Dealing With Stereo Tracks in LCR Mixing

[cjac9]

I've started experimenting with LCR mixing and I'm really digging it. Just did the best mix of my life with the technique. I'm in a pickle though with a track I'm trying to mix now.

The tracking engineer recorded drum overheads with a spaced pair and they're sounding too wide for the track but mono is too mono. How would you LCR vets deal with this? Here are the couple solutions I've thought of:

1.) Use M/S processing to decrease the side signal and thus the width.
2.) Use Waves S1 width control to decrease width. (not really sure what's going on under the hood of this plugin.)
3.) Break the LCR rules and pan the OH's in some.

Thanks!

[drumdrum]

LCR is great for mixes, but generally I find it crap for drums. Its too un natural to have toms coming in from extremes with cymbals at the same place. Think of how a real drum kit would sound on the stereo field if you were dead centre and pan it like it is in real life.

I lcr pan my mixes all the time except the drums. Dont sacrifice a better sound for the mix because you want to adhere to a rule

[cjac9]

Thanks for your opinion drumdrum. I understand where you're coming from and might find myself there someday. At the moment I do as follows:

Oddly enough I pan my toms and hats center. I'm not working on big rock mixes - usually folk music so the function of the close tom mics is to just add a little more bottom end. I'm getting the attack from the overhead mics. I generally don't even use the hat mic but if I do it's for a little added definition if the part needs it.

So, both toms and hats go center and pull their respective images in a little. To my current ears, it sounds fine and doesn't weird me out. To each his own.

Anyone else have an idea with dealing with drum OH width during LCR mixing? Or any stereo tracks for that matter.

[bgrotto]

No need to be dogmatic about LCR. Just pan the OHs how they sound best.

(for what it's worth, I mix largely LCR; there are just some occasions where it doesn't work or isn't the best way. If it makes you feel any better, pan the tracks in PT a bit, but keep your console hard panned...still LCR!)

[cjac9]

duly noted bgrotto. I'm okay with breaking the LCR rules just trying to see if anyone has any creative work arounds. I'm thinking M/S is probably the best way. Maybe only way??

[bgrotto]

Originally Posted by cjac9

duly noted bgrotto. I'm okay with breaking the LCR rules just trying to see if anyone has any creative work arounds. I'm thinking M/S is probably the best way. Maybe only way??

Ok well, one thing I often do is have a compressed drum sub going in parallel. You can send a mono'd version of the OHs to that, whichll bring the imaging in a bit.