The Secret to STEREO WIDTH is Not What You Think
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
- You don't need stereo widening plugins or crazy tricks to get wider mixes. Getting the big, wide sound you want in your mixes is actually dead simple... here's how.
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I just put the left speaker 30 meters away from the right speaker....Instant wide mix! 😳
Nice trick bro thank you. 💯🎶 that changed my lífe.
That’s what they do when they don’t know how to mix or not enough 🧠 on audio prod. 😊
I just put in ear buds and now I get 100% channel separation. Why is no one talking about this super unique hack?
I put my speakers 31 metres apart.
Yow😂
I think a cool way to create contrast in width is to have the guitars panned slightly narrow in the vers and then go full wide in the chorus to make it bigger.
@@DerSilvano How to agree in a condescending way? 😏
@@RobbDizzl haha exactly what i was thinking. "i like coffee." "yea, a lot of people do. it's called brewing quality beans and knowing the grain size to grind them to. you fucking idiot."
@@RobbDizzl LOL. IKR?
@@DerSilvano unfortunately that's not called dynamics, it's called imaging.
@@DerSilvano that's....not what dynamics is lol
I love the fact that you’re crushing COMMON advice that other UA-camrs are giving out.
Some of these are topics that I spent a lot of time on going in the complete wrong direction
Keep it up
This is all true if all instruments are recorded in stereo or have their own duplex. However, it often happens that we have, for example, 6 mono tracks of different guitars that need to be arranged in the stereo panorama in order to distinguish what each one is playing. In such a case, we cannot simply stack three completely left and three completely right.
jordan mainly works with rock music with one or two guitarists. he's not usually mixing music to where there are 6 guitarists playing different things. i think he would get creative if that were the case.
@@Fire-Toolz It would be more correct for me to say 6 different instruments. For example: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, saxophone, piano, trumpet, etc. In this case, C, L, R technique is not relevant. However, I agree with this "rule" in the song presented in the video. :)
Even watching this on my phone I can hear a difference. When you panned stuff in on my phone it immediately became more congested sounding. Thanks for trying to show everyone that so many of these guys out here are trying to teach people the wrong things!
I like the idea of using the stereo widening in ableton as an effect on wide pads by turning them down to close to mono, making the listener used to that sound then widening it for a dramatic effect.
Yep.....great idea and technique!
yeah the only time i really find myself grabbing a widening plugin is to turn down the stereo width for things like bass
or MAYBE use sidewidener on a mono source for a little bit of spread on a vocal layer or EQ'd reverb. but otherwise not much else
You had this on your 17 Noob Mistakes video and I tried it... It was a "dawn breaks over marblehead" moment, I was surprised at how everything instantly sounded much more separate and clear... Thank you for this and your other helpful advice!
Keep in mind your just increasing the level. You also have to slightly change either panned side or its just making it sound louder/better
After watching this video, I can confirm this makes it wider. Night and day and the mix is even better as a result 🙌🏼
This is what I like about different genres of music.
I am more into acoustic instruments. Think bluegrass, jazz, small orchestra. And I almost never hard pan unless it's a (stereo mic) as you lose a lot body of the instruments and it starts to sound really 2D and instruments don't gel together as much.
At most it may be a mandolin or something with a higher frequency to make it appear a bit wider if I need it. (I never pan lower midrangy stuff hard.)
So with that experience, I started doing more rocky things and I noticed that it sounded really small. Full sounding with a lot of body. But it sounded like a cramped space. Not at all like what I was getting with my acoustic recordings.
I opened my session up and started panning it LCR and it became instantly much better.
It really made realize that there is a way for every genre out there.
Thank you for that! Also subbed
If you have double tracked acoustic guitars you'd be better hard panning them, in that way they sound awesome. For orchestral instruments... yeah it might suit better to pan stuff in between (i'm gonna test it soon, I'm arranging a prog rock song with lots of orchestral stuff)
Remember correlation meter .. if you want a balanced mix if it dips it’s not going translate into mono. Correlation meter the master bus and it will tell you how far you can go
You're videos are always clear and helpful. Doing the work first isn't always fun to hear but we all know the truth when we hear it.
Editing and content of the videos recently has been spot on. Nice work Jordan!
I hate how simple yet effective this is. I’ve been spinning my wheels for so long trying to get wide sounding mixes. Thank you for this.
I have always been told the ways I would fail or not reach the little potential I had. I always keep trying and when I'm manic I say some messed up stuff that I don't mean but I'm not a bad person. I don't try to be 😢. Your advice was great and makes a lot of sense. Like how you have to cut the bass to make it come back harder. Contrast is often overlooked in music but a critical part. My example is the song "no quarter" and it's use of light and dark for a dramatic feel.😮
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Why were two of the guitar tracks stereo and two were mono?? RH guitar 2 and Main guitar is stereo?
Never expected to hear this... very cool! Great video.
IMHO Stereo wideners can make the track sound kind of hollow. But if you select only the higher frequencies and make them wider it can open the mix a lot without sacrificing "body".
I’m an amateur mostly R&B producer but I can’t forget the first time I heard sound of the Tool drums and always wanted to add this kinda progressive metal drum sound to my tool kit. Thank you 🤍
Can you show more of the exclusions to these tips. Like how to use light panning correctly.
Just make sure nothing is in the same spot if you pan one guitar all the way to the left don't pan the cymbals all the way to the left to
@@DerSilvano jordan pans the toms in a realistic way, and he would probably make more exceptions to the rule if he was working on other genres. often rock and metal don't really need anything other than LCR. i mix a lot of experimental music and though i still use the LCR technique when it comes to heavy guitars, snares, kicks, vocals and harmonies, etc., i get more creative in other contexts, but if i were just mixing the types of bands jordan mixes, i'd be doing it the same way.
Great advice - for this genre, I suppose. An orchestra or big band, you would have instruments arranged as they would in reality.
Points off for using the term "Band aid" solution out of context. (Band aids are temporary fixes - pretty sure a plugin remains in place). ☺
I'm gonna try the best panning soon, since I'm arranging a prog rock song with lots of orchestral instruments. I guess I'll move away from LCR panning for these instruments if something sounds bad
I usually do a left guitar at 6 o'clock with more treble and fx, an overdubbed guitar panned 3 o'clock with less treble and FX. 100% pan sounds like overkill.
That’s great advice brother. I’m rather new to mixing and mastering, but recently on another UA-cam channel of mine, I’ve been uploading my compositions. This is one of the many newbie mistakes I’ve been making, so Ty very much for sharing. It’s going to change everything for me on the production side of things🙏🎻🎹❤️
I watched this review and was like “it’s probably genre specific” and for shits and giggles tried it on my track and when I used my ears, I couldn’t deny that this in fact, does sound better.
LCR mixing is a valid technique but it can cause the mix to fall apart when put in mono, having your hard panned instruments even at 80 instead of 100 will help it translate better.
"Nobody cares about mono" - CLA
@@danymalsound so sayeth the lord, seriously, just because a thing works for him doesn’t mean it’ll work for you, brilliant people say dumb things, it’s not just about if you were listening on one speaker it’s about the fact that mono compatibility is also an indication of the stability of the stereo image in a mix, also why wouldn’t you want your music to translate well on almost anything, listen to playing god by polyphia, that translates pretty well in mono yet is extremely wide, that’s the mark of a good mix, when the whole tonal balance of a song isn’t dependent on one thing, it’s like someone have a pure sine wave bass at just under 40hz, sure it’ll sounds great on really amazing speakers that go that low but it’ll suck everywhere else, so what do you do? You add harmonic distortion to allow the higher order harmonics to create the illusion of the fundamental, now it translates much better on almost all speakers. Going from 100-80 is barely noticeable but is the difference between a mix that falls apart in mono and one that sounds good regardless of what you play it at.
I listened to a mix of mine using LCR panning in mono and it sounds just fine (I did it both on my computer in the mix and on a friend's phone when the song came out). Also remember that for a while there were only LCR positions on the pan nob, and those mixes sounded great even in mono
@@alessandrosummer by that logic we should be recording through wax cylinder and with one mic in the room with all the musicians, that’s “real” music.
LCR mixes don’t always sound bad in mono, what happens is that the panned sounds become 3db quieter in mono, so if you pan the things that are already really loud in LCR then yes the mix will hold up but let’s say you’ve got a solo panned left and it’s well balanced in stereo LCR, when monoed the solo will be masked heavily by other instruments and be buried, so it’s not as if having it in LCR will make it suck in mono it’s just another consideration.
@@memeswillneverdiethat's why every professional mixer often checks the mix in mono. I can understand your point (I make especially prog rock music, so definitely it's going to be loud for the whole song or almost) but I think a good mix of an acoustic song can hold up even with LCR panning. For sure you have to be more careful. Anyway it's pretty always a bad idea to have a solo hard panned: a solo guitar (or even a lead vocal) should be 100 % center (unless you doing a Bohemian Rhapsody kind of moving panning)
I find that it’s really easy to crowd the sides if you never put anything in between full L/R and Mono. Seems to result in more masking and less clarity but I’m no professional
That's not the case. Don't think the panning is distributing the sound around 200 spaces, think as distributing the sound on the two channels. You start with a center signal: this has the same volume on both sides; if you pan it a little bit right, the volume on the left channel starts decreasing (the same for the other side). If you hard pan it the volume on one side has been completely turned down. If you pan everything wide or center, you're gonna have more separation, since something can be heard just in one channel; if something is panned in between, you'd have less separation. In any case you're going to hear the sound in the two speakers, not in 200 different positioned speakers. I hope this explanation was clear
@@alessandrosummer uh thanks but I know how panning works. I appreciate the thorough response but just bc there’s only two channels doesn’t mean that there’s no perceived space in between full width and a mono signal
@@jakesoojian438 of course there's perceived space. But saying that the channel can be overcrowded if too much stuff is hard panned is not correct. They are overcrowded when too much stuff is overlapping in frequency, especially in the low end
Hendrix in mono 🍻🤘 Your advice is "That's Gold, Jerry ! Gold ! "
Good, informative and short -- that's how it's done. The only thing I would disagree with concerns Izotope's "Imager" plugin, which allows for 4 separate bands within dependent frequency setting and widening, so that the low end (whatever upper frequency you want) can be kept as narrow or wide as you want, and the others similarly set. It's a nice option instead of straightjacketed LCR.
panning and imaging are not the same though. panning is placing an element at a specific location in the stereo field. the imager plug-in is taking stereo information and either boosting or cutting it, or it's generating artificial stereo information
@@Fire-Toolz That is true, yet Imager does allow for the 2nd type of widening in the video where the lower frequencies were also widened.
I think that you should pan stuff wisely first, then use this "Imager" in some cases (for example on a lead guitar track to widen it). As Jordan says, it's better not to use band aid fixes, and mixing in a narrow way to then add a stereo widening is definitely a band aid
Creativity and intention is 🔑
As always, there are exceptions. It’s very subjective. A great example is the song Warrior by Kimbra and Mark Foster and A-track, which has everything spread out really wide with pretty much nothing in the center.
I always do this simple approach, But then I hear a song from the latest Rammstein album and it sounds so much wider and huge... there must be still a difference.
they use techniques that engineers like jordan would probably never mess with because they don't need to, because they aren't mixing synth-heavy electronic music. when you're working with lots of synths, you can get a lot crazier with stereo imaging. and honestly, if you have a metal song with double tracked guitars panned hard left and hard right, there really isn't anything more wide-sounding than that unless you start going out of phase. and with a lot of experimental and electronic music, out of phase sounds are sometimes intentional and used creatively
@@Fire-Toolz I get it, but even if there is just bass, drums and vocals it sounds so huge.
Don't forget about multi-band harmonic saturators/exciters and Mid/Side mode on your plug-ins (especially on the mix bus). It's SUPER easy to destroy a mix with these, but maybe that's the difference between your mixes and the latest Rammstein album? Also, their album has been mastered. I know you shouldn't just assume something will be fixed/addressed at the mastering phase and great mixes don't need a ton of work during mastering, but it still does make a difference.
@@chrisburkhardt4902 I also have the same mastering engineer as they had. But yeah, I'll have a closer look in mixing.
Dumb question but "hard" left or right means 100% right. Only out of one speaker?
yes
Not a dumb question bud, and you’re correct, hard left or right indeed means 100% panned.
@@greedokenobi3855 I might have the "dumb" question now ^^, but in the case of loops or samples (inclued sampling), how can you apply this stereo method via hard left or right?
Is there a pugin that compensates for this problem?
@@HobbieOne What problem are you referring to exactly? Can you be a little bit more specific? What result are you trying to achieve with what type of ‘sample’?
I always do hard panning for guitars. Seemed obvious, but what about chorus? 20 vocal tracks or so with harmonies? I'd be curious to see how that is done to still get a massive sound.
I like to use delay for width. Left channel has short delay on right and vice versa.
you should start putting the song title and band names of the example tracks in the descriptions. Sometimes I wanna look up the band cause i dig it and i can't.
Excellent video chief..
I wouldn't say it sounds bigger. Depth is what makes things bigger to my ears. Width seems highly overrated to me. Some of my favorite songs aren't wide and are just really well recorded instruments with punch and clarity coming right up the middle. I do like the contrast idea and it's useful to be aware of and make use of at times.
Is there a way to do that live instead of during preproduction
I rarely pan things lately and people tell me my mixes sound wide
Tbh the “widest” thing placed in this mix, whatever
mix or plugins used- the kit.
Interesting. The kit gets more mics and can get too much attention. Its the one thing you want narrowed, even with being accurately panned - your guits are never going to sound wide if they’re all happening “inside” the space a drum kit seems to occupy.
Anyone think I’m wrong? Please, discuss!
Do you know if your mastering engineer uses any stereo widening or M/S for supplemental width?
whoever they are, they only use it if they think it sounds like its needed. there should never be routine usage.
@@Fire-Toolz oh agreed, I was more curious if part of Jordan's philosophy here related in part to a particular workflow he has established with someone else for the end of the process :)
its funny that when i do a mix on my headphones before i listen to it on the monitors it sound completely even and good on the phones but on the monitors i get hit with bass and have to turn it down a whole lot so i dont understand how anyone is always searching for more bass
Great video! Also: whats the song in the video? Sounded cool!
LCR mixing sounds wide...but is also widely mono incompatible
so do you have 2 of the same track, one panned each way? because I make techno and I cant figure out what to pan to one side
The rhythm guitar, for example would be double tracked. Two different performances with the same or similar tone. One panned hard left, on hard right. In EDM or pop situations you may do a similar thing with a Rhodes or synth pad or something. However don’t just copy the patch and put one left and one right. Make sure they’re slightl different patches or even slightly different chord arrangements (that obviously still compliment each other). So you’ve got essentially the same thing as a wide rock mix. Two fundamental tracks each panned to the far sides.
solid as always, thank you
Great video, thanks!
Any advise to avoid my hard panned guitars to get lower in volume when the song is reproduced on mono systems like cellphones or clip speakers?
Set the pan law in your project to 6dB instead of the default 2,5 or 3 dB, then balance your mix again, and stereo-mono compatibility will be better.
@@markusandergard6925 wow that´s new for me. Gonna look out on how to do it on Reaper. Thanks!
I would recommend the house of Kush's video on mixing in mono. He does a better job of explaining but I think the basic idea is that if your guitars are disappearing in mono it's an indication that you're relying too much on stereo placement for separation instead of making spaces in frequencies
So what about straight drum mixes? Do you pan things like hi-hat vs ride far left and right also then?
If everything loud, means nothing loud.. if everything bright, means nothing bright.. if everything panned and wide, means nothing wide. As you Said, contrats.... Something need to be quite to make loud perceived loud, or something need center so when something wide, we perceive it as it wide
What if you have dense mix
Please magic eq for piano 😁
Dude, you work with Mandroid Echostar? I love those guys!
Great video, cheers!
Hardcore Music Stereo - An interesting video; thanks.
I'm a bit confused. I've been told by 'everyone,' ...any dude with an opinion to the studio in California with "the most famous drum room anywhere." ALL have told me NEVER pan, EVER, completely hard left or right. Close to but not absolutely. And 'everyone' also says, "don't do this on a preponderance of tracks, use it incredibly sparingly.
I was at a movie mixing session - now I know movies are a bit specialized. They had a symphony, etc. Nothing was hard-panned. They worked for a couple of hours getting precise mono-positioning of the various instruments. A trumpet might be at '1:15' and an electric guitar at '1:20.' They achieved this monstrous, James Bond, superwide mix - and did not use extreme panning. I'm not sure how you could extreme pan instruments in a symphony. Are you referring to certain types of metal music perhaps?
That said, I wonder if you could help me decode one of my favorite mix sounds - don't know if you have a website? I've asked producers to show me how it was done. All puff out their chests and say 'done' "piece of cake," "be my pleasure to help you with this great sound," but then, inevitably, I get an email saying ""ya got me. Stumped. BTW why would you WANT this sound?" LOL.
Regardless, thanks for an 'ear-opening,' video.
yeah but no stage has someone dead left or dead right
Speaking of size, do you have an opinion of atmos as of yet? Cheers
I'm not saying this is right or wrong, just not my cup of tea and utterly boring even, as an oldschool engineer/mixing engineer/producer from the days of tape and vinyl (80's) I naturally keep the bass-energy material in the center, guitars, keyboards and other stuff divided with air in between the various panning positions if it makes any sense, the soundstage and mix just get's so much more interesting, would never ever consider a psycho-acoustic plugin for this that's blasphemy ;-)
Surprising advice. Thank you. But what about widening that goes BEYOND the speakers or headphones? I remember decades ago there were mixes that sounded amazing and the wound went beyond the speakers. Of course, none of this means anything with the many mono audio devices, these days. :)
To go beyond the speakers you often need negative phase correlation which creates issues in mono unless its using binaural techniques
Do you really do the center-right-left position also for example with a guitar intro? Doesn't it lose some impact once the song moves away from the intro?
I think it works just fine
How do you pan double vocal like one singer on each side? Hard left hard right or somewhere in between?
typically if they are lead vocals you do not want to pan them at all. if it's a choir peace then you can get a little more creative and complex. if there's one singer doing lead and another doing a harmony, have the harmony vocal double-track, and then pan each of those takes hard L and R. lead vocals should always be in the center. unless of course you're trying to create a psychedelic effect in a uniquely produced song. which 99% of the time you are not when you're working with the type of music jordan mixes.
So what do you do when you have orchestra in the mix? Hard pan them too or..?
he's talking about rock and metal music.
Funny how I've Never heard a difference in Any comparison on any video I've ever watched. Doesn't matter who's video. Headphones, earbuds, my studio sound system. Also funny how everyone only plays the samples for 2 seconds.
Ya but if you dont slightly change either panned side your just increasing the side volume. Tricking yourself, like compression can
A flashlight on a bright sunny day 😅
After watching this channel I can't watch other channels for mixing, their source material is amateur and bad sounding... This channel spoils you. But it really makes the difference hearing good source material. I don't wanna learn from somebody that is mixing a terrible garage band mix.
The amount of times I have seen huge mixers, Joey Sturgis extensively, use widening plugins has me confused with this statement. Guess I will just keep using my ears.
LCR vs Dolby Atmos 😅
"imagine standing in an actual room with six guitar players"
I'd rather not do that.
"Band Aid mixing are for amateurs..." -- pro mixer would never said such thing
*listening to stereo on my iphone*
Mmm yes I see, very nice…
Omg, you really made this video? Everyone knows how to hard pan. How many videos will you people make about stereo width?
This is a neat video except that stereo mixing is dead now.
Unsubscribing until you retrofit your studio with 11 speakers and two subs and how us how to create width in atmos so my mixes can get playlisted by Apple
/s
Iron Maiden.Will be calling for there money.Soon.
Personally, I find your recording with so many guitars to be the problem. It is not _at all_ realistic, so how can we get anything even _resembling_ a real life audio experience? This is the problem! So much heavy metal and rap and hip hop and modern pop is _completely_ unrealistic. I haven't the slightest interest in hearing it.
For a contrast that provides a far more interesting audio mix go listen to the Rolling Stones' "Tumbling Dice." There you have exactly two guitars, maybe more with a bit of layering, but they sound exciting and vital and the sound stage is indeed wide. This is from a recording made in 1972!!! All this technology has absolutely ruined music! 🤔🤷♂🤨😠
I agree with all of this except for the dramatic ending. "All this technology has absolutely ruined music!" 😄 Take a deep breath. There are people out there recording DAWlessly and otherwise keeping it relatively old-school. Seek out and support that music rather than throwing tantrums over all this modern bullshit.
@@fclefjefff4041 Rick Beato can describe the current state of the music industry much better than I can, and with much greater authority, too. ua-cam.com/video/YD_DoKo5Dg8/v-deo.html
Light doesn't need darkness though. Sorry that was just a bad comparison. I mean, imagine Heaven. Jesus IS the Light. Is there darkness in Heaven? Nay. His glory will still shine, amen?