Charles must be making a FORTUNE on these mixes!

[Charles Dye]

Yeah, I deserve it. Sorry man. But you were doing a great job posting answers. I really appreciate that.

And yes I began using stereo busing for effect sends in some of the mixes. They worked great! I'm going to try switching my whole effects template over to stereo sends next so I can see how it affects the entire sound.

Thanks again for the tips.

[Extreme Mixing]

Charles,

Glad you enjoyed using the stereo sends. It's one more tool that can help "lift and separate" the mix, without adding more devices.

Thank you for the Drum/Squish set up. I've used it in nearly every mix since I read about it here. It works great and takes up so little dsp compared to the result. Brilliant!

Steve

[GrooveJungle]

Stereo sends you say, The TDM plugins I have seem sound like they sum to mono just before the fx processing, therefore I have been using mono sends and stereo returns. I have not seen any documentation on this subject. Do you know an info source or which stereo plugins are true stereo for the fx processing aspect?

[Extreme Mixing]

Groove Jungle,

Try TC Chorus, TC MegaVerb, Waves Super Tap Delay, and Waves Mondo Mod. Many others will as well, you just have try them out.

When you set up your stereo aux return use a multichannel TDM plugin.

Select a stereo bus as the input source for the aux, like bus 1-2.

Send to the FX from a mono source and pan the source track hard left. Pan its Aux send hard right, so it is feeding only bus 2, and turn it up. If the FX returns only on the right side, or leaning heavily to the right in the case of a reverb, then the FX has a true stereo input. If the FX returns equally balanced L to R, then the plug-in is summing the input to mono before processing the effect.

Not all devices respond this way, but the ones that do can be very cool. It can be a useful and creative techinque for focusing the stereo image of your mix, since it gives you the power to have a very dry guitar panned hard left with its effect returning only on the right, or only on the left, or anyplace in between, just by panning the send. I like to be able to bend the rules of reality in my mixes, and not having all of my FX wind up in the center is a good tool to that end.

Check it out and let us know what FX you find that respond in this way.

Steve

[Charles Dye]

Thanks Steve.

[travista00]

steve, what's the difference between your idea on stereo sends and using a mono send that you pan on the return side... in other words, source panned hard left, sent to a mono return which is panned hard right. stereo spread, right?

[Extreme Mixing]

The difference is that I can use the same reverb to send the left electric guitar to the right reverb return as I use to send the right acoustic guitar to the left reverb return. That same reverb can also send from the vocal and return from the reverb in the center. All of those results are available from the same plug-in instantiation AT THE SAME TIME and controlled by where I place the pan control of the send.

In your example, once you pan that reverb return to the right. it's hard to send another instrument to it and have it come back on the left. It becomes a dedicated patch for that instrument, uses more DSP and requires a special set up. With my set-up, I can acomplish the same thing whenever the inclination strikes me, just by moving the pan control on the send.

For me, it's just a part of the tools that I use in every mix. Try it. I think you'll see what I mean.

And Shhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone about this...

Steve

[Stargazer]

How do you set up your mixer to be able to pan the sends from different channels to the same reverb individually?

[djui5]

Originally posted by Stargazer
How do you set up your mixer to be able to pan the sends from different channels to the same reverb individually?

What you can do is set aux 1 to the verbs left input and aux 2 to the verbs right input, then turn them up accordingly on each channel, returning the verbs outputs to the console and panning them accordingly.

turning up aux 1 and 2 to the same level on a channel would be like panning the send center. turning up aux 1 more than aux 2 would be like panning the send to the left a little...get my drift?

Just make sure you set the inputs on the verb to stereo and the outputs to stereo...making sure they don't cross during processing somewhere like some verbs with dual engines do.

[Stargazer]

Thanks!
Maybe that's the easiest way to do it...

[Shan]

Thanks for your stereo tips Steve. I have been using these also. I'm getting more depth in my mixes.

Shane

[Extreme Mixing]

No problem, Shan. I'm glad if I can be of some help.

Steve