What do commercial production studios do on stereo imaging?

[Blue Cat Audio]

ever tried Mid / Side equalizing?
Changing the balance on some key frequencies between Middle and Side channels can have a very impressive effect on stereo perception. Either on the whole mix or on each instrument seperately, it drastically enhances the stereo sounding of your tracks.

You can give a try to Blue Cat's Panning Liny EQ at http://software.bluecatonline.org . It'll do the trick for you. Sure you can hear the difference!

[IIRs]

ever tried Mid / Side equalizing?

Thats what I've been saying all through this thread..

[Blue Cat Audio]

ever tried Mid / Side equalizing?

Thats what I've been saying all through this thread..

You mentioned Mid / Side processing globally. Just wanted to add that a simple Mid /Side EQ could do the trick... MMMhh it seems you are an expert in this field, aren't you?

BTW I forgot to mention that Mid/Side EQing does not harm mono listening in any way...

[IIRs]

You mentioned Mid / Side processing globally. Just wanted to add that a simple Mid /Side EQ could do the trick...

The plug I linked to in my earlier post is a Dynamic EQ, but it can also be used to apply a static EQ boost..

MMMhh it seems you are an expert in this field, aren't you?

I wouldn't go that far: I still haven't tried mid/side mic'ing. (I only have one mic with a figure of 8 pattern, and that's the nice valve mic that I would always want to use for the main mid channel.) But it is one of my favorite techniques..

[ghost666]

Going back to plugins for moment, I sometimes use the stereo enhancer in Raygun DX, set to about 25%!
It really seems to open things up in my mixes, when needed.

Try it you'll see/hear what I mean!

[greendoor]

Getting back to the original question - how to make mixes sound extra wide stereo, like movie theatre music. For a start - you could play a mono mix on those excellent movie sound system, and it would sound extra-wide stereo. That's part of the magic of listening on a good system in a big space. So it's not a good reference for comparison. Personally - i'm opposed to using stereo-ising plugins, although I admit I had a brief fling with them a few years ago. Mono compatibility is so important, and most of them totally screw this. I listen to a mono tv a lot, and frequently hear some really phasey crap - and I know that somebody has been playing with a stereo plugin again. I'm one of the people who was seriously pissed with Steinberg for removing the Mono button from Cubase SX - we now have to go out of our way to check mono compatibility, but it's the difference between a pro engineer and an idiot. Digitalfishphones Endorphin is a handy plugin with a mono button if you are stuck with using Cubase SX and have no mono button. While I sort of agree with the guy who suggested a better clock, I expect that most people won't hear that particular difference. Not if they burn mp3's and listen on PC speakers anyway. The key to big stereo effects is to do it in the mix, not afterwards - that's too late. Mixing everything dead centre, and applying the odd stereo effect, won't give a good stereo mix. Also - how many people know that applying a stereo insert effect to a Cubase mono track will only create a mono track? To get stereo effects to work in Cubase requires sending to a Stereo Effects Group, or to a Stereo Group Track. As an interesting experiment - try panning a part extreme left, and applying a 100ms delayed copy panned to the extreme right. That's a really easy way to get a huge extreme stereo effect, that will still collapse to mono ok. If you can create something that is "too wide" you should be able to work back from there. But before you say that sounds too easy, consider how you would actually do that in a DAW like Cubase ... it's not as easy to do as you would think. Especially if you don't actually clone the track ... I think some of the gripes about the stereo imaging of digital as opposed to analog mixing are not comparing apples with apples.

[jtxx000]

yes but rons not using a cubase sucks host, he's using tracktion where that kind of thing is a snap.

[IIRs]

Personally - i'm opposed to using stereo-ising plugins, although I admit I had a brief fling with them a few years ago. Mono compatibility is so important, and most of them totally screw this.

Widening the stereo field with mid / side processing has no effect on mono compatibility.

[greendoor]

Yeah - I said "most". I admit that if the mix is bad, you don't have any options to make the stereo wider than to use some effect that hopefully won't screw with mono compatability. So that requires careful testing in mono - and you will find most stereo-izing plugins to be useless. Most KVR's are creating their own music, and have access to the individual mix tracks. That the place to make your mix as wide as you want. The point i'm making is that even "stereo" plugins may not get you that wide stereo effect you want. I'm saying you might need to use some tricks to get those extra-wide sounds. Listen to some of the early 1970 stereo tracks, when the stereo medium was being explored for hi-fi buffs. There are some amazing stereo things going on, totally without the need for fake-stereo effects. Panning, delays, binaural recording were how they were done, and the principles are the same now. I admit eq was also used to fake stereo on some old recordings, but usually in the mix - not over a whole mix. Stereoising plugins are a crutch for salvaging poorly recorded work. I doubt any serious pro engineer would use them on a whole mix - although maybe on a track for an effect.

[tee boy]

May have already been said:

Create mix width using ambient effects. For example, on instruments panned near the centre, send to wide stereo reverbs. You can create these by either; using the same setting on both sides of the bus and altering one side slightly, or using two completely different reverb generators.

Another trick is to double track and pan. For example, would could copy a synth track and pan left and right, then alter settings on one side slightly. If you're using guitars a cool trick is to split the signal and send into different preamps. This is cool cuz it gets sample accurate double tracks. If that fails, try the standard technique; copy a track to 2 tracks panned left and right, move the one track forward about 10ms, and the other back 10ms. The result will still sound in time.

Also, remember not to go too made with your panning. If everything is hard left, right and middle, then it can ruin the effect. Think carefully about where to place tracks for best effect. And automation can be cool, particularly for background stuff. If you're doing more ambient stuff then spatializtion is definately your friend!

[bmanic]

Personally - i'm opposed to using stereo-ising plugins, although I admit I had a brief fling with them a few years ago. Mono compatibility is so important, and most of them totally screw this.

Widening the stereo field with mid / side processing has no effect on mono compatibility.

Well, in a way this is not completely true. One should rather think of it as a balancing act for volume. If you go too far in the side processing versus the middle signal, then you'll end up with a mono signal that is much softer than the stereo signal which would mean that once you listen to the mix in mono you might have lost the sound into the background! Not always desireable.. However, giving single sounds different compression and EQ kind of 'detaches' the mono signal from the side and makes the whole sound 'larger than life'. I warmly recommend Kjaerhus Golden Channel for these M-S processing things as it has dedicated EQ and compressors for each!

Also, Voxengo has a free M-S encode/decode plugin that anybody can use. The voxengo plugin+energyXT = power beyong your wildest dreams.. how about this:

Separate the side signal with the voxengo plugin,
make seriously wicked haas-stereo-delay setup (a delay with different settings on left and right with less than 30ms of delay, no feedback) on only the separated side signal, mix this subtly into the main signal trough some EQ that differs from the middle EQ and also some differing compression. The result? A seriously mad stereo effect for most material that keeps mono compatibility!

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

Also, one more thing, try using stereo effects such as phasers, flangers and chorus on ONLY the side signal.. makes for some very weird stereo effects too.

- bManic

[LoopFilth]

Obvious question, are u bouncing down all your vst midi tracks to audio. I used to mix vsts with bouncing down all my tracks to audio. Mixes sounded muddy with no stereo separation.

Now I render everything to audio - wow what a difference.

[brianbrian]

I'll say it again: I am almost positive you are hearing stereo widening effects (a la Orban) that the broadcasting station is using on their transmission.

[Sascha Franck]

Obvious question, are u bouncing down all your vst midi tracks to audio. I used to mix vsts with bouncing down all my tracks to audio. Mixes sounded muddy with no stereo separation.

Now I render everything to audio - wow what a difference.

Why should it make a difference?
Bouncing tests I've been doing showed that the bounced file was identical to MIDI data playing through the VSTi in question.