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Panning issue


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I’ve had a hard time getting my kick in absolute center of my mixes. Bass guitar also, not as much as the kick though.. sounds good in the daw and on my monitors. In the car or other reference listening,  it’s like the kick hits wide and loses punch. 

I’ve noticed this in my past songs as well. I just settled for the sake of finishing the project at the time. 

But the center punch a kick has in professional metal mixes is difficult to achieve for some reason? I use addictive drums. But I bounce the kick and snare to audio tracks and edit from there. Obviously keep their pan at 0. The Kick, Snare, Bass, Lead vocal track are basically in the Center. While guitars, layering/backup vocals, drum pieces are spread throughout.  

I don’t have any imaging tools on my master/drum bus. Just normal panning. 

If it helps, this is for rock/metal genres. I’m looking for that low end punch with click for the speed...

 The kick sound from “All That Remains” would be a good example. 

Any pointers? 

My kick sounds really good as is, until exported. 

Edited by TryMyTones
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I’ve tried using that with izotope imager, which I’m not sure it’s very good or the same thing. But honestly I don’t know how to read it, what to look for or what exactly it all means. I’ve got a general idea, but in all, looks like I need to check into that more. 

Thanks for your help!

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Basically, the way these things usually work, is...

First they take a stereo input...

a line from the top right corner to the bottom left corner is panned all the way right.

a straight line going from the top left corner to bottom right is signal panned right.

You can test this by playing with what you feed into the meter.

Mono signal is a vertical line. This would be the same identical signal in both channels.

If you take a signal and send it to the left channel and the inverted to the left channel then you get a horizontal line. The horizontal line is phazy and will cancel if you switch the stereo to mono.

Most of the time you get signal that is mostly up and down the vertical with some going left and right.

If your music looks like an hour-glass, you have little phase issues.

if it looks like a ball of steel wool, you're dancing with danger.

the more you have to right and left of center in the middle, the less phase correlation. Usually this meter comes with a phase correlation level.

If you watch movies while watching the meter, the tense scenes can have pretty phasy sound.

idk if phasy's a word. don't laugh at me. I'm just learning too.

 

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Gotcha, for the most part I understand everything you wrote there, but to do or change about it is what gets me. I can solo a instrument and I get a good idea. It’s just when it’s the whole mix, and funny you say “like a ball of steel wool” now that I can relate to, in that I understand you don’t want the “steel wool imagining, dots” to go outside the L & R angled lines. I can work with that by ear and visual. What gets me is I’m losing the center to the sides, or I’m almost mono. Both extremes. 

To further update:

i also have the Abby roads mastering plugins. Comes with a At Th meter bridge, I believe it’s technically called. 

After loading that up, I noticed my cymbals are slightly out of phase, Also my guitars were pushing a bit more to one side. 

 And actually after soloing the guitars, they are definitely the culprit. I can solo anything and the phase is good.

A Couple times the vocals drift out for a couple seconds, but I have wide vocal backup layering on the chorus, thinking that’s the cause of that and not too worried about it.

Other than that, I can easily fix the cymbals phase issue.. 

Hoping I fix this guitar phase issue and get clarity overall. Thanks for the videos! I will definitely sit down and watch those. Always growing, always learning! \m/

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Kick should always (in most cases) be mono/straight up the gut. If your hearing your Kick float around it could be a phase issue.

When you bounce the kick and snare to audio tracks, do you still have the midi (Addictive drums) tracks too ? Could also be a plug in floating it around.

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9 minutes ago, martins said:

do we set the interleave-button to mono?

Not really necessary. You just don't want your kick as a stereo track, or have a stereo FX on the kick track (unless its for some out of the ordinary effect).

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Most tracks in cakewalk output in stereo unless interleave is set to mono.

This is fine. The same thing in both channels is equivalent to mono.

Most vst fx can process in stereo. You want this.

I don't think this is your problem.

Remember you can use the vector scope to see whether your single track is in mono or is stereo. The same signal in left and right get a vertical line. If you get fuzz in the scope then your left right output are not identical.

When not identical and you think it should be, try to answer why.

Edited by Gswitz
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On 5/6/2019 at 2:58 PM, Gswitz said:

Most tracks in cakewalk output in stereo unless interleave is set to mono.

This is fine. The same thing in both channels is equivalent to mono.

Most vst fx can process in stereo. You want this.

I don't think this is your problem.

Remember you can use the vector scope to see whether your single track is in mono or is stereo. The same signal in left and right get a vertical line. If you get fuzz in the scope then your left right output are not identical.

When not identical and you think it should be, try to answer why.

I would set the interleave to mono anyways, because I don't trust the stereo FX. It does some stereo magic without telling me and the kick will lose grit.

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I believe if you have a stereo track that is mono...

Add effect that outputs to stereo...

Click interleave to mono...

Your volume will increase 3 dB.

I tend to use the interleave button to do a mono check, but i don't use it normally. By this i mean to see what a mix sounds like in mono.

Edited by Gswitz
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