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Finally! Someone who is giving clear examples with how to deal with phasing issues like this in the context of ambient music. Just found your channel and am loving all your videos so far! One topic I'm really curious about is how an ambient track should sound when mixing in mono -- since ambient is usually known for its stereo qualities it's always tough to judge if the thinness of the mono track is appropriate or if there's subtle frequency masking / phase cancellation occurring. Would love to hear your take on this or perhaps see a video on it? Looking forward to seeing this channel develop!
Thanks for watching! It's kind of hard to avoid masking in ambient, it's just part of the experience. I do like to mix in mono but I usually have to switch back and forth to make sure I'm not sucking too much life out of the mix. Will add that to the content list, definitely something to go in depth on!
Good video, I was messing with haas delay for a certain sound within an ambience track i've been making, and I had to be real careful to make sure it sounded good in mono, not just because it might scoop out frequencies I wanted, but it also leaves this nasty comb filter sound that I really don't like. Pitching one of the signal copies differently seems to help with phase cancellation but then it sounds like a chorus which I like more but is still inappropriate in many cases. I guess, intuitively, if you delayed a frequency by a time equal to half of it's cycle (or the time it takes for it to return to zero crossing for a sine wave), then that would result in the phases cancelling, and you'd want less than 1/4th (or maybe more than 3/4th as well) for the phases to be agreeing more with each other than disagreeing. I might try looking at my unison or stereo wideners or any situation with those kinds of delays in a numerical lense to get a real visceral sense of what it's doing to the phases of all the different frequencies. That retro color plugin seemed to be a red flag as it's simply labeled "stereo" but doesn't seem to have much numerical feedback as to what it's doing, though I could be wrong since I don't use it. Either way, I like my plugins to be as geeky as possible (without being a headache)
Thanks! As I understand it, plugins like Ozone Imager (particularly its "stereoizer") are more effective than basic Haas delay at because it accounts for phase rotation, but even it has limits. Yeah as much as I love Retro Colour, it's not particularly helpful about telling you what it's doing to the sound 😅
had this issue with a client just this last week. they sent it to me, saying they wanted it wider and more consuming, that they had experimented with stereo imagers but just weren't getting what they were after. they didn't realize they were halfway to being 100% sides. i think this comes back to the idea that there needs to be mono or at least "narrower" sounds in the mix along with wide-to-the-limit sounds. mono signals in super wide ambient music sound so good to me. i love hearing a warbling cassette tape in mono but panned off the center 5 or 10% buried down in the mix while these beautiful pads and reverby guitars are going. it's like looking at a huge landscape and then looking down and seeing a single worm. or something. lol
Exactly! Took me ages to realise that width is all about the interplay between the centre and sides of the stereo image - you need that centre to enable that lizard brain to compare the things in the sides to. I learned LCR panning when I studied mixing, but because I was learning in the context of rock music I felt it like it didn't apply to ambient (as I imagine a lot of my fellow artists assume). Only recently realised how wrong I was 😋
Thank you for the tips - will bookmark this video to remind me to check for this! I don't have Ozone, but I have a feeling there's a correlation meter in Bitwig (which I used). If not, I think I need to get one!
Thanks so much for watching! It's great to have one on hand - I often get the feeling something is out of phase, and it's handy to be able to check my suspicions 😉
A 10 minute video just to explain "make things a bit narrower, m8", lol. at least you didn't bang on about MID/SIDE. the amount of mixes i get in that are F'd because of MID/SIDE processing is getting a bit silly. everybody wants width, but they want tightness too. ya can't have both unless you have a lot of sustained low end to cement it all (no. folding the anti-phased low frequencies back to the sum of L-R AKA highpassing the "SIDE's" is not the solution either)
Thanks for watching! Yes you're right I really should be putting more emphasis on the fact that it's the original recording where you need to get things right, but in my experience, a lot of the artists I'm working with either prefer prioritising their creative workflow over getting their recordings perfect, or have difficulty controlling things like stereo width due to restrictions in their equipment (e.g using modular where there is no way to control the width of most stereo voices or effects). Yes it's not ideal, but I'd prefer that artists had a grasp of how and why the issue occurs, so that they can hopefully bear this in mind as far back as the recording process - but at the least they can try and mitigate some of the mistakes they've made at the mixing process, so things are in better condition by the time they get to me. I'm planning to bang on about mid/side in my next video, looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that 😋
Oh yes no stereoizer - that is only for making mono signals seem more like stereo. I tend to avoid using it unless I'm really desperate, as it really can mess with the phase pretty bad (even though Izotope have taken great pains to avoid it).
I guess so - I've never actually tried stereoizer on a stereo signal, to be honest! But yeah as far as I understand it, it uses a similar principle to the Haas effect (very short delay on one side), so that would be highly likely to cause phase issues on a stereo track
Respect for the attempt and all, but ppl pls mix with your ears and not your eyes. Yes it can help, but you can detect phase issues with critical listening.
Agreed! I made this video out of a concern that some artists may not actually know what phase issues sound like, because I have encountered quite a few ambient tracks in my time that are almost entirely sides, with no centre. My hope was that by using their eyes to start with, they can help train themselves to hear what good phase sounds like.
@@holosuitemastering indeed. In an attempt to make the track as “wide as possible” and add movement to the droning elements, people indeed make mistake of missing the centre, hard panning and when you sum to mono you get a chuck of dirt. This is one of the traps of ambient/evolving music sound design as there is a fine line between evolving drones, be it pure noise with a filter on top, and the absolute blob of layers threw on top of each other masking and beating the hell out of each other. Also as you said, phase issues might creep in and be harder to detect as ambient music doesn’t have super dynamic repetitive elements that usually stand out if not in phase (example - top and bottom mic of the snare drum not phase aligned). So, the problem often is not understanding that less is more when it comes to ambient, and that you better design one killer drone that stands out dynamically and in frequency spectrum vs piles of random preset layers. And then, we have the mid/side issue with lots of people’s mixes, since no one thought them to watch out for it. On another hand, there is also tons of comments that make MS into mystery and science, and people start being restrictive. Again, yeah, fine, use Izotope to see you centre but listen to what you are producing because there is no manual. Anything can work and everything can clash:) cheers mate
Beautifully put! Eventually I will make a video about "mixing with your mind", ie planning and designing your sounds/recording so that they will slot together and require minimal mixing, which will cover the points you've noted there. Although definitely in the experimental sphere this is something that takes time and experience more than anything, because our music is so idiosyncratic and unique. But it's definitely the most important way to improve a mix!
Request a FREE master sample of one of your songs:
holosuitemastering.com/sample
More free resources on producing and releasing experimental music:
holosuitemastering.com/resources
I used to regularly check for content like yours but never found any. I’m very happy I’ve found your channel. Definitely checking your stuff out!
Pleased to be of service ✌
Finally! Someone who is giving clear examples with how to deal with phasing issues like this in the context of ambient music. Just found your channel and am loving all your videos so far!
One topic I'm really curious about is how an ambient track should sound when mixing in mono -- since ambient is usually known for its stereo qualities it's always tough to judge if the thinness of the mono track is appropriate or if there's subtle frequency masking / phase cancellation occurring. Would love to hear your take on this or perhaps see a video on it?
Looking forward to seeing this channel develop!
Thanks for watching! It's kind of hard to avoid masking in ambient, it's just part of the experience. I do like to mix in mono but I usually have to switch back and forth to make sure I'm not sucking too much life out of the mix. Will add that to the content list, definitely something to go in depth on!
Good video, I was messing with haas delay for a certain sound within an ambience track i've been making, and I had to be real careful to make sure it sounded good in mono, not just because it might scoop out frequencies I wanted, but it also leaves this nasty comb filter sound that I really don't like. Pitching one of the signal copies differently seems to help with phase cancellation but then it sounds like a chorus which I like more but is still inappropriate in many cases.
I guess, intuitively, if you delayed a frequency by a time equal to half of it's cycle (or the time it takes for it to return to zero crossing for a sine wave), then that would result in the phases cancelling, and you'd want less than 1/4th (or maybe more than 3/4th as well) for the phases to be agreeing more with each other than disagreeing.
I might try looking at my unison or stereo wideners or any situation with those kinds of delays in a numerical lense to get a real visceral sense of what it's doing to the phases of all the different frequencies. That retro color plugin seemed to be a red flag as it's simply labeled "stereo" but doesn't seem to have much numerical feedback as to what it's doing, though I could be wrong since I don't use it. Either way, I like my plugins to be as geeky as possible (without being a headache)
Thanks! As I understand it, plugins like Ozone Imager (particularly its "stereoizer") are more effective than basic Haas delay at because it accounts for phase rotation, but even it has limits. Yeah as much as I love Retro Colour, it's not particularly helpful about telling you what it's doing to the sound 😅
Thanks for this wonderful piece of information ❤❤❤
You're most welcome - thank you for watching!
had this issue with a client just this last week. they sent it to me, saying they wanted it wider and more consuming, that they had experimented with stereo imagers but just weren't getting what they were after. they didn't realize they were halfway to being 100% sides. i think this comes back to the idea that there needs to be mono or at least "narrower" sounds in the mix along with wide-to-the-limit sounds. mono signals in super wide ambient music sound so good to me. i love hearing a warbling cassette tape in mono but panned off the center 5 or 10% buried down in the mix while these beautiful pads and reverby guitars are going. it's like looking at a huge landscape and then looking down and seeing a single worm. or something. lol
Exactly! Took me ages to realise that width is all about the interplay between the centre and sides of the stereo image - you need that centre to enable that lizard brain to compare the things in the sides to. I learned LCR panning when I studied mixing, but because I was learning in the context of rock music I felt it like it didn't apply to ambient (as I imagine a lot of my fellow artists assume). Only recently realised how wrong I was 😋
Thank you for the tips - will bookmark this video to remind me to check for this! I don't have Ozone, but I have a feeling there's a correlation meter in Bitwig (which I used). If not, I think I need to get one!
Thanks so much for watching! It's great to have one on hand - I often get the feeling something is out of phase, and it's handy to be able to check my suspicions 😉
Thank you really much for this information! Just today I had a question about phase cancellation because of my project 😮
I hope this helped! This is such a deep topic, I feel like I'm just scraping the surface
A 10 minute video just to explain "make things a bit narrower, m8", lol. at least you didn't bang on about MID/SIDE. the amount of mixes i get in that are F'd because of MID/SIDE processing is getting a bit silly. everybody wants width, but they want tightness too. ya can't have both unless you have a lot of sustained low end to cement it all (no. folding the anti-phased low frequencies back to the sum of L-R AKA highpassing the "SIDE's" is not the solution either)
Thanks for watching! Yes you're right I really should be putting more emphasis on the fact that it's the original recording where you need to get things right, but in my experience, a lot of the artists I'm working with either prefer prioritising their creative workflow over getting their recordings perfect, or have difficulty controlling things like stereo width due to restrictions in their equipment (e.g using modular where there is no way to control the width of most stereo voices or effects).
Yes it's not ideal, but I'd prefer that artists had a grasp of how and why the issue occurs, so that they can hopefully bear this in mind as far back as the recording process - but at the least they can try and mitigate some of the mistakes they've made at the mixing process, so things are in better condition by the time they get to me.
I'm planning to bang on about mid/side in my next video, looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that 😋
@@holosuitemastering all good, mate. sorry if i came across like a bit of a bellend, lol.
That's cool, TH-cam comments section does not exactly lend itself to nuance 😉
Could you make a video about how to fix phase issues with EQ m/s?
Definitely!
🤘👽🤘
🙏☺️
Imager is off ?
Thanks so much for watching! Could you please clarify what you mean?
@@holosuitemastering stereoize is off i mean
Oh yes no stereoizer - that is only for making mono signals seem more like stereo. I tend to avoid using it unless I'm really desperate, as it really can mess with the phase pretty bad (even though Izotope have taken great pains to avoid it).
@@holosuitemastering so if its stereo signal goes through stereoizer it get more wide ryt n u think it will have phase issues
I guess so - I've never actually tried stereoizer on a stereo signal, to be honest! But yeah as far as I understand it, it uses a similar principle to the Haas effect (very short delay on one side), so that would be highly likely to cause phase issues on a stereo track
Respect for the attempt and all, but ppl pls mix with your ears and not your eyes. Yes it can help, but you can detect phase issues with critical listening.
Agreed! I made this video out of a concern that some artists may not actually know what phase issues sound like, because I have encountered quite a few ambient tracks in my time that are almost entirely sides, with no centre. My hope was that by using their eyes to start with, they can help train themselves to hear what good phase sounds like.
@@holosuitemastering indeed. In an attempt to make the track as “wide as possible” and add movement to the droning elements, people indeed make mistake of missing the centre, hard panning and when you sum to mono you get a chuck of dirt. This is one of the traps of ambient/evolving music sound design as there is a fine line between evolving drones, be it pure noise with a filter on top, and the absolute blob of layers threw on top of each other masking and beating the hell out of each other. Also as you said, phase issues might creep in and be harder to detect as ambient music doesn’t have super dynamic repetitive elements that usually stand out if not in phase (example - top and bottom mic of the snare drum not phase aligned). So, the problem often is not understanding that less is more when it comes to ambient, and that you better design one killer drone that stands out dynamically and in frequency spectrum vs piles of random preset layers. And then, we have the mid/side issue with lots of people’s mixes, since no one thought them to watch out for it. On another hand, there is also tons of comments that make MS into mystery and science, and people start being restrictive. Again, yeah, fine, use Izotope to see you centre but listen to what you are producing because there is no manual. Anything can work and everything can clash:) cheers mate
Beautifully put! Eventually I will make a video about "mixing with your mind", ie planning and designing your sounds/recording so that they will slot together and require minimal mixing, which will cover the points you've noted there. Although definitely in the experimental sphere this is something that takes time and experience more than anything, because our music is so idiosyncratic and unique. But it's definitely the most important way to improve a mix!