How do you guys give your music that Stereo Sound?

Glitch1044

Producer
I pan almost every instrument I use when making a song, but can never seem to get that Full stereo sound going. :hmmm:

 
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Good stereo mixes rely heavily on Contrast so if mostly EVERYTHING is panned left, right, and wide then there is likely not enough sound being strongly centered. Strongly Centered basically means 30% width all the way down to Mono, but that is just me throwing numbers out there for reference... dynamite, explosively good reference.

What this could mean is you might be missing an essential point of Contrast in your mix.

The essential point of Contrast is having a solid center.

Sure you'll have stuff that is wide, and I'm sure it's NICE and WIIDEE, but something is missing and because you've followed the rules it isn't obvious at first. Well clearly it's your soul.

But none of us can find our soul because we sold it to the devil in exchange for becoming a Master Producer.

So instead we need to realize the ear won't know how to perceive width without anything contrasting as a solid center. That's because we need to trick the ear into perceiving more width by contrasting hard center with wide. Ever seen a Kenyan long distance runners blindingly white teeth? I bet you his american competitor had equally white teeth. I wonder what artistic insight will explain this..

It's because contrast creates the illusion of more intensity.

So obviously kick is center, snare is sometimes center. But those are intermittent, so that reference point comes and goes quickly. A constant point of reference in center like a melody or just many different instruments intermittently working together to create a strong center can create that effect as well.

That includes taking reverbs for instruments and reducing the width of reverbs by up to 70%. I find mono reverbs don't sound that great because they can merge too much with the source. But if you do mono a reverb, it just means you have to more aggressively eq scoop the reverb itself so it just adds sheen and boundary around your source rather than merging with it.

If your mix has nice stereo width but feels like its kind of raw but still enjoyable and good, I'd leave it to a mastering engineer. This is his specialty.

Hopefully that helps.

-Nathan
 
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@ Nathan Alexander

I never thought of it that way, but your contrast theory definitely makes sense.
Also, reducing reverb, I usually crank that up way too much. lol
It usually sounds good at the moment, but I'm guessing too much reverb bouncing around kind of throws off the stereo effect of other instruments.
Well thanks man! I'll definitely try to keep that in mind for my next project.

@ wreckthisbeat

Hmm another idea I hadn't thought about. I use a lot of strings/pads in my music, I'll give that a shot for sure as well.
I've been doing this for a year now, and it still feels like I don't know the Half of what I'm doing. It's like there's a never ending learning curve to this music stuff. :S

Thanks guys! :cool:
 
...You never really know what you're doing. You just get to a point where you think you do and it gives you the confidence to do things you didn't think you could, and worst of all they end up working, thus completing the circle and undermining the knowing you thought you had. lol production in a nutshell.
 
depending on what you are doing... University rules are, kick snare centre, always.... u can pan toms left and right, same with high hats, Bass usually is centre, but since vinyl is no longer being printed much, that rule isn't determinate of itself... I myself like to keep bass in the middle..

delays that X also give depth and width... again, it depends on what music you are making... Panning guitars left and right (2 separate players) with a slight reverb to merge the two channels in the middle can also mesh the image... again, It's all just suck it and see style stuff.. :)
 
The rule about contrast is pretty important! If there's no foundation you can't build a roomy house on top..

Beyond that anything goes though. I love using lots of large reverbs, but they do take some managing. Most of the time I use them as sends mixing them in at very low levels.
But there's a lot of effects that'll help fill out the stereo image without brutal panning.
Small delays, larger echo's, choruses, doublers... all those delay based effects. Just go wild..

... but do keep an eye on your spectrometer and the correlation indicator (needs to stay in the positive), things can become too wide pretty quickly once you go
all King Tubby on your tracks, lol.
... and doing this almost certainly means you're gonna have to do some stereo management in the mix down, where you want to make your low frequencies (below 150-200hz) mono,
or close to mono. It doesn't technically have to be mono, people treat it like a dogma sometimes. It is not.. but for dance/club/electronic music that just works well on most (club) systems.

I generally avoid using artificial stereo wideners on my sounds.. it sounds nice and big when you first add it but it always ends up giving problems.
You can't have a mix full of big stereoized sounds.. the sum of those won't sound big, just shit. Many wideners don't even sound that good to me.

Also a good tip more related to dance music: if you mix wide: mix LOUD. Applying heavy limiting to bring the average level up at the end will mess with the stereo image. It will appear
less wide and all the careful mixing, balancing and positioning you did will be not gone, but affected. Some limiters have a stereo unlink setting that kinda addresses that but isn't ideal either..
Another reason to be loud is that compressing limiting the master will also make your reverb tails etc louder.. what sounded good in the mix will be way too much.

In general it's a good idea to avoid having to add huge amounts of loudness in the mastering.
Great engineers can maybe make that sound cool, those you or you label can likely afford will just pancake the whole shit and it'll suck if you've used a lot of stereo.
 
Also a good tip more related to dance music: if you mix wide: mix LOUD. Applying heavy limiting to bring the average level up at the end will mess with the stereo image. It will appear
less wide and all the careful mixing, balancing and positioning you did will be not gone, but affected. Some limiters have a stereo unlink setting that kinda addresses that but isn't ideal either..
Another reason to be loud is that compressing limiting the master will also make your reverb tails etc louder.. what sounded good in the mix will be way too much.

That was a very helpful insight localspace. I was aware compression had effects on stereo width, but only intuitively to the extent that everything had to be a 'certain kind of clean' when mixing or stereo perception would evaporate faster than ice on the sun.

That's really, really cool and a helpful. Thank you.
 
Thanks.. it's not always a problem per say.. it's just a waste of time to spend hours mixing your reverbs when you're going to aggressively mono-ize and limit your track in the final stage anyway.
Which won't necessarily kill your work, but at least change a lot of it.

In general though, what I talk about doesn't work at all if you're mixing pop and rock or looking for any kind of natural sound. I make electronic music though, so there is no natural sound for mine.
A lot of mixing/engineering dogma comes from A) times where expensive analog studios were the norm, B) people that worked on pop and rock, live instrument stuff, C) tend to be engineers, not musicians
and, C) have a vested interest in keeping that reveration of the 'good ole analog workflow' alive and well so they can justify and keep their expensive analog studios afloat. It is a business.

Plug-in manufacturers have realised that this is perfect marketing.. instead of giving you innovative NEW products that allow you to work faster, smarter, better..
they can shovel out endless emulations of classic gear in all it's variations so you can rest safe in the assurance that you too can sound exactly like The Beatles did 60's years ago. Yay!

I see a lot of electronic musicians fall for that, and that's a shame.. It's not a bad way of working, just not necessarily the best or most optimal one if all you want to do is bang out dance tracks.
 
Contrary to what many have mentioned, I am of the opinion that it is the console and its headroom that creates most of the perceived stereo depth. By combining that with good signal routing you get a good stereo image. If you apply chorus on sound sources before you pan, you are able to get more out of your panning. So enhancing stereo depth is in my opinion also about techniques that when they are applied make you able to achieve better panning. In a lecture I did in some other thread here some time ago, I mentioned that a stereo image can be built from the center outwards. You start with a center panned sound source like kick and snare, for each remaining sound source you bring in one sound source at a time in order of center to side, such that when you bring it in, it is panned just so much that it is perceived to be a bit further out and hence separates, in other words you want to add unique separation for each sound source further out.

These days many put entire sound sources hard L or R, like for instance a distortion guitar panned hard L and none of its frequencies on the other speaker. I think you should be careful with that, I find it ruins a lot of records out there because the mix as a whole sounds less natural and it makes the listeners tired to the songs faster. But what you can do instead is to pan it a bit less hard to remove that weight that is created from a hard panning and add a little delay on the other speaker. Just like you apply chorus before panning you can apply delay and reverb before panning too. Your panning moves become quite powerful when you have effects that assist in those moves...

Finally I want to mention that your monitoring quality plays a critical role in this too. You want to be able to hear the high frequency transients well across the stereo spectrum so that they are balanced to sit evenly across the stereo image, tons of speakers/cans out there cannot do that. For this reason, be careful with making side panned sound sources too loud. The acoustic guitar should just "kiss" the listener's ears without adding much punch. These types of techniques give you more room on the side which enhances the perception of the stereo image when it is used up.

With really good hardware you can push the sounds a bit more up front without causing much additional edge/bite in the transients, it just sounds bigger and all sound sources separate more while the mix still sounds soft. Big. So it is definitely a matter of having the gear to do it.

Also have some really nice hardware delays/reverbs that can do taped slap delay well. Getting slaps that are soft and pleasant in the background can really add some perceived size. Overall think about getting good groove/rhythm out of the transients across the stereo image. A great arrangement will bring important rhythm qualities to the stereo image.

It is also important to ensure the stereo image does not collapse in the choruses. Tons of mixes out there, even many that have got a chart position, collapse to some degree in the chorus, this is rarely the case with the top hit mixes though. This happens because in the choruses the broad stroke compression becomes too aggressive on the content, typically these mixes have very loud verses. Compression has to be applied so that there is breathing room left and that is removed when you push tons of signal into a very high compressor ratio, fast attack and an aggressive threshold. It is better then to apply the right type of compression for the broad stroke that dynamically allows those louder transients to not get smacked too hard. The louder and more sounds that are being played in the mix, the more important it is that these sounds have enough signal. Leave some headroom available to be used for the choruses, so that the massive playing rocks. You can focus that signal to the mids and highs, to avoid added weight.

Do not try to fake a good stereo image, great stereo images always come from great gear, techniques and ears. :)
 
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Not the best diagram, but I agree with Kick, Bass, and Snare in the middle. I usually have the main take of the vocal recording in the middle as well and the backing takes panned out left and right. I like to pan drums according to how an actual drummer views the drums (i.e. High Hat on the right hand side which is what the diagram shows conveniently).

But also I have some go to Plugins for stereo widening some sounds.

1) bx_control V2 by Plugin Alliance (This tool is also useful in many ways, but I usually use it for stereo widening as well as setting a threshold fro frequencies to translate into mono, very useful)
2) S1 Imager by Waves. Simple Stereo width tool, sounds great.
3) Izotope Ozone by Izotope. I use this mainly on the master channel, best part about its stereo imager is that is split up into bands, so you can spread each band respectively. Heavy on CPU though.

Hope this helped.
 
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