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[odysseys]

Hello,i'm having trouble on improving those things when i have a relatively mono-dimensional mix.
If we forget for a moment what can cause situations like this,what is the general route you take in order to fix the problem?(please give me an example and analyze if you find the question too general)

Thanks in advance.

[jasonf]

To improve with stereo spread it can sometimes be useful to run into an MS matrix and turn up the sides a tiny bit. Be careful not to go overboard at first though. Some people sometimes also eq the sides differently than the middle to fix problems or accent certain things. Be careful though because it's really easy to screw things up when you're doing MS processing.

Also remember that doing a lot of limiting will eat depth. If you bypass your limiter and find that depth comes back I would play with settings on the limiter so that you don't lose the depth.
good luck,
jasonf

[OTR-jkl]

I had a project recently that was pretty mono - only thing to the sides was acoustic gtr parts and effects....and this was a rock tune! Everything else - including the elec gtrs - was panned dead center.

I approached it with M/S processing and adjusted the M/S ratio a tiny bit to give it a little spread. You can't go too far with it or you'll ruin the guts of it.

Would that help yours...?

[bblackwood]

In mastering, you can really only enhance stereo width, not create it. If everything is panned center, there really isn't much you can do that doesn't sound worse, ime...

[D Harris]

If the mixes are not already too bright a simple method would be to add more "air".  High frequencies are very directional and give our brains a lot of spatial info.
Highs are as addictive as sugar though, so don't let the client hear you crank it too much or they may lose perspective and want more and more.  

[odysseys]

Thank you all.

[Innominandum]

I was wondering if anybody has checked out this K-Stereo "Ambience Recovery Processor." It doesn't explain what it does. Is it voodoo, or is it a Pentium 2 and Wave's S1 under the hood. With no explanations I am sceptical.

[Ed Littman]

I just worked on a project that was almost mono as you described.
I put the SIR impulse response processor with a conservative reverb setting, than placed the waves s1 stereoimager after. It helped allot, but as brad said it could make it worse too.
Ed

[odysseys]

Ed Littman wrote on Tue, 27 April 2004 03:37

I just worked on a project that was almost mono as you described. I put the SIR impulse response processor with a conservative reverb setting, than placed the waves s1 stereoimager after. It helped allot, but as brad said it could make it worse too. Ed

I was wondering,is it possible to load several multibands all working in different,let's say fundamental frequency or "instrument" areas,and apply different ambience so as to create at least an illusion of background-to-foreground (depth) and still have a good result? Does anyone use a technique like this? Does it depend on the material?

[chrisj]

Innominandum wrote on Mon, 26 April 2004 17:51

I was wondering if anybody has checked out this K-Stereo "Ambience Recovery Processor." It doesn't explain what it does. Is it voodoo, or is it a Pentium 2 and Wave's S1 under the hood. With no explanations I am sceptical.

That's Bob Katz's box. It's not voodoo. It's an arcane series of very short slapback delays to take advantage of what's called Haas effect (IIRC). That means, with slapback short enough you hear the nonperiodic information (like verb and ambience) but periodic information like musical notes blends with the initial signal. Think of it like singing in the shower, only not

If you want a cheap-date version try putting a really really short slapback (like 30 ms or so) on the mix. Or, one I like is going mid/side and putting a really short slapback on the side channel. Unless it's faint it will be unpleasantly obvious, but it does jazz up the ambience a bit. If you put it out-of-phase it'll also act a bit like an elliptical EQ reducing side-channel bass. And of course if you do that, everything will clean right up when you sum to mono, so it's clock-radio friendly...

But anyway, no, Bob's "Ambience Recovery Processor" isn't voodoo, it's a complicated series of delay lines. I believe the point (and the patented bit) is the exact amounts and timings of the delays...

Chris Johnson

[ted nightshade]

Is the mix the only thing you can control? I  would say that the place to start is in tracking. If you can track it with these things in mind, you will be in much better shape come mix. Bob Katz's site and book have some good info on the subject.