Making pads sound transparent

[StringBean]

Side-chain the pad to the kick/bass. If you get the settings (particularly release) right, it will pump with the tempo of the song, creating a breathing pulse and allowing those low mids of the pad to stay out of the way of the low end material. Also mix the pad a little lower in volume. Just needs to be present--unless you're aphex twin. Also, high pass stuff that doesn't need to be down there to clear space. 200-500hz is where the boys get separated from the men.

[verve92]

Not experienced enough to give mixing advice.
Effects also play a part in pads I have found. GOOD reverb and delay is a must.

[Halma]

Originally Posted by blizt

Ok, so I don't know really how to explain it. Do people here have any technique or eq setting to apply to pads that sits between the 200-500hz region?

I'm not 100% satisfied when I mix them because sometime they sound to thin or I make them sound to loud eating a lot of space in the track. Is there somehow a way to make the sound more transparent, so they are back in the mix but very present like they can breath.

A proper low- & high-cut on your pads could give you some space. Normally my pads do contain a lot of energy in the lower mids (200 - 800Hz)so I have cut those frequencies anyway. I often eq them using wider q settings like 1, 1.4 or 2.8.

Gentle distortion might work also to bring up some upper harmonics. You could also try to use some kind of FM filtering. This one sometimes gives them some "sparkle" and applying a lp after that will tame those higher frequencies. And I apply some compression if there are too many dynamics.

[MoteOfVoid]

Originally Posted by MoteOfVoid

Sometimes I'm not happy with sidechaining a compressor on pads to get
them out of the way. Then I might try this method :

Send the pads to another channel with a gate on it and activate the sidechain.
Invert the phase of that channel.
Send the stuff that needs space to the sidechain input of the gate.
Bring up the fader and adjust the gate to taste.
...put an linear phase eq in front of the gate, adjust to taste and
ride the fader if you like...

I posted this in another thread an hour ago. I don't like that much to quote
myself but I thought I share it here as well...

[vespiz]

Tried the "Haas-effect"? I've found it spreads pads nicely into the background and makes them a little more indistinct, when I want it. Leaves room for other elements.

[Halma]

Originally Posted by vespiz

Tried the "Haas-effect"? I've found it spreads pads nicely into the background and makes them a little more indistinct, when I want it. Leaves room for other elements.

Great idea. Forgot about that. If the pad sounds way to dead center (mono pad perhaps) I usually try to hard pan it to one side and apply a delayed (and often processed) version to the other side. The delay time and volume of the signal will give you a lot of control placing your pad right into the mix.

But I´m a LCR fanboy anyway.

[dubmunkey]

Try the 500 to 1000hz range as that is often where low mid presence is

[artech909]

Im pro mixing engineer in the studio and i can tell you few good things:

1. mono pad = boring pad and also conflict with any (mono) center important stuff such as kick & bass so if it stereo use any good M/S plug-in and spread it more so less center more stereo AND less center stuff clash.

2. eq it like a pro so start with high pass cut 100/200Hz depending on notes don't cut too much if you need low mid in your pad next you need to deal with 500/600Hz zone try some narrow cuts there if you have another elements in your mix with the same frequency spot you will hear it more than your pad next high mid stuff around 2/5Khz classic zone for some cut here because almost every instrument & vocal meets here and for the last part gentle low pass around 12/15Khz can fix some conflicts with your hats.

3. side chain it by kick, main lead, vocal etc.

4. don't use too much reverb and if you still need it than high pass reverb sends around 100/200Hz AND you can side chain reverb send too.

[blizt]

Thanks for all the replies. Never heard of the haas effect, I will have to research on that subject.

Originally Posted by artech909

Im pro mixing engineer in the studio and i can tell you few good things:

2. eq it like a pro so start with high pass cut 100/200Hz depending on notes don't cut too much if you need low mid in your pad next you need to deal with 500/600Hz zone try some narrow cuts there if you have another elements in your mix with the same frequency spot you will hear it more than your pad next high mid stuff around 2/5Khz classic zone for some cut here because almost every instrument & vocal meets here and for the last part gentle low pass around 12/15Khz can fix some conflicts with your hats.

So even if I have no big amount of information on the 2000-5000khz and 12000-15000khz area it's a good thing to eq anyway? Almost all the pads I like to use go deep and are more like murmur/hum and dont hit very high in the spectrum.

[TYPHY]

Originally Posted by artech909

4. don't use too much reverb and if you still need it than high pass reverb sends around 100/200Hz AND you can side chain reverb send too.

How do you high pass a reverb send?
This sounds very useful.

[jrhager84]

Just high pass the aux that the send buses to.

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[audioconsult]

Originally Posted by StringBean

200-500hz is where the boys get separated from the men.

no.. 20-50hz is where the boys loose control..and men dont need sidechaining

[TYPHY]

Originally Posted by jrhager84

Just high pass the aux that the send buses to.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk

Oh, I thought he meant there is a way to hi-pass the individual send without having to do it to the reverb aux; which would affect all the sends. Nevermind..

[jrhager84]

Originally Posted by TYPHY

Oh, I thought he meant there is a way to hi-pass the individual send without having to do it to the reverb aux; which would affect all the sends. Nevermind..

Most verbs have built-in filters.

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[gremlin moon]

I just want chime in to differentiate between a drone and a pad, or a droney pad and an airy pad.

Also, in practice, pads are often layered so you can drop out the conflicting layer when needed. If you have a lot going on, constructing a pad in layers can be helpful -- sort of like dressing in layers if you are going to be outside and active.

[TYPHY]

Originally Posted by jrhager84

Most verbs have built-in filters.

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I know that.

I thought he meant that you can filter certain sends on its own for a specific track.

Nevermind.. I guess you can't.

[artech909]

Originally Posted by TYPHY

I thought he meant that you can filter certain sends on its own for a specific track.

Yes you can! You can insert eq and filter what you want inside any send channel after reverb or any other processor.

[CoolColJ]

start from the source

[x99]

Originally Posted by vespiz

Tried the "Haas-effect"? I've found it spreads pads nicely into the background and makes them a little more indistinct, when I want it. Leaves room for other elements.

Anyone care to elaborate more on this in terms of what you actually do.

[artech909]

Originally Posted by x99

Anyone care to elaborate more on this in terms of what you actually do.

Haas effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Originally Posted by x99

Anyone care to elaborate more on this in terms of what you actually do.

Panned delay without feedback maybe?

[Halma]

Originally Posted by x99

Anyone care to elaborate more on this in terms of what you actually do.

You need your audio signal two times. Hardpan the original to either left or right. Now go to the "copied signal" and hard pan it to the opposite site. Put a delay as an insert into the copied channel and set it to zero feedback and 100% wet. Now play around with the delay time. You can also eq, process or what ever you want to do else with it.

This one is worth a read: Principles of Multitrack Mixing: The Phantom Image

Cheers,
Sebastian

[jrhager84]

Haas pretty much always sounds terrible in mono, mind you...

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[Halma]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

l..and men dont need sidechaining...

Parallel to the "sidechain kick and compress the hell out of something else in the same frequency range" there are a lot of other useful applications you can do with sidechaing one signal to another device.

But I agree with you that a lot of people overuse this technique at it´s most basic level.

I think de-essing is some kind of sidechaining technique too if you do it manually, isn´t it?

[StringBean]

Originally Posted by audioconsult

no.. 20-50hz is where the boys loose control..and men dont need sidechaining

Oh word well I guess every electronic track made in the past decade is the tomfoolery of adolescents. Sorry for giving practical advice to the OP, the wisdom here is to focus on 20-50Hz to get your pad more transparent in the mix.

[x99]

Thx Sebastian.
I'm aware of the delay/pan thing already, though not in the context of named as Haas effect as such. Though ive not spent time on it, my understanding is delay sets direction of a sound ie left side or right side, but height can also be determined by the ear. My assumption without experiment has always been frequency has something to do with that. (I really need to get some monitors....)

Thx also for the link.

[JSt0rm]

Originally Posted by TYPHY

I know that.

I thought he meant that you can filter certain sends on its own for a specific track.

Nevermind.. I guess you can't.

It would be trivial to set this up in protools. Send to a aux and from that aux to the verb. You could put the eq on the aux and hipass to taste. Or you could hi pass eq before the verb on the verb aux.

[Halma]

Originally Posted by x99

Thx Sebastian.
I'm aware of the delay/pan thing already, though not in the context of named as Haas effect as such. Though ive not spent time on it, my understanding is delay sets direction of a sound ie left side or right side, but height can also be determined by the ear. My assumption without experiment has always been frequency has something to do with that. (I really need to get some monitors....)

Thx also for the link.

Yeah I need a pair of proper monitor speakers too.

Anyway, I think it´s not your ear that will tell you something about depth, height etc but your brain. So how can we fool our brain to work like that? I´ve read a lot books and papers about everything related to mixing and audio and I also have done a lot of experiments on this subject.

Here are a few things I´ve learned the last years (I´m not a pro enginner btw or a graduated physician so pls keep that in mind because I´m not sure if everything is correct - please correct me if I´m wrong):

- sound travels in waves and contains energy - reading about physics and the mechanics of travelling waves have taught me so many things that improved my mixing and sound design skills
- frequencies travel at different speed (some are faster, some not) - this could be used for depth (cutting the lows AND especially the highs to get the impression of a far away sound source, gain/level/delay/predelay are also important)
- for reverberation high frequencies tend to diffuse more than lower ones (in reality) - something I found out lately and that improved my reverb use a lot
- early reflections have most of their energy in the lower and sometimes upper mids so the lower sounds of a reverb will give your brain the proper room information - another thing I discovered lately. Apparently high frequencies contain less ER room information then I expected.

For example I think our brain can be fooled in one way to assume height in our mixes by using some sort of reverb that sounds like something where we would guess this sound like something big in reality. Eg a cathedral or hall. Those algorhitms are different from a plate for example. So if somethings sound like coming from out of a hall or church we also would assume the sound source sits somewhere where a lot of height is available. (I hope you understand what I mean ).

This are some thoughts about this topic. A very good one indeed.

Hope this helps a little bit.

Cheers,
Sebastian

[AcoosticZoo]

Choose an octave that doesn't fight with other instruments. Mix it softer. Roll off the highs and cut the mids.

Kind regards
Josef horhay
Mixing engineer
Www.acoosticzoo.com