How to mix in stereo... without sucking in mono (part 1)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Part 1: Toeing The Blumlein.
When you pan a mono part left or right you only change the levels feeding the left or right channels, this doesn't introduce any timing or phase differences. Likewise if you record stereo signals with a coincident microphone pair, signals arrive at both microphones at the same time, and in phase. This avoids the worst possible mono compatibility issues, but still doesn't provide perfect mono compatibility. This tutorial by Dan Worrall shows the pitfalls that remain, and looks at a few ways to use panning and effects to create a sense of width, while mostly following Alan Blumlein's original rules and avoiding any timing differences between the channels.
This series continues with • How to mix in stereo..... .
You can find more useful tutorials at www.fabfilter.... . FabFilter plug-ins can be downloaded and purchased via www.fabfilter.com .
i've been doing this shit for 15 years.
my mind is BLOWN. this is like unlocking a new achievement in mixing abilities. holy shit. some of the things people do make so much more sense. I never knew about these things.
Been mixing for years and thought I might find an interesting tidbit here. Instead my mind was blown. One thing I love about audio and music is just how much there always is to continue learning.
This series is genuinely incredible. The quality of the information, the maximization of your time without extraneous information or cutaways, the visuals, the VoiceOver. Well done, and thank you for putting this out!
Dan, have you considered starting an online school?
I second that!
He had a website platinumears dot com.
But I think it's down now check what he is offering on his TH-cam Channel on his affiliate programme, really interesting plans there.
Yeah he diserve much more attention that's a fact since a long time.
I think that the least we could do is to mention him when we see bad tutorials like so: made by Dan Worral this bad tutorial could have been wonderfull... or something like that...
Fabfilter Academy, i'd give them all my money
Bottom line.
"I'm keeping a photo frame of Dan in my mixing room". Respect!!!
That and audiobook narration. Such a great presentation voice.
And this is a very informative vid. I've recently been doing more mono checks on mixes because BT speakers and room settings where the stereo image is lost or obscured. This is great :)
Dan, you are an absolute eye-opener. Your tutorials are always well explained, and in high quality. I don't know how, but when you talk I really feel trust about everything you are saying.
Thanks for making us better musicians. It really matters, and it really helps.
Finally, a decent mixing tutorial directed by Guy Ritchie
These are some of the best YT videos on sound mixing production.
All producers, engineers, etc must know these kind of stuff!
These are pure gold. Thanks fabfilter and dan
FAB-ulous! Using Fab filters to illustrate the discussion cleared up some confusion for me.
You have a new fan, Dan!
Thank you Fab Filter to bring us Dan Worral's great tutorials. I hope you value him as he diserve it. Probably well, seen the long terme collaboration...
Thanks for explaining matrix virtual surround without even mentioning it. Listening to the phase shift example on a 5.1 setup with a matrix decoder really sells the point across.
These videos are simply brilliant.
awesome video :o never really understood those concepts before. I can't say I'll be a pro with this right after watching, but it's definitely gonna help me getting better in the future, so thank you !
Dan worrell is fast becoming the David Attenborough of attenuation
All his vids are so informative and helpful. But what is it about this guy's voice I just love? I'd listen to him read the dictionary.
Dan Worral
He has his own YT channel!
that proq3 trick is amazing...
SÛREMENT un excellent guide! I hope to hear his nice voice in French Canadian!
This is insane! Love it. I have so much to learn on this.
i am vibing with this demo lol
this is a masterclass
You guys should make some utility plugins. That would definitely be FAB !!
I need Dan to narrate my life
Is there a Pan plugin that does this automatically?
Great video, thanks for the tips! I'm a little surprised to see you left out using the Haas effect to give stereo spread that disappears in mono. Was there a reason for that?
So helpful
i almost never pan something HARD left or right, unless they are dubbed track of a guitar, so i make the two mono signal into one stereo signal, the feeling of something being hard left while another is hard right i cant stand it unless there are two sources complimenting each other, just like how the Telecaster and the organ, were panned hard left and right, but the organ was complimenting the tele
Anyone else watching this in mono?
God damn you are good, Mr Worrall!
It all comes down to what ive always believed was key ....The arrangement. Pick your main(focused) elements and arrange around them instead of forcing other elements that are not really that important for the song.
3:50 ..... but ... argh, i'm struggling to wrap my head around it ... 1 + 0 / 2 = 0.5 ; on two speakers = 1. But Bass and drums+Bass and Drums / 2 ; on two speakers = 2x what they were at the beginning... So... It does mean they are 6db less than what they were at the beginning, because their volume has effectively been halfed; or you could say the bass and drums were doubled while the sides were left the same... Why did you have to say the "in air" bit.. now i'm confused haha
great
I have a pan knob, now I need a further Left and Right 😅😂
INCREDIBLE
Such a sick video!
12:07 yeah but it doesn't *sound* harder panned :0
I return with knowledge. This effect only works on loudspeakers (and is a pretty goddamn cool idea).
Has anyone reading this comment compared Fab Filter's L2 to Logic Pro's Adaptive Limiter?
awesome !
Reaper Gang!
I actually didn't understand that EQ part 8:50
I mean why is he doing huge cuts in the range where the instrument sits on mainly?
If it works, do it.
super great tutorial, but what were u thinking with that awful music
Sir can you teach us the way of life?
These are NOT fabfilter videos.
These are DAN WORRALL videos.
@@funguy8801 :D just in case! Love both Dan's content and well, fabfilter all the way! (L)
@@MixYourWay and Subscribe to both channels! :)
To quote Dan´s channel description "I also make official videos for FabFilter, UVI and others, but this is my own channel, and all my own opinions."
Dan is just an audio tutorial monster...I am addict since his Camel Audio Alchemy tutorial series on sound design from more than 10 years ago. I still have them in MP4...in multiple HD to be sure to not loose them.
Camel Audio doesn't exist anymore as such but Logic Audio (Apple) bought their soft synth called Alchemy.
@@mimidhof2179 Any chance you could share the Alchemy videos? I've been looking for those since they went down.
Fabfilter: Uploads Video to TH-cam
Me: "Grabs Pen and Paper"
The two sentences to describe mixing;
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“Well not exactly…”
This was so good, I feel like I have to pay someone for it. Wow.
Go find Dan worrall on TH-cam. He does good content
@@adnana7918 Yeah been a subscriber of his for quite some time 👌
You ARE paying for it. You know those adverts? Watching them IS your payment. Or, if you are paying for Premium, you are paying with money. Or if the video is ad-free yet sponsored, then the video IS the advert and you are paying for it by watching it.! :)
@@joelonsdale Adblock ;)
@@mgmg116 It's sponsored content, your still paying by watching, even with the adverts blocked.
This make so much more sense than anything I've EVER tried learning from. The visuals without the cutaway to someone talking is fantastic, as well. It's almost art therapy. Bravo!!!!
"further right than hard panned" now we understand why Dan is so good at what he does
He is Ambisonicaly right and Dolby Atmosly good, tutorialy speaking...
There is no limit 😁
How he makes the part sounds like it's coming from behindi is quite mind blowing too.
I want this guy to teach me everything.
Right? if you're not aware, the guy narrating this is Dan Worrall, and he's got more mixing tutorials of much the same quality on his own channel.
I love this topic, there isn’t enough on this topic. Mono seems more common than ever. Mono speakers everywhere, mono streams. I’ve started mixing in mono.
Also there are far too many plugins that don’t seem to account for mono compatibility.
Plugin Alliance are one of the few companies that includes some type of mono feature in most of their plugins
Once I heard Dan's voice I automatically went up and clicked the thumbs up!
Dan could stop wars with his voice
Dan Worrall is the de facto industry 'seal of approval' for quality sound design and engineering tutorials.
Yeah that's how you know where people knows him. Nice to meet you guys...
I think we are a familly. But I think it is more about the flow how he express his ideas and make it simple for us...
oh, hello there
This is how religions start.
Me listening on phone speakers at 13:15
You’re right, they did disappear
Exactly, it was literally silent at that point.
why have i never thought about this???? this is eye opening (ear opening) dude, thank you for this!!
When mixing I do try to swap between mono and stereo to help keep it's comparability, it's quite a discipline but worth it, I think it keeps things more realistic.
I'm in shock about what I just learned. I just had to sit down in silence for 20 minutes and conceptualize the info Dan just casually presented. So grateful for your work Dan. It's so relieving to learn and understand the how and why of it all. THANK YOU
15 years into the game, one takes the liberty to think that one has figured it out, and then comes Dan with such videos. Thank you for keeping me humble.
“Who listens to mono in 2019”...dusted this one off the backlog huh?
Playing mono is a standard in Clubs and Concerts to avoid phase cancellation, especially for lower frequencies.
Really important for a good Mix.
@@verond
so just one speaker in a club? then again all ravers care about is drop kick
@Grendel _ Even hearing from both sides, I think the panning on some Beatles songs is really bad and distracting. Panning the bass (e.g. "Taxman") is very noticeable on headphones and totally unnatural.
@@simonr7097 man those Beatles remasters are so much worse than they have any right to be..
when he switched from mono to stereo back and forth i almost thew up
Was anyone else confused last election? Couldnt find Dan’s name anywhere.
Lol oh yes it was a confusing one
😂🤣
Can i ask that you turn your voice down just a little bit, you have a great vice but you're so clear and loud its hard for me to switch between listening to the mix and you talking into my pineal gland. Thank you
talking into my pineal gland 😂😂😂
Voice was a perfect volume for me. They make it so that the mix ducks in volume when he speaks. When he's not speaking, the mix returns to its normal volume.
@@PeterNjeim youre so right, his voice wasnt too loud, the mix was just too quiet 😂
So my issue is having really good stereo parts turn to shit when I hit the mono button, if I apply fxs to take (mono) and convert that track a lot of time it’s will sound terrible? Maybe I should upsample before I render?
Am I the only one who feels like a freshman who walked into a class of grad students arguing astrophysics? So much info in so little time. I find myself getting distracted by wondering how he is able to think about so many things at once, have such a tremendous mastery of the FabFilter plugins (a huge achievement itself), exercise such a great creative sense, and have such a sound understanding of the technical/mathematic elements of what he's doing at the same time. So inspiring!
Inspiring and soul crushing
THE BEST tutorial I found on this subject. Congrats! Can't be more clear and simple than this, I think.
Congratulation for you to meet Dan Worral's tutorials... You will remember this day your all audio life... if you diserve it...
I wish Dan Worrall would adopt me
the demo song annoyed me at first but now I seem to enjoy it lol. learned a lot, awesome video
repetition. legitimizes.
(for self-reference comparison)
4:19
8:30
Tip. Don't watch this on your phone. 😁
What an amazing tutorial! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Dan Worrall and Fabfilter are... the perfect mix! 🙏🏻👌🏻
I am loving this discussion. Also, the guitar part that comes in at 16:00 is so sick! The whole production is really cool but I’m really feeling the playing and the mix of that part especially.
That part reminds me of a piece of Buckethead:
th-cam.com/video/YygbOC21PcM/w-d-xo.html
Thanks, that is very helpful as usual with Dan.
Instead of going for the surround / Atmos concept (which is sort of impractical / pointless for music and likely won't really stick anyhow), they should have implemented a seperate channel for a dedicated mono mix. Mono devices like phones could decode the signal and use that channel rather than simply folding the stereo down. Why has nobody ever thought of that?
The really problematic thing in this regard is distorted rhythm guitars, which are basically always 1. double-tracked and panned hard L and R 2. the meat of the sound. This explains well why they tend to vanish in mono, but I’m struggling to think of how to apply the workarounds given.
Most modern sound systems also only put out summed mono on the subwoofer so your bottom end is lost a bit from the get go even on a 2.1 system. Considering that lots of systems these days have something like a 4 inch driver at best on the tops, this is quite noticeable going from a nice old school system to a modern one that relies on a subwoofer for everything below 250 hz
I like mixing guitars around 70% L/R as opposed to hard panning, any bite lost can be made up with small tweaks to amp or post-processing. This doesn't always solve the mono and phase issues, so I've taken to ensuring that even if I'm tracking both guitar parts, I change the amp settings in between to help retain some thickness in mono.
Another approach is quad tracking, which is usually a pair of hard panned tracks and a pair of 70% panned tracks, this sort of gives the best of both worlds as it maintains much higher volume when summed due to the extra channels, though it's not possible to always get away with quad tracking, I usually save it for big spacious riffs or riffs that involve a lot of full barre chords a la Gojira
Fair enough with panpots, but the real problem lies in stereo (a/b) recordings - for example piano or strings. There the phasing / EQ issues get really ugly when folding down. How does one go about that?
Dan Worrall. The world leader we need right now
yeah, in Brasil we need a president!
@@RafaelPfleger you mean the world's first sonic President...
The tutorial prime minister of this galaxy.
@@RafaelPfleger you guys are so lucky having Bolsanaro. Here in Canada we got blackface Trudeau.
@@RafaelPfleger you probably supported his stabbing too smh.
I don't understand a word and only come here for the voice.......
😂
At the same time we are "competing" with guys that don't give a f@@k about mono compatibility and they win grammys for that. I think Serban Ghenea has about 13 grammys and he doesn't care about mono. He constantly has 3-4 songs on the bilboard top 20 and when I sum them to mono in my daw, everything disappears except for Kick, snare(sometimes), vocals(sometimes)and bass. The correlometer constantly shows values below 0, even well into -1(out of phase). Check out Troye Sivan's My! My! My! This is equally valid for all the songs he mixes. Dan does a great job in educating people on things that should matter, but the reality is that some get gigs and some watch videos about the guys that get gigs. Thumbs up for everything you do! @Dan Worrall
I listen in mono in 2021 😎gotem
Yup i am a normal person and i use MSED manually 😅 but i might divide my workflow between Ableton live (composing) and Reaper (mixing) and cleverly and efficiently (cpu) have the best of both worlds
When listening to the M-S examples and widening beyond hard pan on headphones the effect seems more like narrowing down behind my head than widening. I suppose it' because in case of headphones the signal from each speaker is only reaching one of the ears, not both.
Glad you mentioned this, I was really stuck/confused. Has same exact experience. Listening on earbuds.
This video hurts my back...
Finally, I was waiting for this
Don't wait for it follow Dan Worral.
Shouldn't then be an algorithm with M/S processing, so when stereo signals are summed to mono, de "middle channel" got trimmed by 6 dBs? Would that preserve the mix balance of a song for mono devices? Gonna run some tests and see how that works! (I'm guessing Waves Center would be the right tool?). Now that we live in a digital distribution world, and bandwidth is not an issue anymore, I would not mind embedding a mono mix "hidden" into a stereo file, to make sure it sounds great when played in mono. Many devices and video/music software players downmix surround multi-channel signals to stereo automatically. Couldn't that be done also with stereo to mono?
There’s a plugin called Neve DFC channel strip by UAD that has the best stereo imaging I've ever heard but when I turn my Apollo to listen in mono, I can't hear the signal at all, does that mean I shouldn't use the imager? It's a shame because it sounds so great
Thank you for this. This is exactly where I am in my learning stages . It helped.
Dan Worrall could talk about Tax Code and I'd prolly still watch
3:20 took me about 10 seconds of confusion wondering why the two examples sounded exactly same when I realized I've been listening to this video over a mono bluetooth speaker lol
Excellent tutorial. Additional bonus points for using Reaper to demonstrate ;)
Quarantaine Dan 🙌!
I wish these videos existed when I was working with the 1st version of FruityLoops and RT Tracker 😂
Whoever disliked this, does not deserve Dan's celestial voice on mundane speakers.
It should be prohibited to listen to Dan on hearbuds...
Clearly the solution is just to make your hard panned channels extremely loud and overbearing like “search and destroy” by the stooges
I'm listening on a single (automatically mixdown) earbud.
Latest mobile devices are in stereo now? right? that's quite important
Was the background music necessary????????????? I cannot focus!
this song is so funny to me. like dubstep bass wobble over royalty free happy guitar music
That last part went over my head. Couldn't figure out what exactly that Volcano plugin was doing. Guess i'll wait for part 2!
holy shit "hard panned signals will end up almost exactly 6db lower in level in the mono downmix."
Dan's voice alone makes me smart
SoulChorea i concur
5:48 harsh noise wall
Thanks for the clear explanation, with examples.
I would love to hear Dan Worrall talk a heap of crap about a subject he doesn't know anything about, just to read the aghast comments below!
Altough I'm quite sure he would still surprise us with any concept he would find and develop in that whatever subject...