MeldaProduction

Thavma · Post by **Thavma** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:40 am

Hey, some more info on what this does and works would be great!

DarkStar · Post by **DarkStar** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 12:48 pm

Click the main Info [?] button:

MAutoStereoFix is an essential tool for processing stereo tracks, whether these are drum overheads, rooms or any kind of stereo signals including master tracks. It lets you first analyze the audio and then apply several "fixes" to improve the stereo field and make it sound centered as it should be. We would recommend using headphones when analyzing the stereo field, since doing that with monitors is nearly impossible even in the best mixing rooms.

When using 2 microphones to record a certain instrument (or instruments), there is nearly no chance that the stereo field will be balanced. That would be possible only for an infinitely small intrument recorded with a pair of identical microphones placed at the exact same distance from the instrument, and recorded using a perfectly flat interface with no phase alteration. None of these requirements are even remotely realistic.

Most engineers adjust manually the level between the 2 microphones and that's pretty much it. Unfortunately that's not enough to keep the stereo field balanced. For example, if one microphone is further away from the instrument (or its prominent part - snare drum in case of drum overheads for example), the sound it will record is going to be delayed and the track will psycho-acoustically appear "sounding from the other side". Trying to fix that by increasing the volume of that microphone would then only make things worse and sadly that's the usual way to deal with this problem. Delaying one of the microphones would solve the problem, but manually searching for a perfect delay would take a tremendous amount of time. Even searching for a good volume ballance takes a lot of time, adding delay to the equation is nearly impossible even for a skilled engineer.

It gets worse when it comes to spectrum. For example, one of the microphones may record a little less high frequency content due to a different high frequency response, location close to a dampening surface, or even the room acoustics. The instrument will then appear closer to the other side again, because high frequencies are absorbed by the air and our brains know that. Fixing that using a linear-phase equalizer would be even worse than setting up delays and volumes.

And the final stage is phase. Any of the devices in the recording chain can alter the phase, whether it is the microphone, AD converters and especially if you are using an analog deck. Fixing phase manually would probably mean using an equalizer featuring allpass filters and that would take forever.

The worst part is that a phase or spectrum difference would not only make the stereo field appear out of the center, it would also sound confusing, because the clues picked by the brain would just don't make sense. After all stereo recording is generally everything but natural.

MAutoStereoFix solves all of these problems automatically. It analyzes the audio and calculates the optimal levels, delays, polarity inversion, equalization and spectral phase correct, so that the stereo field becomes as centered as possible. Please note however that the plugin cannot magically fix poor recording conditions such as room acoustics or crazy microphone placement.

DarkStar · Post by **DarkStar** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 12:56 pm

I'm not sure about those big on/off buttons with graphics on them.

And F1 does not seem to work on any of the controls (could be broken in all plug-ins? Edit: being fixed.

vectorwarrior · Post by **vectorwarrior** » Wed Sep 13, 2017 6:27 pm

This thing is pretty spectacular. It's awesome for sound effects that have drastically different signals on left/right where you want to bring the channels closer together without just 'losing' the stereoness of it. I can see me getting a lot of use out of this, it's already allowed me to resurrect some relatively unusable sound effects very quickly. Nice one Vojtech, totally unique!

I'm wondering if this is another part of the ultimate mixing toolkit master plan that has been brewing for ages.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:33 pm

Thank you!

And not really, it's not part of the "mixing revolution" development, just something I needed when processing the acoustic drums for MDrummer

. But there is some pretty cool technology in it, so it's quite possible it will be useful for the mixing thingy as well

.

Jedinhopy · Post by **Jedinhopy** » Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:52 pm

Is it the same as:
(Multi-Band-Dynamic/Adaptive-Panning-Correction) ???

vectorwarrior · Post by **vectorwarrior** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 1:24 am

It has a bunch of stuff... correction for:
phase
frequency spectrum
delay
panorama
envelope

it is static though, so requires an analysis phase. I would love to be able to do it without the offline analysis... so realtime analysis. Obviously that's going to have massive latency (as the analysis is carried out in realtime, then applied to the other channel) but this opens up a lot more interesting sound design and creative potential as the sound characteristics can change over time. And yeah, i know that's not what this plugin was made for but it would only need realtime 'unlocked' for this to work... and boy would it be interesting! A bit like MMorph but on steroids.

mccy · Post by **mccy** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 6:57 am

I just link a sample of what are my typical most beloved recording situations... creating an orchestral Part for a song... and I use many STEREO sources for that.

http://www.derknott.de/baumraketedry.mp3

This Plugin helps me A LOT to fix my improper microphone positioning!!!!!

THANK YOU AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who are interested, this is the whole song:

http://www.derknott.de/baumrakete.mp3

Jedinhopy · Post by **Jedinhopy** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 7:42 am

vectorwarrior wrote:It has a bunch of stuff... correction for:
phase
frequency spectrum
delay
panorama
envelope

it is static though, so requires an analysis phase. I would love to be able to do it without the offline analysis... so realtime analysis. Obviously that's going to have massive latency (as the analysis is carried out in realtime, then applied to the other channel) but this opens up a lot more interesting sound design and creative potential as the sound characteristics can change over time. And yeah, i know that's not what this plugin was made for but it would only need realtime 'unlocked' for this to work... and boy would it be interesting! A bit like MMorph but on steroids.

Making stereo music: (mono compatible) :

1. Some frequencies can disappear when collapsing stereo to mono.

2. If one of the LR channels is detuned while the other LR channel is not, chorusing effects can happen
when summing stereo to mono.

3. If one of the LR channels is delayed while the other LR channel is not, comb filtering effects can happen
when summing stereo to mono.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 11:27 am

Stereo makes quite a few more problems actually - mainly it can cause a completely illogical stereo field. While it is virtually impossible to fix that, because each mike could just record something different, it is possible to improve that, using MAutoStereoFix

.

Anyways realtime processing is very very unlikely. It needs several seconds to readjust switching from one settings to another may be virtually impossible.

sextonr3 · Post by **sextonr3** » Thu Nov 09, 2017 5:41 pm

I bought this plugin the moment it came out. Incredibly useful. I want to make sure I'm using it right however. does one just click "Analyze" and wait for it to reach 100%? Are all the adjustments made once the analysis is complete?

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:11 pm

Thank you!

When you click Analyze it starts analyzing the incoming audio, but 100% is only like a nice value, where everything usually is "more than finished". It lets you stop it already after 20% I think, sometimes it is enough, sometimes it is not. And by the end of analysis, everything i setup and stored.

Sassafrass · Post by **Sassafrass** » Sun May 27, 2018 9:24 am

Does this do what MAutoAlign does? Or are they two different plug ins? I get the feeling this is like MAutoAlign on Steroids.

Thanks,
Sass

jmg8 · Post by **jmg8** » Sun May 27, 2018 9:50 am

Sassafrass wrote:Does this do what MAutoAlign does? Or are they two different plugins? I get the feeling this is like MAutoAlign on Steroids.

Thanks,
Sass

They are actually quite different.
MAutoAlign is for aligning the phase multiple recordings.
MAutoSteroFix is to fix unbalanced stereo recordings.
It uses several different processes like phase, loudness, delay etc to make the left and right channel more closely related to each other.
A good use for this is if you used a stereo mic to record something, but it wasn't aligned correctly. So the recording is louder in left than right. You can't just turn right up in volume, as there will be other problems too. Left will have received the signal slightly before right and depending on the room and other possibilities there will be other things that need fixing.
MAutoStereoFix does it all automatically.

Sassafrass · Post by **Sassafrass** » Sun May 27, 2018 4:41 pm

Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

MeldaProduction

KVR Audio

MAutoStereoFix plugin