The secret of STEREO!!!

[seriousfun]

The definition of stereo:

Stereo: From the Greek word sterios meaning solid; identifies sound recording and reproduction by more than one (mono) channel.

Stereo does not connote two. The original experiments and demonstrations of Stereo by Bell Labs used three front speakers, although Blumlein (look him up) created many ways to acquire and deliver a stereo image with two mics and two speakers. Stereo, the presentation of a solid image, can be done with two speakers, and IMO can be done better with more than two speakers.

Also, remember that stereo does not say dimensional. Two speakers present a one-dimensional image - a point and a line both exist only in one dimension, and two speakers create a line. You would have to add rear speakers to add a second dimension, and top/bottom speakers to present a third.

The key to stereo imaging and soundstaging with two-channel stereo is not the dual-mono panning of everything to R and L (although that can be a key to presenting a big image), but how you address the Phantom Center - anything steered identically to R & L. The benefit to the listener, if the listener is positioned precisely at the apex of an equilateral triangle with the speakers, is that the sound will appear to come from directly between the two speakers. There will be a cost - because of the shape of our head and the time it takes for sounds to travel from the right around to our left ear and vice verse, there will be a small dip in the frequency response; also, moving our head even in small amounts to the right or left will lose the image placement and cancel or reinforce other frequencies. Keeping this phantom image in-mind, we can do a lot in a rock mix to keep the listener engaged when listening on two speakers.

As has been said, the key to Stereo is Mono, and there are many ways to get there, including doing your mixing and panning (even 5.0 panning) while listening to the mix summed to one speaker. Leaving enough room in the middle for your important element, and EQing this properly, can give you freedom to place just about everything else hard L and hard R, or adding doubled or delayed parts in opposite channel.

For fun, research Terry Manning's Cardinal Points method of mixing.

[Han]

Originally Posted by KBToys

I think the theory of analog tape being more accurate is exactly backwards.

I'd guess that any enhanced stereo effect on analog tape is a result of analog's LESS accurate track-to-track timing. This can be caused by problem's with a deck's playback head azimuth, causing a timing skew across tracks. I've never heard anyone mention this, but it seems pretty plausible that you'd get a more 'stereo' sound from the inter-channel delays. It wouldn't be more accurate, but might sound better.

It might not sound as good, but I can virtually guarantee that any decent DAW is going to have absolutely solid inter-track timing.

-- Ken

Ken, I only have said that a two inch deck works in basic like a cassette deck, but more accurately. I'v never said that an analog deck is more accurate than a DAW.

And any analog deck should be aligned as well as possible, but besides that, imagine a machine like the Tascam MSR24 which has only one rec/repro head and this head is on a 5 deg angle, then still it will work decent. Problems will occur when a recorded tape is being played on another MSR machine that is aligned perfectly.

@All:

I've said that I may be wrong, it's just my view. First off this is not my native language and it's difficult to find the exact words to express what I have in mind.
I am a musician/engineer, not a tech and there are guys on these forums who know a whole lot more about the subject.

What I do know is that on a 24 track two inch deck each track is really a track and it will not move once it has been recorded on tape. I'm not sure about Adat and Dash, but it's something like Video tape and there's something like one track which contains 24 or more separate signals. These tracks also won't move and in case problems occur it must be in the digital domain.

When the particles of the analog 24 2" moves against the head, something happens which is not very complicated. What happens in the DAW is much more complicated in my opinion.

Having worked with Nuendo, Cubase, PTHD, AA RADAR, etc I can only say that I
have no problems making a sound which is warm, fat, wide and deep with a well aligned two inch deck and an analog board, but I do have problems doing the same on a DAW. And in my view this has nothing to do with different tricks, an ORTF placement of two KM184's will sound different on a DAW than on an analog setup.

Clients hear the same, something gets lost when the music gets digitized and they're always a little dissapointed about that. I'm not saying analog sounds better than digital, but it surely sounds different.

So I will stick to my 2" machine inspite of the high cost of it, I just love that sound.

You may call me stubbern.

[drundall]

It depends on the type of music you're doing a what you're trying to achieve, but some of it is in the EQ you choose. I've noticed that certain mixes with sound "wider" have a certain quality about the mids. I work with a guy who freaks out on this stuff, so I'm aware of this issue. Most of the time though, I think if you get the song rocking it's not much of an issue to worry about. As others have said here it's suprising how mono some mixes are. For me SOAD is the most dramatic offender.

[John Suitcase]

Originally Posted by Han

Another point: we had a test a couple of years ago in a pro magazine. A 15khz square wave was recorded to both an Ampex ATR102 and a DAW.

The playback was on a scope and the playback of the tape showed a near perfect square wave, the DAW showed a sloppy sine wave. Can it be that digital makes sine waves from all kind of wave forms in the very high freqs? I dunno, but when I record a ride cymbal with tape, it sound in playback like a shiny ride cymbal with that silky ping. In digital it sounds different from the original.

You're right.

In a perfect world, analogue will sound better than digital in the high frequencies. The problem is that most analogue systems aren't going to reproduce the high frequencies well, because of noise, the slew rate of the involved gear, etc.

But, if you're sampling at 44.1 khz, a 15k square wave WILL start to look like a sine wave. Higher frequencies are worse. A square wave has certain higher frequency harmonics (listen to a square wave at a lower frequency to see this), a sine wave doesn't. When you're sampling at low frequencies, the A/D process can replicate the waveform decently. But at the upper limit (22.05 khz in this case), the A/D is just going one up, one down, one up, one down, then upon playback, dithering that to a 22.05 khz sine wave.

At 15 khz, you're not going to see a pure sine wave, but it's not going to be a pure square wave, either.

For further info, search for 'nyquist' and read about the upper frequency limitations.

Of course, sampling at a higher sample rate should alleviate some of these problems...


Now, on the topic of wide/deep, I would just like to ask whether anyone else collapses guitars to mono, then eq's the guitars in such a way as to be able to distinguish the two (or more) parts, before positioning them in the stereo field. I often do this, and it seems to give a better stereo image, if done correctly. I might put a little boost at 1550k on one guitar, then cut that freq on the other one just a bit, while boosting 1580k, which I cut on the first guitar. Just to give them a little space (this is primarily when I have a guitar player who has double tracked his rhythm parts.)

Also, I read The Art of Mixing:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Mixing-Rec...e=UTF8&s=books


Some of the ideas presented are a little odd, but I have to admit that the mixes I did while reading the book are VERY wide and clean. I ended up doing something different, since I was working with a punk band, but the techniques do work...

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally Posted by corn55

You want wide? Place the mics farther apart. You want deep? Move them farther away from the source. It is such a simple concept. I think the real culprit is that not enough time is spent moving the mics around the source to find that sweet spot. Years ago, before all the gadgets, engineers were forced to actually listen to each mic for good placement.

For the most part, in most types of modern rock, country, and pop, the "distance makes depth" notion is misleading at best -- a rhyme without a reason (what a great quote). Presence is a virtue. Maybe track the room separately as well, but don't commit to a "roomy" sound -- you can mix IN room, but you can't mix it OUT. Of course, if the room is part-and-parcel of the track you're doing, all bets are off, and have at it...

One cut is worth a thousand boosts. Tracking is like painting, mixing is like sculpting -- balance things by taking away what you DON'T want first.

I may be wrong here, but most people I see who want "wider" mixes are really missing the boat -- and they think that width is the concept they're missing, fuzzy as that concept is.

If you're certain that your issues lie in mixing and not tracking, arrangement, doubling/layering, performance, tuning, groove, substandard sonics/gear etc., then get that Mix It Like A Record DVD and watch it a few times. Or have a mixer you respect take a crack at mixing one of your tracks, on the condition that the fee includes a lesson on how they got your mix to work.

[corn55]

Originally Posted by Gregg Sartiano

For the most part, in most types of modern rock, country, and pop, the "distance makes depth" notion is misleading at best --

Depth is created by reverberation. Those early reflections contribute greatly to the overall illusion of "how far away" the source sounds. Even in a dead room, moving the mics a bit farther back, will result in small amounts of reflections creating a more vivid sense of depth.

Since I don't record modern rock, country, and pop, you may be correct.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally Posted by corn55

engineers needed 4 things:

Originally Posted by corn55

...Good room

Even when they only had mono capability, the depth was unreal.

This is part of where I was going with this "distance makes depth" being "misleading" (note I didnt' say "wrong").

I'm just envisioning the mix I had to do last week with the drum mic called "fun mic." It was not very "fun." It was the phasiest piece of c%^p mic in history. At least it wasn't blended into the room or the overheads -- all I had to do was mute it...and start getting out the samplesbut that's another story.

I think we're on the same page. I just think there are SOOOO many qualifiers involved here. For one thing, I reckon many of the folks on this board don't >REALLY< know how phase relationships, comb filtering, etc. work, and considering that what 80% of them are recording (modern pop, country, rock...rap, R & B...metal) depends on an "in your face" sound with depth surrounding it (I'm grasping at an explanation here, but you catch my drift)...well, I'd rather have some close-mic'd Marshalls and hit the 'verb when I mix, if you know what I mean.

You're right. Wanna sound better? Buy/make/rent a good room.

Wanna get depth? Think about sticking an extra mic 20 ft. from the source and printing that on a separate track. You won't get phase problems, 'cause it'll be too far for any significant interference. Problem is, you can't do that in a bedroom...

[corn55]

Originally Posted by Gregg Sartiano

Problem is, you can't do that in a bedroom...

Well therein lies the culprit. I thought bedrooms were for sleeping.


I was going to add, I go for that extra width even if it does sacrifice some mono capability due to phase differences. The point I stop is when it starts to strain the ears, and then I back it off a bit.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally Posted by corn55

Well therein lies the culprit. I thought bedrooms were for sleeping.

Good one. Let's do a GS poll
"Bedrooms are for:

a) Sleeping
b) Gear storage
c) Recording
d) All of the above"

[AndreH]

Lots of great advice here.

I can't experiment as much on the tracking side of things (I work mostly with a small, dead room for one-at-a-time vocal, guitar, or small percussion takes), but on the mix side I've been having some good results with image-widening plugs on a few tracks and with Mid/Side processing during mastering; either of these techniques can be recreated in the analog domain as well.

Since the perception of width is achieved through l/r/c contrast (along with many other things pointed out in this thread), I try to be tasteful about not making too many things too wide; widening a nicely-recorded stereo hat track or even a verb on a vox can really make things sound more spacious if other elements are left "in the speakers." Also, widening plugs can suck out your low-end and, so I usually only apply them to elements that can afford this loss. Bear in mind that I'm talking strictly about wideners that use pure M/S ratio adjustment such as Waves S1 (one the few remaining Waves plugs in my stable); artifical wideners can cause phasiness that I usually find undesirable.

In the mastering stage, applying different EQ curves on the Mid signal from the Side signal has really helped to ground the center image and enhance contrast/width in my mixes. Plus, I'm able to better-target frequency corrections since problems that exist in the mid-panned instruments are usually different from side-panned parts.

I speak humbly in such accomplished company; these are just observations based on my own experiences.


HTH,
Andre

[Sput]

Hi,
thank you all again!
As I previously said, the acoustics in the church were actually pretty good. No bedroom here.
John, I've read that book ("the art of mixing"). I found the idea interesting but the result kind of lame. Did nothing for me. I should though recommend the book "mixing with your mind", by Michael Paul Stavrou. One of the only truly original books on the subject, and I have read tons.

I may just post some mp3s of my mixes so you guys have an idea of what I'm talking about.

[midnightsun]

In some songs stereo recreates the sound stage. In some songs stereo is used as an effect.

For recreating a natural room sound I would love to try one of the Soundfield Mic packages http://www.soundfield.com/ This makes sense to me but they are very expensive.

A while back I started checking out various popular songs on SpectraFoo. I noticed that at times a song would sound great and the meter would tell me that there were big phase issues.

It seems that the use of "stereo" is part of the art of the engineer.

[abit]

Let say I have a nice fat pad.
And I want it about 3 feet wider on each side .
What I'm gonna do is I'll just reverse the phase.
Oh my God! Are you crazy?!
Yes I am.
What about mono?!
What about it?
Who the hell listen in mono for the last like 20 years?!
Who cares about mono any more?
My sound stage is huge and my center is even more focused because of this wideness.

I came to conclusion that mono phase check is a theory and real life is bit different.
Am I a bad guy?

[drBill]

Originally Posted by abit

Am I a bad guy?

No, not at all. Just a little short sighted.

[gwailoh]

Originally Posted by abit

What about mono?!
What about it?
Who the hell listen in mono for the last like 20 years?!
Who cares about mono any more?

"because FM radio is frequently received in mono, even on “stereo” radios, due to signal-quality-trigged mono blend circuitry" -- Frank Foti & Bob Orban, What Happens to My Recording When It's Played On the Radio?

[Gregg Sartiano]

...

[corn55]

Gregg what the H*ll is that? Is that a UFO? Weird..

[mdsmith64]

Ha! Very funny Gregg! Quit taking pictures with that damn camera phone. Someone needs to buy you a nice digital camera for Christmas.


Seriously, though, as usual you are dead right. However, some of us have to work with what we have available and make the best of it. You need to be creative and smart to make improvements. I've found that the creative use of baffles can help focus the sound of a small room for example. If I'm using my Royer, placing a baffle (usually a 2'x4' bass trap) directly behind the mic helps. If I'm using dynamics, two baffles on either side seems to help. Again, only making the best of a bad situation. It still sucks having to use a bad room....


Best Regards,

Mike.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Is this better?

[abit]

Originally Posted by drBill

No, not at all. Just a little short sighted.

Thank U.

I agree with the fact that we have to use mono as a tool,
to check this and that, drums..
Otherwise ..
I don't care about too much especially if it sounds the way I like.

[mdsmith64]

Originally Posted by Gregg Sartiano

Is this better?

[the russian]

Originally Posted by Gregg Sartiano

Is this better?

That's mono in stereo.

[Sounds Great]

Originally Posted by the russian

That's mono in stereo.

You have to put on the special glasses. Then it becomes Stereo in 3D.

[SiliconAudioLab]

Originally Posted by corn55

I think the real culprit is that not enough time is spent moving the mics around the source to find that sweet spot. Years ago, before all the gadgets, engineers were forced to actually listen to each mic for good placement.

That's because most bedroom PT "studios" are only @ 14' X 16'. Not much room to actually move ONE mic, let alone a second one. Then there's always that pesky problem of the bed in the way.

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally Posted by Sounds Great

You have to put on the special glasses. Then it becomes Stereo in 3D.

[Ravian]

Originally Posted by gwailoh

"because FM radio is frequently received in mono, even on “stereo” radios, due to signal-quality-trigged mono blend circuitry" -- Frank Foti & Bob Orban, What Happens to My Recording When It's Played On the Radio?

the signal of FM stereo in radio's are mono and there is a multiplex circuit in the radio
that is a switch that switches the mono signal reeeaaal fast between L and R
so FM stereo aint real stereo. and the FM stereo led indicator go's on wen there is a FM signal that is broadcast from the station that comes with the FM stereo signal
(i forgot the Mhz of the indicator led on status).

[beats workin']

oh boy, i remember getting a call about 8 or 9 years ago from the exec. prod. of a record i did. he was driving in his car and the song was on the radio. problem was, all you could hear of one of the guitars was the reverb. Duh! i had mic'd a pair of matchless amps with 87s ( yes, in my BEDROOM!). everyone was so thrilled at how great it sounded- how WIDE the stereo electric was and how the acoustic, also stereo but panned in at 10 and 2 sat so well inside the electric. lush and deep. problem was that the electric was indeed partially out of phase. when i went back to remix them (just as a pitiful gesture on my part- the record was already out) i could never match the beauty of those original out of phase mixes.
So there you have it. out of phase can SOUND huge, but you may well pay for it down the road. funny, i never got hired by that guy again...
david