How Mastering Goes.

[TheStoryteller]

I don't know who mastered Revolver.. my guess would be Göran Finnberg, and he usually don't use any stereo widener. I can assure you, it was most probably just mixed that way by Charlie Storm (which by the way is the same guy who did the keyboards/synths for In Flames "Clayman" and more great stuff). There's nothing you can do with S1 (and other wideners) that can't be done with volume and panning in the mix.

 

[chadsxe]

I don't understand. How can you make them sound further out than the speakers are positioned? Is it about psychoacoustics and fooling our brains into thinking that they're wider than they actually are?

You can mess with the phase to make things appear farther apart.

 

[Seizure.]

When mixing down your project for your mastersession, should you allready add dither?
theoreticly, if your not downsampling.. you shouldn't have to right?
But i useally mixdown my project of 24 bit tracks down to 32 bit float (i think plug ins work better in 32 bit float)..i'm now upsampling?
So should i add 16 bit dither when doing so?

I'm confused....

 

[TheStoryteller]

No, you should not! If you dither to 16 bit you "destroy" the bits from 16 -> 24 bits, to put it simple. The absolutely best way if you record at 24 bit is to export as 32 bit float since, as you say yourself, the plugins will work/render at 32 bit whether you like it or not. If you do this, you will lose NO data at all. If you export to 24 bit there's a possibility you will lose SOME data; audible or not. Dithering should be done only once, to 16 bit, preferably as the last thing in your mastering chain.

 

[Seizure.]

Thanks very much for clearing that up!
I've been wondering about it for a while.