have stereo link selected on numerous tracks. I will keep you posted. Maybe this will help.
Thanks
 
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