The ‘center’ of the mix tends to feature the most dominant sounds.
What makes a great mix? There are two ways of answering that question, one which goes to the heart of the emotional response of the listener and the other which targets the technical understanding of what a mix is really doing. Of course, the two things are linked; by mastering the parameters available at the mixing stage, we can drive the musical elements contained within it to provide maximum emotional expression.
At the most basic level, these parameters will include control over volume (with both ‘static’ levels for some channels and volume automation lines making others more dynamic), tone control and the sense of space and depth we tend to associate with reverberation treatments. These days, however, our options stretch much further, with both hardware and software processors affording us control over effect types and their numerous parameters.
For a moment, let’s make life simpler and get ourselves in the imaginary mind-set of mixing a track on a basic analogue console. On each channel strip, we’ve got EQ controls for managing tone, a volume fader to look after levels, auxiliaries to route signals out to (and back from) hardware effects processors and, of course, directly above the fader, a pan control. This will allow us to keep a single channel’s sound in the middle, with its volume shared equally between both speakers, or shift it to one side, where its volume will be biased either to the left or right, either subtly, or more extreme, as you prefer. For stereo sources, plugged into two channels on a desk, panning could narrow a sound; by moving both pan dials closer to the middle from ‘extreme’ hard left and right positions, for instance, or by leaving the left hand-channel panned hard left and the right moved to the middle. This could create a ‘stereo’ image that is deliberately narrowed to the width of the left-hand channel.
The ‘center’ of the mix tends to feature the most dominant sounds.
As you might expect, the ‘center’ of a mix, where sounds are equally shared between the speakers, tends to feature the most dominant sounds. This is where you’ll find the kick, bass and lead vocal in 99.9% of mixes and frequently the snare too, particularly if this is programmed from samples rather than recorded live. It’s also the default center axis for other sounds, as it’s rare to record a new part which is pre-panned to one side or the other, so if you’re an electronic music producer, you’re likely to place your leads here and possibly pads and sequencer lines. If you’re working with microphones, at least to start with, you’re likely to record your guitar and keyboard parts here too.
Herein lies the beginning of the problem – unless you’re careful, your mix is likely to start life with most elements panned centrally, either because they’re mono already, or because their sense of stereo keeps them equally shared between left and right speakers. But the problem is made even worse for mix engineers who work principally on headphones. When you listen to sounds from speakers, any signals that are panned only to play back from the left speaker will still reach your right ear. If you’re facing the speakers, most signal will reach your left ear, of course, but parts of the sound – both directly and via reverberant reflections – will reach your right ear too. When wearing headphones, this isn’t usually true – a sound panned hard left will ‘only’ be heard on the left. This doesn’t encourage significant pan position moves – any engineer working on headphones and experimenting with pan will hear sounds moving much more dramatically to one side, discouraging bold panning choices.
However, great mixes have a keen sense of which sounds should be panned away from the middle and, with the exception of those key musical ingredients listed above which will ‘need’ to be panned centrally, it’s a good idea to consider than no other mix elements will take up space directly in the middle. Finding pockets of space, to the left or right, with some sounds more extremely positioned than others, will definitely help clarify your mix overall.
Within modern workstations, even though many feature a Mix page or screen designed to replicate the look and feel of an analogue console to some extent, the ways in which we can manipulate ‘mix width’ are now considerably more sophisticated than moving pan dials. Auto-panning effects provide a simple and hugely effective way to make pan settings more dynamic and, by extension, offer a simple opportunity to create the illusion of greater mix width.
Auto-panning effects, such as PanMan, can provide a simple and effective way to make pan settings more dynamic and create the illusion of greater mix width.
Autopanners usually allow users to specify how wide pan movements will be from left to right, the speed at which sounds will move and, just as importantly, whether sounds will zip from left to right ‘through the middle’, or whether they’ll simply ‘jump’, bypassing the middle altogether. This latter option is well worth exploring if you’re looking to kill two birds with one stone; creating the illusion of width whilst freeing up valuable mix space in the middle at the same time.
However, a more sophisticated approach seeks to further separate the central area of a mix from its extremities, via processors designed to break signals down into two categories – those assigned to the central, Mid portion (sounds shared equally between both speakers) and those assigned to the Sides (the ‘stereo’ portion which offers discrete differences between the left and right channels). Mid/Side processing was first explored as a recording technique by Alan Bluemlein, who patented his discoveries back in 1934.
Using Mid/Side processing can greatly increase the sense of ‘space’ around a sound.
He found out that if you record a sound source with two mono microphones – a cardioid microphone pointing at the sound source to capture the ‘Mid’ portion and a bi-directional ‘figure of 8’ microphone to capture the ‘Side’ – it is possible to greatly increase the sense of ‘space’ around a sound. By raising the ‘Mid’ microphone’s level and dropping the Side, recordings sound close and focused but the more level introduced to the ‘Side’ channel, so more space and ‘width’ the listener perceives in the recording. Mid/Side recording remains popular today but its techniques have extended dramatically at the mix stage, with a range of manufacturers now building tools which decode the Mid and Side portions of signals so that they can be independently processed. The picture below is taken from DMG’s Equilibrium EQ, which allows each individual band of processing to target either the main Stereo image, or either the Mid or Side portions of the source audio.
DMG’s Equilibrium EQ allows each individual band of processing to target either the main Stereo image or either the Mid or Side portions of the source audio.
Additionally, towards the bottom right hand corner of the screen, independent level controls are provided, allowing you to adjust volume for these two components, exactly as Alan Bluemlein did with his Mid/Side recording channels. As you can see from the picture below, dramatically dropping the level of the Mid channel separates the graphical waveform display into two parts, showing the quieter Mid portion at a lower level than the louder Side portion behind it. Apart from the graphical benefit to seeing the signals separated, however, these sliders make it easy to hear the difference between the Mid signals and the Sides, helping inform choices about which sounds would benefit either from width ‘taming’ or from further widening.
At the mix stage, it’s possible to control the stereo width of any sound beyond its default position by using Direction Mixing plug-ins. These are designed so that if a sound contains stereo information that seems ‘too wide’, it can be narrowed to fit into a smaller mix space (see image below). This leaves ‘full stereo width’ at a position of 1.0, so the setting you can see in the picture below is narrowing a sound to around two-thirds of its original width – 0.66. As you can see at the top of the plug-in, again it’s possible to narrow the entire Stereo signal (LR), or to process a sound via a Mid/Side matrix (MS). Remember, any signal narrowing will only be required for stereo sound sources and, once narrowed by the amount of your choice, the pan dial can be used to find a space for each sound in the mix.
At the mix stage, it’s possible to control the stereo width of any sound beyond its default position by using Direction Mixing plug-ins.
However, Direction Mixers will process the whole of a sound as a single entity whereas Equilibrium, and other processors like it, allow you to process different frequency portions of a sound with contrasting settings, allowing for a broader range of sonic results. To understand some of these, it’s helpful to put a plug-in such as iZotope’s Ozone 6 under the microscope; as it provides a range of modules which allow for Mid/Side processing, we can apply what it can teach us to other processors.
Like Equilibrium, Ozone 6’s EQ modules can have their bands target the entire stereo signal, the left or right channels independently or the Mid or Side portions, depending on which approach to tone control you select (see image below). If you choose the latter mode, this means that, for example, by applying a high shelf to the mix but assigning this to only the ‘Side’ portion, only frequencies detected as ‘belonging’ to the Sides will benefit from the increased frequency boost. So rather than applying a universal boost to frequencies across the entire stereo spectrum, the results will increase the illusion of width, as only the extremities of a signal will sound wider.
Ozone 6’s EQ modules can have their bands target the entire stereo signal, the left or right channels independently or the Mid or Side portions.
To understand which frequencies benefit most from ‘widening’, EQ plug-ins which offer an M/S matrix are extremely useful but, for a more direct and potentially just as effective a solution, Stereo Spreading plug-ins shine a useful light too. These are available in two forms; firstly as multiband processors, which allow for different amounts of stereo spread to apply to different frequency bands, or as single processors, which allow ‘global’ spread across the entire frequency range, or a user-defined, smaller frequency band. Tempting as it might be to spread the entire frequency content of a mix, rather than achieving the ‘widescreen’ sonic result you might hope for, it’s usually the case that bass frequencies, in particular, suffer dramatically from being dispersed heavily into the ‘Side’ portion. Just as mixes usually sound grounded when sounds with prominent low end exist primarily in the middle, so they can lurch horribly when low frequency content is stretched too far from the centre. By contrast, upper mid-range frequencies, treble and even some low mid-range spread can work well, which is where multiband Spreader plug-ins come into their own, allowing a mix engineer to quickly select frequency-band thresholds and then experiment with an appropriate amount of Spread for each band (see image below).
Spreader plug-ins allow a mix engineer to quickly select frequency-band thresholds and then experiment with an appropriate amount of Spread for each band.
Remember too that parallel processing allows for a variety of opportunities to increase mix width. If you don’t have access to an EQ with a Mid/Side matrix, for instance, you could try sending a sound (or a group of sounds) to an auxiliary and inserting a regular EQ plug-in onto it. Use the EQ to target only the frequencies you want to enhance, dramatically cropping the frequencies you don’t need. Then, pan this parallel EQ treatment hard left. Copy the effects settings and send the original sound to a second auxiliary, copying the mix settings from auxiliary 1, before panning this second parallel treatment hard right. Then, use the auxiliary return levels to balance only the amount of these extra ultra-wide treatments that you want to hear. Additionally, if you want to reserve their inclusion only for certain sections of your track, automate the send levels to them. That way, your original sound will ‘transition’ into the wider, parallel-treated version at the moments of your choice (see image below).
But don’t forget that, for all of the widening techniques you can apply at the mix stage, one of most successful ways to bring additional width to your tracks is to build wider layers of sound as you record. Layer up chorus vocals and spread each take across the stereo field. Double or quadruple-record acoustic guitar parts for larger sections of your track, panning each performance to its own discrete place in the stereo field. And why not try adding two lots of high percussion, auto-panning and crossing in the middle during main track drops? Even these simple tricks will result in your mixes sounding substantially wider as they move into their biggest sections.
Whether you favor some of the more sophisticated mixing techniques explored earlier, or take more of an arranger’s approach, there’s no doubt that an increased sense of mix width will equate to more impactful mixes.
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