Creating Crosstalk in DAW? (faking an anlogue mixer.)

[shalako]

Creating Crosstalk in DAW (faking an anlogue mixer.)

This dicussion has come up in a post about Steen Slate VCC so I thought that it would be good to have a discussion about how you would/currently do this.

How do you create crosstalk in your DAW?

[Nokenoku]

Crosstalk is totally unimportant for getting the effect of analog summing.

And if you'd want crosstalk, you'd just add it (nothing to fake here).
But then there is no reason to add crosstalk at all. In no case ever.

[timandmonica]

In many records that we know by heart - that have taught us how to listen to music and how it's balanced - there is plenty of either small amounts of crosstalk or small to large amounts of mic bleed. We are used to hearing it even though we don't always know what we're hearing. How many times have you fought with your kick eq b/c you were inadvertently bringing up the snare, or vice-versa? Maybe if you've only worked with drum samples you've never dealt with this. Or how about guitar amp bleed in the drum room mics?

Sounds accidentally appearing on each others channels sometimes and in some small degree is just part of the reality of making a record with multiple microphones and overdubs.

If you want to emulate classic records as close as you can, it would be wise to at least consider this as a possible strategy. For example, in the Reaper manual, the author suggests using Reapers uniquely flexible routing to emulate this from time to time. If you add some snare bleed to your kick, it will be processed along with the kick, in ways that only the kick was intended to be. So there is a slight imperfection, but something that might also sound 'familiar' to those who have listened carefully to older records. The imperfection may at times be desirable and used as a creative tool.

I realize I focused more on mic bleed than cross-talk here, and that they are achieved differently, but the principle is the same - sound ending up where it doesn't belong and how that affects a record.

[Bronto Scorpio]

Ohh. Summing engines aren't hip anymore? Now crosstalk is the reason why my tracks sound like crap

I remember the time when the lack of the MPC groove in modern DAWs was the reason

What came before that?
Was that the time we all inserted vinyl noise in our tracks?

Sorry....couldn't resist

Cheers
Dennis

[shalako]

Crosstalk is totally unimportant for getting the effect of analog summing.

And if you'd want crosstalk, you'd just add it (nothing to fake here).
But then there is no reason to add crosstalk at all. In no case ever.

How about because I want to accentuate it to add more glue and because it helps a digital mix sound less digital. How about because it fills a space in in the mix that DAWs don't have and that your ear can hear the difference. It's like the diffence between MP3 and Vinyl. You don't need Vinyl but if you have it you'll hear a lot more depth than MP3.

And what I need and don't need in my mix is my decision, if you don't need it then that's fine.

Imperfection is beauty, this age old saying also applys to a mix.

Digital mixes can be very sterile and lack depth and character. The only real plus to digital is that it's easier to work with. This is not the sound I am wanting to achieve.

[No_Use]

When I want something to sound a little less perfect I sometimes use the Time machine plugin found here (free):
http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/audio_vst.htm

Suits my purposes and has a crosstalk dial.
I have no idea if it models hardware accurately but I don't care.

[shalako]

Ohh. Summing engines aren't hip anymore? Now crosstalk is the reason why my tracks sound like crap

I remember the time when the lack of the MPC groove in modern DAWs was the reason

What came before that?
Was that the time we all inserted vinyl noise in our tracks?

Sorry....couldn't resist

Cheers
Dennis

I know you're joking but really it's about what sound you want to achieve, Like I really didn't like it when the chemical brothers changed from hardware to hoftware, their sound became thin. I liked the fuller sound of the hardware. And I also love listening to albums recorded on analogue desks, and didn't like the change in sound qaulity when Pro Tools desks was introduced.

Some musical styles suit digital I don't argue that.

An analogue mix is the sum of it parts not just crosstalk or just summing.

Anyone who uses reverb is trying to achieve the same thing (a fuller sound,) should we stop using reverb?

[djanthonyw]

Crosstalk is totally unimportant for getting the effect of analog summing.

And if you'd want crosstalk, you'd just add it (nothing to fake here).
But then there is no reason to add crosstalk at all. In no case ever.

Fine then, just don't use cross talk. No one is forcing you. Meanwhile I'll be happily using it with the VCC.

[james0tucson]

It's like the diffence between MP3 and Vinyl.

I would love to see the rigorously controlled, double blind test that shows how often listeners can correctly identify a high-quality MP3 encoding of a high-quality digital capture of a properly executed vinyl playback against the non-encoded version of that recording or the vinyl playback itself. It would be remarkable to see the statistically meaningful results as compared to control groups who heard MP3 versus MP3 and Vinyl versus Vinyl.

In case you don't read between the lines, I'd be willing to make a large bet that you would find no such results.

[shalako]

It's like the diffence between MP3 and Vinyl.

I would love to see the rigorously controlled, double blind test that shows how often listeners can correctly identify a high-quality MP3 encoding of a high-quality digital capture of a properly executed vinyl playback against the non-encoded version of that recording or the vinyl playback itself. It would be remarkable to see the statistically meaningful results as compared to control groups who heard MP3 versus MP3 and Vinyl versus Vinyl.

In case you don't read between the lines, I'd be willing to make a large bet that you would find no such results.

Firstly the average person bearly knows the difference between stereo and mono let alone vinyl and MP3 so the odds are in your favor there. But that's not a fair test.

But if we use a control such as Itunes store then the MP3 is 256kbps. That is defenitley enough of a difference to be audiable. Some people even use 128kbps which causes degradation of the signal. Why? because they don't care about sound quality. In order to get a fair example you need to have the right listeners, and how do you do that? haha umm, I have no idea but good luck to anyone who wants to try.

Don't forget that you are talking to people here who can tell the differnce between using VCC and not using VCC (an incredibly subtle saturation plug) so that's in my favor.

[jupiter8]

Crosstalk is totally unimportant for getting the effect of analog summing.

And if you'd want crosstalk, you'd just add it (nothing to fake here).
But then there is no reason to add crosstalk at all. In no case ever.

How about because I want to accentuate it to add more glue and because it helps a digital mix sound less digital. How about because it fills a space in in the mix that DAWs don't have and that your ear can hear the difference.

But adding crosstalk in the digital domain will be nothing like crosstalk in analog. They are two completely different things.

[kritikon]

If you seriously want crosstalk (and I think you're mad to even consider wanting it), the simplest route, and a reasonably inexpensive one is to just buy a 2nd hand cheapo mixer rather than mucking around with fancy DAW techniques. Behringer will do it - all of their old Euro series had horrendous crosstalk in adjacent channels. I almost bought a cheap mixer a few years back and specifically checked out stuff like that, and Behringer were some of the worst for channel isolation. If you pull down an adjacent channel on full input and listen through the next one turned up - you can hear the zeroed channel remarkable clearly. They only seem to talk across one channel, but I was horrified at how much. Hopefully their newer mixers have improved...

But seriously - crosstalk would have been absolutely minimal in any recording that supposedly has that analogue "magic" because of crosstalk. That was one of the things any musician and studio spent serious money on desks for - to get rid of crosstalk. It's not considered beneficial, it doesn't sound good, and the reason we all spent upwards of a grand on dencent mixers was precisely because they had good isolation on channels.

Really - I hope this isn't going to be another one of those daft webmyths. Crosstalk is not a good thing. Good mixers don't sound better because they have better crosstalk. They sound good because they pay attention to getting rid of crosstalk.

But if you have to do it (and god knows why you want to) - it's cheap. Buy any cheap mixer. You could probably get away with sub $100 to get your desired effect.

Any sign of noticeable crosstalk on any of my old mixers in the h/w days and it was off the list.

[Nokenoku]

In many records that we know by heart - that have taught us how to listen to music and how it's balanced - there is plenty of either small amounts of crosstalk or small to large amounts of mic bleed.

Mic-bleed-crosstalk is one thing. Channel-crosstalk (as in analog summing) is something entirely different.
Mic-bleed can really add something to a recording .. channel-crosstalk just reduces the stereo-image.

Crosstalk is totally unimportant for getting the effect of analog summing.

And if you'd want crosstalk, you'd just add it (nothing to fake here).
But then there is no reason to add crosstalk at all. In no case ever.

How about because I want to accentuate it to add more glue and because it helps a digital mix sound less digital.

Sorry, but I really have the impression, you don't even know what crosstalk is.
The crosstalk happening with analog summing does nothing else than putting a bit from the right channel on the left and vice versa. And this is nothing different from just reducing the stereo-width on your master. It's exactly the same.
There is no glueing and nothing, which would make something sound "less digital".

How about because it fills a space in in the mix that DAWs don't have and that your ear can hear the difference. It's like the diffence between MP3 and Vinyl. You don't need Vinyl but if you have it you'll hear a lot more depth than MP3.

Oh my .. it gets worse and worse ...
1. There's reverb, compression and even noise to fill spaces, but not crosstalk. This has absolutely nothing to do with filling spaces.
2. You can still rerecord from vinyl and save it to a digital format. With proper converters there's no difference in sound.
And even if you compress the digital file to an MP3, there's (nearly) no percievable difference if done right.

[No_Use]

Regardless if adding crosstalk makes sense or not, couldn't this be done easily in any DAW ?

Make a submix of your track, set up two aux sends, one going from left to right the other vice versa, adjust to taste.

Or am I missing something ?

[Nokenoku]

Yes, that's it.
And it's equivalent with reducing the stereo-width on the master (or mixing less wide before).

Absolutely useless.