RexRed Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 I thought I would bring this subject up to help CBB people who (like me) use a lot of Dimension pro presets in their music. One day I was listening to one of my songs on a phone speaker and noticed that the song sounded bare and had hardly any music with the voice. This was when I discovered that my favorite Dimension Pro pad had completely canceled itself out when the song was played in mono. Then I discovered that nearly all Dimension Pro presets are not tuned properly in phase, someone here in a blog (I think it was Craig Anderton) said something to the effect that the presets are put out of phase to make them appear to sound better (wider). Well, this can lead to many problems down the road when using them in your "radio ready" song. I use the correlation trace feature in Izotope Ozone 8 on each and every track to make sure that they are in proper phase. Otherwise your track can completely disappear when played in mono situations. Also, my ears have become trained to prefer sources that are in phase, when they are out of phase they sometimes seem hot and aurally "excited" and appealing but they do not fit into a mix properly. A track should always have its correlation trace corrected not only for mono purposes but also for getting the song landscape to meld together in a more focused way. Nearly every Dimension Pro preset is out of phase and needs to have its correlation trace phase corrected. In other words out of the box they are unuseable in production without correcting their phase. Otherwise you may find yourself in the situation i found myself in where your instruments simply disappear when played in certain playback configurations. Also the correlation trace is necessary to give mono vocals and bass guitar some width in the mix. Both vocal and bass both often appear as a sharp spike up the center in the stereo field. You should always cut the width out of the bass frequency range but it is okay to add a little widening in the treble ranges in both the bass and the lead vocal. This helps fill out the center of your mix so there is not a huge hole in the center of your sound landscape with the vocal huddled sharply in the center. It also helps the vocal nestle into the mix better. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with what I have written here. I am interested in other opinions on this topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 Dimension Pro is no longer a supported product, and therefore is not ever likely to have any adjustments made to the factory presets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msmcleod Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 Can you give specific examples of Dimension Pro patches? I've just tried a whole bunch in mono, and they all sound fine to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexRed Posted March 10, 2019 Author Share Posted March 10, 2019 (edited) Hello Mscleod, thanks for your comment. You have to look at the patches through a correlation trace and you will notice that most of them hover directly on top of the center line. Many of the strings, the pianos, the Hammond patch, the pad "as quiet as possible", French horn... nearly all of them are that way. I will make a YouTube video showing the trace and how it displays them, and how I correct them. I will post a link here soon. Edited March 10, 2019 by RexRed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Nelson Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 I tried another DAW a while back and although I found it lacking in some regards, it has a nice feature that analyzes the relative polarity of every track and suggests which ones might benefit from flipping. It gives you various choices and tells how much dB increase it will yield. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexRed Posted March 12, 2019 Author Share Posted March 12, 2019 Here is a video I just made with Cakewalk By Bandlab and correlation trace using Izotope's Ozone 8 imager. Sorry about the audio problem I was having, my song sounds like it is in a can. I had two audio sources coming from my DAW into my recording mixer. It is only there when I play my song. The information though about correlation trace is still there. Any comments on this video are welcome. Sometime later today YouTube will be done processing the video and it will be in 4K. Cakewalk By Bandlab Correlation Trace Ozone 8 RexRed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S.L.I.P. Posted March 12, 2019 Share Posted March 12, 2019 Great topic. If you have Kontakt, try the Synth patch "Across The Pacific." It's totally in the red. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Vere Posted March 12, 2019 Share Posted March 12, 2019 This might explain why I just had a weird experience with "freezing" a Dim Pro Acoustic bass track. I'll admit I've never used the freeze function before not needing it in the past. But while my 2nd DAW is at my friends I'm forced to use a 3rd machine and of course it doesn't have all my VST instruments authorized. So I just thought I'll freeze the instruments and that would also free up memory. I assumed the mix would not change but it totally did for some sounds. Dim pro is also "out of tune" I found many samples that are not pitch correct. Try the Vocal- Male choir. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacab Posted March 13, 2019 Share Posted March 13, 2019 Ozone Elements also has the correlation trace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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