Best ways to add depth to a mix

[Freddyhaynes]

What are some ways that you add depth to your mix? Any cool tricks or techniques to share?

[BertKoor]

Depth is about contrast. Without things in the back, there's effectively nothing in the front. You want something glaringly obvious at the front (melody, bass, snare, kick) (scrap that, in modern music the kick comes first) and smaller details to discover only if you listen closely.

It's also not a mixing thing, but rather an arrangement thing: which parts are there playing what.
Instruments need their own part of the frequency spectrum and part of the timeline.
Too much overlap and you will get mud.

[roman.i]

What are some ways that you add depth to your mix? Any cool tricks or techniques to share?

Split your reverb into two sends, one for the early reflections and second for the reverb tail.
Early reflections alone don't sound like a reverb, but add a sense of depth.
Also, add small amounts of short delays, and effects based on short delays - doublers, phasers, flangers etc.

[Mazala]

What about adding lots of subtle rhythmic sound effects or sparse instrumental ornamentation? It's the subtle background elements that can help to add depth.

[kgarboski]

I'll put a bit of room reverb on a dry instrument's insert and send that to a larger reverb (hall, plate, etc.)

[DJ Warmonger]

Make main sounds as clear and prominent as possible. Scrap all the elements that are barely noticeable.

[BertKoor]

Anayse & remake this, for example:

[Unaspected]

LPFs. Especially first order, damping filters.

You could use something like Precedence by 2CAudio or Tokyo Dawn's distance filter - which is free: https://www.tokyodawn.net/proximity/

[currentsound]

Depth is one of those subjective words but most people associate that with imaging and the stereo field. So on that topic, to increase imaging/depth...

Many virtual instruments are in stereo already. However, reducing the width of them with an imaging plugin that can reduce the stereo with like Waves S1 imager and then panning them can help with separating them.

The other thing you can do, it just make the file stereo to begin with. For example, record acoustic guitars in stereo, mic up amps in stereo. Pan each one 50% left and right.

Synths can also be made in stereo. Instead of using one oscillator, add a second one of the same, detune each slightly and pan them in opposite directions.

Double track all harmonies and pan them to opposite sides. That way you don't have one harmony only on one speaker/side and it will sound more balanced when walking around the room or in a club where people are in different parts of the room.

Avoid 'mono to stereo' type plugins as most if not all of them add phasing issues.

Check your mix in mono. EQ in mono. Make sure your not just panning stuff to try to compensate for not EQing stuff properly. Too many people who are learning to mix pan stuff instead of mixing it properly then wonder why their mixes sound like crap outside of the studio. People are almost never sitting directly between two speakers when they're listening to music. That means, they're hearing it partially in mono.

Also, most nightclubs and large venues run all their speakers in mono. Not to mention all cellphones and tablets are in mono. So although stereo imaging is important, the mix still needs to sound good in mono.

[currentsound]

Other than imaging, some people might associate depth with the separation of elements like the posters above. That is not so easy to explain as every song is different and all the elements in the mix will be different. Basically, every sound needs to occupy one main space the frequency spectrum and the more that elements overlap in frequency, the less separation there will be between the elements.

[Votox]

4 secret weapons to genrate depth. FX 2 will blow your mind.

Delay, Reverb, EQ, Volumefader.

[GRUMP]

That topic is quiet deep. "Depth" probably means something different to most of us and also in different mixing situations.

But if you mean that you want "the Singer" not to sound close to the Mic you´ll move him further away by using Reverb/Delay and modifying the stereo image (L/R, M/S, Spreading, Chorus, ...). And secondly bass-waves are much longer than high frequency waves. In so far the frequency balance is a crucial aspect for 3D Design, too.

Daily practice will probably look different with some experience, as it does here. But those two aspects are surely important for what is generally called depth, although there is more that could be mentioned. For me personally Depth is a very important aspect of sound design and a good mix, balancing the frequency spectrum is what I spend most of my time on - and balancing does not just refer to EQs. Picture your Mix and Sound as a composition of waveforms reflecting frequencys. Despite of the balance it´s in the end mainly the composition of the spectrum itself that makes sounds go "deep" (like for example a JD-990 Pad). The deepest Sounds I have made so far all have several Layers btw.

[Kinh]

wha-da-ell you pweeple on about?

[naveedejaz]

I second that, also using delays instead of reverbs helps to add depth without making things too muddy

What are some ways that you add depth to your mix? Any cool tricks or techniques to share?

Split your reverb into two sends, one for the early reflections and second for the reverb tail.
Early reflections alone don't sound like a reverb, but add a sense of depth.
Also, add small amounts of short delays, and effects based on short delays - doublers, phasers, flangers etc.

[ohsomiggz]

I'm actually going to release a plugin Marco to help with this specifically very soon, hopefully next month. It's whole purpose is to push elements further in the mix without losing energy, washing them in reverb, or relying on binaural tricks that don't work on speakers. It'll be at www.brucejames.studio