KVR Audio

loveless · Post by **loveless** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:15 am

Uh, funny thing is... THIS is from Charles Dye on the Gearslutz forum link someone posted:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=64506
"I don't use dual-mono with a compressor or limiter on stereo tracks, especially my 2-buss. Doing so, causes the center of the stereo image to shift from left to right as the compressor reacts independently to sounds on each side. It's for this exact reason stereo compressors were invented.

As far as EQ, it shouldn't make any difference."

Uh, well, then what are we yapping on about?

According to this you do?:

oblagon · Post by **oblagon** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:38 am

loveless wrote:Uh, funny thing is... THIS is from Charles Dye on the Gearslutz forum link someone posted:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=64506
"I don't use dual-mono with a compressor or limiter on stereo tracks, especially my 2-buss. Doing so, causes the center of the stereo image to shift from left to right as the compressor reacts independently to sounds on each side. It's for this exact reason stereo compressors were invented.

Side effect of that is more spacious sound. Which can be a good thing on pads, leads, etc.

Sound degradation is not a bad thing. Most commercial music seems to have peaks evened out and degraded quite a bit during mixing.

Kiwburger · Post by **Kiwburger** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:55 am

A true stereo saturation effect is dual mono - no need to run two instances of the same plugin with the same settings and rout things. You can prove this easy enough with some sine waves and null tests.

And now for something completely different ... I wish to blow apart the theory, stated by two people previously, that a single saturation effect over the 2buss is "just the same as having the same plugin with the same settings on each channel". Bollox sez I.

To make it easier, think about triple tracked lead guitar, like Brian May. Would you get the same effect if you ran three clean guitars into a single distortion pedal? I don't believe so. By treating each single note guitar part with it's own distortion, each part is sweeter, and sums together in a sweeter way. One reason for this is that one their own, each part is lower in level and contains less harmonics. As soon as you put two or more parts together, you get a mass of sum & difference tones, and everything sums together to create peaks and the whole mess creates chaos with distortion. With individual distortion, the saturation has occured before the summing. With buss distortion, the summing occurs before the saturation. There has to be significant differences between these two approaches. And perhaps a combination of both is required anyway. I can't help thinking that with analog circuitry, there are multiple stages of mild saturation at each and every link in the chain.

And with analog, Left & Right of a centre panned mono channel are always subtley different. Digital left & right are digital clones - no difference whatsoever, except in the D/A converter. I strongly believe that all the analog die-hards who swear that analog summing increases the stereo width are simply hearing the random differences that analog channels impart. Analog components are made to tolerance - and 1% tolerance components are considered very good. 1% of variation in all resistors, capicitors, inductors, semiconductors, in all of the many components on each side - think about that ...

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:22 pm

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:21 pm

Rusty Shackleford · Post by **Rusty Shackleford** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 1:04 am

Slightly off-topic, but I remember reading somewhere that differences in stereo image between analog and digital summing have to do with the way pan knobs behave on analog desks and digital mixers. It sounds plausible at least - can anyone shed any light on this?

Kitchen Sink · Post by **Kitchen Sink** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 9:57 am

Kiwburger wrote:the theory, stated by two people previously, that a single saturation effect over the 2buss is "just the same as having the same plugin with the same settings on each channel". Bollox sez I.

Yes it's just bollocks. Saturation is a non-linear process. Only linear processes (gain change, EQ, reverb, etc.) are the same when applied on the buss vs. individual channels. All kinds of compression, saturation and waveshaping are non-linear.

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:07 am

*sigh*

Kitchen Sink · Post by **Kitchen Sink** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 1:30 pm

Kingston wrote:*sigh*

Could you elaborate on that? I don't read this forum for a living, so I'm unaware of 99% of everything that's been argued before.

kevvvvv · Post by **kevvvvv** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 3:16 pm

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:19 pm

Kitchen Sink wrote:
Kingston wrote:*sigh*
Could you elaborate on that? I don't read this forum for a living, so I'm unaware of 99% of everything that's been argued before.

Well, just read the rest of the thread; basically he's just saying the method discussed in this thread, and methods like it, are psychosomatic voodoo.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:20 pm

Kitchen Sink wrote:
Kingston wrote:*sigh*
Could you elaborate on that? I don't read this forum for a living, so I'm unaware of 99% of everything that's been argued before.

Well, just read the rest of the thread; basically he's just saying the method discussed in this thread, and methods like it, are psychosomatic voodoo.

kevvvvv · Post by **kevvvvv** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:52 pm

bduffy

psychosomatic voodoo.

Great phrase

Psychosomaticise me some more, baby

Deep engineer voodoo is such fun

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:59 pm

kevvvvv wrote:bduffy
psychosomatic voodoo.
Great phrase

Psychosomaticise me some more, baby

Deep engineer voodoo is such fun

kevvvvv · Post by **kevvvvv** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 5:54 pm

It's great to have a face to a name

Mix saturation (Charles Dye style) using PSP MixSaturator