wide sounding mastering
- Thread starter Star Ark
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timislegend
Member
- Jun 8, 2010
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m/s mastering helps with stereo image... learn everything you can about mid-side mastering techniques and you should be a mastering ninja. 
pikachu69
mixomatic 2000
Brainworx BX digital is an amazing m/s mastering plugin and is well worth a look at. The Mono maker knob is cool too...
http://www.brainworx-music.de/en/plugins/bx_digital_v2
There is a free demo you can download that doesn't require ilok.
Also check out the demo video on the site to get an idea, its a great video.
http://www.brainworx-music.de/en/plugins/bx_digital_v2
There is a free demo you can download that doesn't require ilok.
Also check out the demo video on the site to get an idea, its a great video.
Morgan C
MAX LOUD PRESETS¯\(°_o)/¯
I've never really understood the fascination with wide mixes. I mean, if guitars aren't hardpanned then it's annoying, but apart from that.. I don't think I've ever noticed any mixes being particularly wide. Some might use the stereo field better than others, but you can't go past 100L/R. If anything, too wide is annoying (Chimaira's Resurrection's cymbals sound like they're all individually panned 90L/R, it sounds weird).
Can you post an example of a 'wide' mix versus a 'normal' or narrow mix?
Can you post an example of a 'wide' mix versus a 'normal' or narrow mix?
RedDog
Humanoid typhoon
I'm for getting your "Wideness" from the mixing stage. I hate using mid-side processing to obtain a wideness that I couldn't get naturally. It sounds too faux and cheesy to me. If it's a crushing wall I'm after, I mix until I get a crushing wall.
Course you could always buy Ozone and widen everything from 1k up. Just hope to god it never gets summed to mono.
Course you could always buy Ozone and widen everything from 1k up. Just hope to god it never gets summed to mono.
I'm not exactly talking about panning
The mixes I got back from a pro mastering engineer sound wide, everything sounds wide, not just the guitars or the cymbals panned further.
The research I've been doing today is talking about processing bass below a defined frequency as mono and hi passing the sides. It is opening up the mix by giving even more space to the mix. It's like an illusion, the pan pots aren't turned further but it sounds like they have been.
The mastering guy didn't do a whole lot else to my mixes he says but they sound much better.
It may be hard to judge from the different players, but my reverbnation page has my old self mastered mixes and the page in my sig has the pro master versions. If you do compare keep in mind reverbnation's player isn't as nice as Bandcamp's.
www.reverbnation.com/starark
The mixes I got back from a pro mastering engineer sound wide, everything sounds wide, not just the guitars or the cymbals panned further.
The research I've been doing today is talking about processing bass below a defined frequency as mono and hi passing the sides. It is opening up the mix by giving even more space to the mix. It's like an illusion, the pan pots aren't turned further but it sounds like they have been.
The mastering guy didn't do a whole lot else to my mixes he says but they sound much better.
It may be hard to judge from the different players, but my reverbnation page has my old self mastered mixes and the page in my sig has the pro master versions. If you do compare keep in mind reverbnation's player isn't as nice as Bandcamp's.
www.reverbnation.com/starark
pikachu69
mixomatic 2000
I mentioned a plugin to you in a previous post. Think you should take a look at it mate. It will do what you want, including making frequencies below a certain threshold mono, I usually make everything below 80 - 100 Hz mono when mastering depending on the mix. It has true m/s processing including being able to solo both the M and S content separately and also EQ each section separately too. Its really great.
Pedro Teixeira
Member
+1 for this. Can't really go wider than 100R/L without sounding weird or phasey... And I agree 100% with Chimaira Ressurection... It really annoys me listening to it, those cymbals are SO hard panned there's hardly anything left in the middle and it sounds very very separate from the drumkit
I believe he is referring to something like the Haas effect, which creates the illusion of a wider stereo image when done correctly. Not the physical hard panning on your pan pots, if achieving a perceived "wide" mix was as simple as hard panning, I'd be pumped.
reg3n
Señor Miembro
+1 , and you just reminded me of that plugin name, i was trying to remember that for days :Smokin:
nezvers
Beast
And that plugin would be... ? I would like to know too!
I've heard of Haas effect, but cant get it right.
bryan_kilco
Member
My buddy went to school for AE and he told me about the M/S "effect" or process.....I still can't totally grasp it.
Is it like.... you treat the "mid" and "side" tones/freqs differently? From what I read on Wiki, you need at least 2 mics on a single source to achieve this? Is it basically playing with the phase? Anyone? :zombie:
Is it like.... you treat the "mid" and "side" tones/freqs differently? From what I read on Wiki, you need at least 2 mics on a single source to achieve this? Is it basically playing with the phase? Anyone? :zombie:
timislegend
Member
- Jun 8, 2010
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there is the mid-side stereo miking technique and m/s mastering techninques.
two different things.
you don't have to mic m/s to master with and m/s encoder.
The Haas effect:
- If you take a signal and delay it by a very small amount, the brain won't realize it's an echo and will instead interpret it as being a separate sound. The threshold is in the 20-30ms range, according to most studies.
- For our purposes, this means you can take a single guitar track, pan it left, pan a copy of the same track right, delay the copy by 8ms, and it will sound like a double-tracked guitar part.
- It can, however, really mess up the mono image of your mix, which can become important a) if some jerkoff is listening to your masterpiece in mono, or b) if someone happens to be standing in just the wrong place with respect to their speakers. The two copies, being so close together in time, start to cancel each other out and sound really thin/shitty/etc. If it works for you, by all means, but it's just something to be aware of. Apparently some of the old Van Halen stuff uses it to fatten up Eddie's guitar.
- Personally, even though I don't hear it as a delay, the end result always sounds like it's leaning to whichever side the original is on. More delay = more width, but more of a pan effect. As such, if I do this, I'll usually do a real double-track and then give each of them a Haas so the stereo sound balances out.
- Longer delays will also start to cause problems if you're working with tight gallops and that sort of thing. However, if you set it to 1ms it won't sound very wide, so you'll have to do some playing.
For a free plugin, try this: http://www.vescofx.com/vfxFreeHaas
You can also do it yourself with a delay. Using GDelay in Reaper, set up a 100% wet, 8ms delay, and then turn off either the left or right output pin. Boom, done.
Mid/Side Mastering:
- Some nerd, ages ago, figured out that by doing some fancy math with a pair of signals, you can separate the Mid (mono) and Side (stereo) components. Mid comes from comparing the two signals and taking the bits that are similar, while Side is derived from the bits that differ.
- For miking, this means that a pair of mics set up properly can give you left, right, and center signals to work with.
- For mixing, it means you can take a normal stereo mix/submix and tweak the center and sides separately.
- If you were to turn up the Side signal and leave the Mid alone, your mix would sound comparatively wider because you're accentuating the two sides. Likewise, turning down the sides will narrow the mix.
- You could also, for instance, turn down the low-end on the Sides and boost it on the Mids to tighten all of your lower frequencies in the middle of the mix, or maybe throw some reverb on the sides to give your mix a sense of space.
I've read in a few places that, rather than focusing on width, it's better to make sure that the stereo spectrum is fully used - give every instrument/drum its own combination of pan position and frequency range so everything has a spot to sit in, things aren't fighting with each other, and so on. I try to leave width tricks until after I've got that sorted out, which tends to be never, so... yeah.
- If you take a signal and delay it by a very small amount, the brain won't realize it's an echo and will instead interpret it as being a separate sound. The threshold is in the 20-30ms range, according to most studies.
- For our purposes, this means you can take a single guitar track, pan it left, pan a copy of the same track right, delay the copy by 8ms, and it will sound like a double-tracked guitar part.
- It can, however, really mess up the mono image of your mix, which can become important a) if some jerkoff is listening to your masterpiece in mono, or b) if someone happens to be standing in just the wrong place with respect to their speakers. The two copies, being so close together in time, start to cancel each other out and sound really thin/shitty/etc. If it works for you, by all means, but it's just something to be aware of. Apparently some of the old Van Halen stuff uses it to fatten up Eddie's guitar.
- Personally, even though I don't hear it as a delay, the end result always sounds like it's leaning to whichever side the original is on. More delay = more width, but more of a pan effect. As such, if I do this, I'll usually do a real double-track and then give each of them a Haas so the stereo sound balances out.
- Longer delays will also start to cause problems if you're working with tight gallops and that sort of thing. However, if you set it to 1ms it won't sound very wide, so you'll have to do some playing.
For a free plugin, try this: http://www.vescofx.com/vfxFreeHaas
You can also do it yourself with a delay. Using GDelay in Reaper, set up a 100% wet, 8ms delay, and then turn off either the left or right output pin. Boom, done.
Mid/Side Mastering:
- Some nerd, ages ago, figured out that by doing some fancy math with a pair of signals, you can separate the Mid (mono) and Side (stereo) components. Mid comes from comparing the two signals and taking the bits that are similar, while Side is derived from the bits that differ.
- For miking, this means that a pair of mics set up properly can give you left, right, and center signals to work with.
- For mixing, it means you can take a normal stereo mix/submix and tweak the center and sides separately.
- If you were to turn up the Side signal and leave the Mid alone, your mix would sound comparatively wider because you're accentuating the two sides. Likewise, turning down the sides will narrow the mix.
- You could also, for instance, turn down the low-end on the Sides and boost it on the Mids to tighten all of your lower frequencies in the middle of the mix, or maybe throw some reverb on the sides to give your mix a sense of space.
I've read in a few places that, rather than focusing on width, it's better to make sure that the stereo spectrum is fully used - give every instrument/drum its own combination of pan position and frequency range so everything has a spot to sit in, things aren't fighting with each other, and so on. I try to leave width tricks until after I've got that sorted out, which tends to be never, so... yeah.
nezvers
Beast
I just played around Izatope ozone. Before this thread had no clue of this awesome thing. How i understand m/s processing mean that you treat mid and side separately.
mid how far I understand is that sound which layers in midle from L & R. And side is rest.
I just did multiband comp on m/s and it sounded realy wide.
mid how far I understand is that sound which layers in midle from L & R. And side is rest.
I just did multiband comp on m/s and it sounded realy wide.
RedDog
Humanoid typhoon
In M/S processing, the Mid channel in a recording is everything that has equal amplitude on both sides of the stereo image. i.e. a mono signal.
The side channel is what you get when you split a stereo track, invert the phase of the right channel, and sum to mono.
The digital phasing will, in effect, annihilate signals of now-opposing phase and all you'll hear is what's on the sides. i.e. a hard-panned guitar.
If you apply an effect to the side channel such as a chorus, the beauty of it is that the effect will disappear in mono. You usually hear about M/S processing in club music and other stuff that you have the option to play on a home stereo and hear some effects in the stereo field, but when played on a mono sound system, the phase occurances defeat each other and the effect disappears. That's all I've come to gather from using simple logic.
The side channel is what you get when you split a stereo track, invert the phase of the right channel, and sum to mono.
The digital phasing will, in effect, annihilate signals of now-opposing phase and all you'll hear is what's on the sides. i.e. a hard-panned guitar.
If you apply an effect to the side channel such as a chorus, the beauty of it is that the effect will disappear in mono. You usually hear about M/S processing in club music and other stuff that you have the option to play on a home stereo and hear some effects in the stereo field, but when played on a mono sound system, the phase occurances defeat each other and the effect disappears. That's all I've come to gather from using simple logic.
