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Segment 10 - General EQ Questions

Let's say, um let's, cut laughter, copy something and pasted here but let's say, well, no, it won't be realistic in the sense that the arrangement fits it, but you can use automation. Your doll is going to be a little bit different, but anything in your software can be automated. Doesn't matter what the software is. So it in pro tools, there's a couple different ways to do it in proto there's a button here under the word auto and it pops up this menu and it's showing me every parameter on this e q these this list of things master bypass input level output level, phase inverter high past type, high pass. Enable hype. Ask you all of these things are describing all these knobs you see here everything I could grab and tweak is showing up in a list. Okay. And your dollars going to the exact same thing in some degree and so let's say for our scenario we want this accused to guitar for the first part of the chorus to be thin in the second half of the chorus to get get more that body we want t...

o automate what we want to automate this high pass filter, which is right here, and in particular we want to automate the high past frequency. We want to keep it enable we don't need to change the type we just want to change this not the frequency we want to be a lower frequency right to bring back some of that that low end we cut out following me so far so if I were in pro tools I would open this up and say let's make hi pass frequency something over on this list that we can automate because this listens you can add to any of these functions to automates and now is automata ble. Now you could do this either in real time where you can put this track into instead of a reed automation mode a touch automation would and a lot of dogs used the same terminology read touch latch right meaning I could do this in real time I could press play and now that this track is not in read mode it's in touch mode it's going toe remember whatever I touch and automate so in theory I could press play and just roll this down you could see it jump back but what it did is automated what? I just did a press play right? That was not me touching anything remembered that move that's one way to do it let's let's look at the other way you're going to do it every doll is gonna have an automation lane so you're looking at this track this accused to guitar track and by default I'm in a way form view so I can see the wave form you could look at the volume lane, but I want to look at now this new lane popped up in q three seven band, which is my cue high past frequency because I allow that to be an automated herbal thing now it created automation later you can see what I just did with the mouse you can see if this is the frequency higher up would be a higher frequency lower be lower frequency you could see that slope so I can delete that automation and I might say for these two bars keep the high password is for these two bars let's take the high pass from one seventy eight down to fifty five and then you can listen to what it changes that makes sense that would show you kind of how you can and I know this is in pro tools, but really when you go into your dog, if you use a different piece of software, they all operate with the same mentality you confined your automation lanes, you couldn't grab your plug and tell what setting I want to make automata ble and powerful concept here because you can apply automation of any parameter of your cue any parameter of your compressor um you know, you can you can spend hours doing this, and I wouldn't recommend it. But if it's something as simple as hey, when everything drops out, that guitar sounds a little too thin and sound of perfect when everything is in the mix, but by itself it's a little too thin. Let's say that's a great idea than to automate the cue for that moment. All right, all right. We have another question here from alberto and this one's got eighteen votes. Hello, guys. I have a mastering question having problems trying to achieve consistency when I play a song through different speakers. For example, if I master using my studio monitors, then play the song on different speakers either a boombox, iphone earbuds or a car stereo, I get drastically sounding mixes. How do I achieve more consistency through different speakers? Well, your mix is going to sound different on those different speakers, so you almost have to be okay with that, right? I mean, the original ipod earbuds before they changed in the year or two ago had like, no bass response. They were very mid ranging, and you just had to get used to that. Like, if you're mixed sounds awesome on your monitors and then you listen to it on those ear buds at the time. Everything sounded mid rangy, your favorite mixes that other bands have done sound mid rangy, so it your mix is going to sound different on every speaker your boom box so you may already know this, but I just want everyone understand that. It's, you can't have a mixed sound the same when every set of speakers that's impossible cause every set of speakers has its own ink, you curve, you know, and that's what that's a whole nother aside, when people say there's, these monitors are better than these monitors, every modern just sounds different, so you just have to get used to whatever your monitor give you. But maybe what the question is is the consistency like up if you're mixed sounds great at home, in your studio, on your speakers and that's the only place that sounds great, you got a problem unless the whole world is going to come. Listen to your record on lee, where you sit and you can't say I have a great album, but you can only listen to it in my room, you know, that's, what makes live mixing in some sense is easier because if you're alive mixer and I'm not trying to downplay live mixing it's really hard, but one thing I love about mixing live is you don't have to it doesn't matter what your mix sounds like outside of that venue, because all that matters is what does it sound like for those people in that moment, right? Um, e I want to share something that a teacher once told me he said that I remember was mixing a mushroom, but if you're gonna make so master and it will bury to do in a passive speakers, because, ah, what he told me was that when you send the single to this passive speakers and the actual signal with this with has it has to do something with electricity that is popping the speaker, so it comes more natural than in aa on active speakers that has already some, like you say, some e q or some amplifiers, so but we've seen that well, I mean, so passive speaker it doesn't have its own power supply, okay, so it inactive speaker has power supply in it, but I think most of us, most typical home studio monitors or professional monitors these days are active so that, you know, you have a plug in the back of them, right? You don't have a crossover, and separate power aims for the speakers. I mean, a lot of people swear by passive monitors because they know them, and they don't change the sound too much, but even like I think you know and as tens are I think correct me if I'm wrong there passive speakers and they have a major in q curve very mid ranging I mean it's so that every speaker doesn't matter if it's passive or active is going to shape the sound in some way so I don't know if that's what you're talking about, but I don't think that makes or breaks the speaker no, I was sharing that I think there are a lot of active monitors that have some type of a e q adjustments on the back like to decrease the low end like by two or three d b or increase in then also the high end as like a low shelf in a high shelf in and most of them don't, but some of them do yeah, they're giving you some some control because the speaker might sound a certain way, but you put it in your room and rooms yeah, close to a wall and so you can adjust the back of it. Yeah, I think I think you know all of this and consideration going to the question of how do we how do we get consistency? You know, the preview of what we're going to talk about in this last segment in the next segment is you can't trust the way your room sounds in isolation, you always need a reference point you always need to know what do songs that we know sound good have been trusted like there, whether that means it's on the radio, whether it's a song that you like the mix of no matter where you play from another professional artist, you gotta reference something and here with that sounds like in your rooms will dissect that a bit the next segment but that's where consistency comes from his always mixing two a reference point every song you open up and you just mix it to how you want it to sound by itself without any reference point, you can get off base quickly on dh, then over time you will learn what your speakers we're giving you. You will learn what your room is giving you and then you will get better at turning out consistent mixes because you'll know the problems at your room has like my room I just moved and I mean I have to start all over again, you know I have to start all over again getting to know what my room's giving me like I knew my last room and always emphasized like four hundred hertz way too much like something around there so everything sounded really soupy and fat, but that wasn't really in the mix it was really in my room and there's things I can do, I can position my speakers and I in two in the speakers and there's acoustic treatment and I contain things, but there's still some inherent problems. I just got used to this problem, so I know I'm aware of them ahead of time, and so a lot of the common thing is I hear this a lot is, hey, my mix sounds great. I take it out in the real world and it sounds muffled, all that top and went away that's pretty common because think about most of us are mixing in a bedroom with drywall and there's no acoustic treatment, and so sound is bouncing around a lot of the high frequencies they they swirl around in your room, so you hear a lot of high end in your room, so you think all my mix sounds bright enough and you don't boost or don't play with a high enough so your mix, plus your bright room sounds good enough to you. But your mix without that bright room sounds dull because you were hearing the brightness in the room so all that to say the waiting it consistent mixes is to stop changing your set up stop. Stop buying another set of speakers every two months or stop, you know, using a different set of headphones all the time or, say what's the best set of headphones or what's, the best set of speakers is it is pointless to to to go down that trail what the best thing you could do is if you want really good mix is to stick with what you have to get some set of speakers or some pair of headphones and start to learn what they're giving you the inherent good and bad of it and over time you'll be able to turn out more consistent mixes because you'll know your weak points that that makes sense great question yeah, well, we have another one that just came in here and say hi gram can I use a frequency analyzer of my room and then use an equalizer to my speaker's based on that analyzers e q curve and use that as an alternative to acoustic treatment? Um, so I would say the answer to that question depends on what you're trying to do because acoustic treatment is not just trying to shape what you hear from a mixing standpoint can also be what, what, what you're describing and like something like, um thie arc the room correction software from ike a multimedia which is really cool um and I have it that program can't stop sound waves from from slapping around in room it can shape what your speaker gives you based off of what it hears like it analyzes sound in your room and then it accuse your speakers so what comes out to you plus, a room sounds normal. I don't know how that it's very it's very like movie magic to me, that's pretty amazing it's still can't stop sound waves from slapping around. We're acoustic treatment absorption can start to soak up some of the sound waves, so it stops thing for moving around too much. So I think it was a good treatment, plus what you're talking about can be a good win one over the other isn't probably enough, so but even then, even if you had not, neither of those you still have to learn what these things were giving you. And then you still have to have a point of reference, which we'll talk about it, and I'll show you how to do that in the next segment and without acoustic treatment without some kind of, you know, room correction software or analyzing or curing your monitors. Without that, you can still get consistent results, because every room is inherently problematic. Every room sounds different. What matters is stay in a room or staying a set of that you can get used to and you can learn and you will get better mixes. Good, I want to ask about headphones because I do to my living situation the hours I tend to work. I do about eighty percent of my work on headphones, but that's why my mixes are not could beating the minds of the chat rooms? That question just came in here, you know, that's great that we're talking about this. Yeah, and I have like four different headphones I use, but there's also have some software and there's a cem unit from focus right called the proms. I don't have it, but there's one on sale on craigslist I might get, but how do you feel about about one, like mixing on mixing and mastering on headphones? Maybe almost exclusively or most of the time, and then using that type of like a software that type of care too make corrections? I mean great questions, I think about think about this if all you have is his headphones, then you can make a record on headphones right now because I'm a weirdo. I'm doing an e p of my own music on ly on headphones. I'm using a piece of software I never used before. I'm using all the stock plug ins. I'm starting with an instrument that I don't start with amusing drum loops instead of real drums, and I'm going to go mix it in the coffee shop with headphones because I never do that just because I'm a weirdo and I like to do fun crazy challenges to see what happens so you can tell me what you can listen to that record when it comes out and see if it sounds good hopefully it does, but I'm goingto I'm not even to use monitors when he's headphones for that if that's all you have basically re creating that environment that's all I had then it's just like speakers you have to learn them, but one thing to take into consideration is headphones it's so unnatural to mix on headphones in some ways because you literally have speakers taped to your face and it's crazy, you're blasting sound so you'll get a very exaggerated stereo image and also, since the sound is so close your ears a lot of times it can heip the sound it's based on sound bigger the topping, concerned brighter all that to say you still have to learn what those headphones they're giving you and you could still get around it if you can learn it and then reference some other material which will show in the next segment that will really that would be your secret if you had headphones if you had to work on headphones, you really need a reference track. Um but the question behind the question is, well, I work you know, if I don't do this full time, a lot of times you're coming in from work or school and then you're mixing late at night and the kids were in bed you're your wife's in bed you know your your roommates you don't want to wake them up can't make a lot of noise yeah I understand that that goes back to also we said earlier today is that if you have speaker ares I would say if you have some monitor I rather mixed on those and turn the volume down I turn it down like super quiet their words not not bothering anybody it's like you watching tv quietly in the other room and it's not really bothering anybody and force yourself that actually is the best thing you could do it will force you to make better hugh decisions at that quite level so you think it's your limitation like I gotta mix late at night and keep it quiet it's actually forcing you to make good decisions and I would rather you do that then and then check on headphones then mix on headphones exclusively if you have monitors speakers and then also you said you had four pairs of headphones you I had more isil buddy in the mix on all four no generally sticked about two of them and then maybe if before if I laid owners and I listen to something on the emir crack monitors to okay while I'm working usually about two of them so I would say pick one to be your main so speakers you needed I like multiple speakers or headphones because that you can get used to whatever you're listening to but still pick one for like eighty percent of what you're doing and then just check your mix on the other pair or checked your mics on ear buds or a little computer speaker, but I wouldn't flip back and forth very often other than just to check I would pick one because you need to have a gun, a point of reference something has to be a normal it has to be the control for you and then other speakers or headphones helped make your ears up because you start to get used to whatever you listening to you but I don't that answers all of you so some people are very anti mixing or master on headphones, but so I'm not anti that with that you can totally make records on headphones absolutely chat room is really charming in about this, but a quick follow up would subs help or hurt you in that situation. I don't mix with the sub at all, but I have friends that do, um and some of my favorite mixers dio to me a sub it tricks my ear because again I'm feeling and hearing base that most people are going to hear it with a sub now if I were mixing for like club music that it might be a good reason to to have a sub because the venue at which most people will hear that is going to have massive subwoofers and it's going really blasting you need to know what it feels like down there but I've never had success with this sub so I only mix with a pair of in your fields and for the longest time it makes with five inch speakers and then lately I'm in a bigger space and I'm mixing on eight inch sober first but they're not they're not much different do you think that's adequate only absolutely I've used five and speakers for over a decade and made records on it and yeah you're not going to hear all the low low end so I need to still compared to pro mixes on the speakers and me too crank it up a little bit to see what the low in does when it's loud and I need to listen to in the real world every once in a while but yeah I had no problem with five speakers in fact I would say bigger speakers and in typical small bedrooms is too much I used to have big speakers in a small room and is actually too much I'd rather get the five and speaker for a typical small room it's a better size for the room all right we'll take a question you're going I was actually wondering how many different places should you reference a mix before you like get ready to master it just does. I've had I've had some songs for a friend's record I've been working on recently and they sound they sound fine on my my monitors they sound fine on my headphones my home stereo they sound okay coming off the laptop's speakers but I tried to reference some and the guitarist car the other day and the kick drum was just like I thought it was going to take out the entire structural integrity. The vehicle is just right like everything so much and it's just like it didn't seem like I felt like everywhere else I was just having trouble like getting it up there just so it kind of sat in a pocket with everything else and like I looked at his stereo there was no boost or anything it just for some reason it's just like it was almost like there was nothing else and makes it was just cutting through so hard I mean, have you listened to other music in that car? Does it do the same thing? Oh, I looked or some other tracks in my list there was I mean definitely seemed like there was a lot of bass response but nothing like that nothing that was making it just rattle up and down the street then I would say that's that's something to pay attention to, like you can have everything sound good on your main monitors and then if you have another set of speakers or a car where all of a sudden something jumps out like too much, you know, like every speaker is going to emphasize things differently but something like that jumps out that might be an indicator that there's still something in the mix there's too much of that no other speakers really highlighting, but one kind of speaker is and you can then go back tame something in that low end and it probably would then still sound justus good everywhere else like it was before but now also plays well on that set up, I have a, um a very mid rangy or a tone type clone speaker that I got for ninety nine dollars the barringer makes and it's called baritone but spelled like b h r something and that thing is a life saver because what can sound good and I can get all my cue right here if I flipped to that speaker it's very mid range heavy and it might expose a random frequency on a guitar that all it hurts my ear, but it didn't hurt me you're on these speakers and then I go find it and I cut it it sounds better on the speakers and then flip back to the main monitors and it still sounds the same and so sometimes other speakers just expose of random frequency or two that you may not have heard and they can fix it and then problem solved it works still everywhere else like or tone speakers air useful for most of the things that you heard those two tracks earlier wait you're talking about was the really low stop based in between the segments is not going to give you any of that, right? But you want to still know what that sounds like on a very mid rain focused system? Because again a lot laptop speakers are all mid range. Most consumer speakers these days have gotten worse and worse and worse because people want to really cheap thing they can plug their phone into and and they don't care but some mid range is where your mix has toe live for the most part we love the low end and we love the top end, but the rest of the world isn't going to hear much of that sits definitely has to sound good when you chop off that stuff and it's just very mid rangy so it's worth waiting on you. All right? Well, we had another question coming here from stratton mondo and he says please please give us any tips involving e q for virtual drums how khun songwriters who don't play drums make their demo sound better when the drums are always a weakness I mean get some better virtually there's some really good virtual drums out right now I mean um gosh easy drummer it's less than one hundred dollars sometimes it's on sale for like forty nine dollars and those trump sound amazing I get I get mixes sent to me from people that I'm critiquing sometimes some of my students you know they're I'm critiquing some of their mixes and I mean you drum sound great like always just easy drummer on my pants I work hard to get real drums that sound that good you just grab the plug in and I think these days a lot of virtual drum plug in sound great um you know, I'm like I'm doing this is marilyn record I'm doing right now it just drum loops out of reason I've never used reason before some doing the entire album in that and some of the drum loops sound really, really cool but a lot of times I'll find myself still scooping out some mid range very similar to what I did here on these drums I scooped out some lohmann stuff this is to fifty some sometimes drum sound really boxing I know this isn't a drum loop but take a listen to these drums um by themselves and this is a lot of times I'm listening to on virtual drums or drum loops is getting rid of some of this if you can clear out some of that it makes your drum sound like there's more kick and more christmas at the top without having to boost anything, so sometimes the best thing you can do with a virtual drums has cut out some of that low stuff. And then also, I find a lot of sampled instruments, whether it's sense or it's like sampled strings if I don't have, I don't have a really good sample strings, but all this year's will come in and pro tools if I need a string patch, they never have enough top end. They always sound like there's a blanket on the speakers like they sound like strings, but I will do almost extreme shelf boosts on on the strings to get that air that makes him sound riel. So I feel like a lot of samples sound real, but they're missing the top end or the bottom and it's like all mid, and that doesn't sound exciting to me, so if the drums with that problem is probably get rid of some of those mid so you can really feature the top end or maybe need a little of the top in boost or just try different virtual plugging yeah, I mean, another tip, actually is that we've done, of course, here on creative live on the music and audio channel all about easy drummer so if you did want to learn more about that recurrence actually taught that course and you can post a link to that but if you go check out the course in the catalog you can find that and may help if you're looking to learn a little bit more about virtual drums, go check that out. We have another question that came in here. Now, this is a little bit of an advanced question, but you know, we as we've realized we have some real smart guys in the chat room lots of good experience here, so can you educate this user on? So can you educate me a bit more on pull techie cues and do you use them for what I know? It is also a combination of boosting and cutting. Yeah, I don't know I'm on ah, mon zach's computer here let's see if we have a pull tech um oh, yeah, we do. All right, so, um all all accuse for the most part this is a blanket statement. All the accused could do the same thing. Okay, some cues like we talked about in the compressor a session yesterday in part different sonic characteristics with some compressors sound cool have their own vibe to it same thing the accused accused that add their own bob but this queue this is waves simulation of a poll tech the people that made this did something that's really really crazy they they basically allowed you if this makes sense looks kind of weird but look to the left of this e q you have cps which is cycles per second which is basically the hertz which is basically the frequency so you can for the loan and it could be a hundred hertz sixty hertz thirty or twenty whatever you want um you pick the frequency and then you can even knob for boosting that frequency and they have a knob for attenuating or cutting that frequency and they're two separate knobs there to independent knobs which basically means someone said well what happens if you boost and cut the same frequency at the same time? What is that if there aren't going to let me boost sixty hertz and cut sixty hertz does that cancel each other out like somebody basically realized this is weird why shouldn't be able to boost and cut a frequency at the same time because I can't do that on this sick you I can boost and cut if I do have to take another band and cut also but then it pulls it back down right? So the pull tech one of the only plug ins are accuse I know like a hard very cute now plugging that lets you do this and what people have found out is that it doesn't really, really interesting on your loan so if we have our mix here um see let's just play everything that's a newt the rest of the band what I'm gonna do is let's leave it on sixty hertz that's fine um I'm going to boost sixty hertz by four I don't know what for is if it's for dp don't it's just for a boost by four and then I'm gonna cut it by a little bit less than four okay and then it's like three point six and it does something so in essence you think if I boosted it by four and cut and cut it by three point six and I've only really boosted it by point for whatever that means but it creates is really weird e q curve words boosted and cut it and it kind of creates this cool thing on the low and stick listening with and a lot of thickness right you do down here twenty hertz humans take a listen pretty cool it allows you to add weight and low into a mix without it getting crazy and it just does something unique that no other e q does so pull techs have a place in a lot of people's hearts they still love them and then lots of manufacturers make their version of the politic here's waves please check I ke multimedia as their version the poll tech you universal audio has their version of the poll tech um you need to run out and get one no, but you could demo one for free and see what it's doing on your mixes but it does something unique because you can boost and cut the same frequency at the same time I don't really know what's happening in that just does what it does. All right, let's see, we've got another question here when you use parallel compression on a drum on a drum track how do you eat you that you know, great question we we did this yesterday like I've got so here I have my drum tracks. Um meet the rest the band this track is my drums and its process the way it is to the right of that I have a parallel channel where it's compressed that's what it sounds like compressed and I decided that that sounds cool for the smack that I wanted, but it was still little muffle e and and so what? I added a nick you and I scooped out from that low end and then I ended up boosting a little bit around three cakes I wanted to smack more so the compressed drum sound go from this that so it allowed me to just sculpt that parallel channel a little bit more so than when I blend that in with the drums it sounds a little better so you absolutely if you find yourself because if you're going to do some super squashing with parallel processing on your drums, you're going to really bring out some frequencies and on that drum tracker in that room, that may not be pleasant. It may be fine half the time. I don't need any cue in my parallel compression, but sometimes, like in this case, it felt like it was two wolfing you give. You see, I did a high pass filter here would have still been showed you the filters yet, but yes, it's, no problem at all. Cleaned up as much as you want something you blended in it. It sounds really good together. Clear. I don't want to add parallel compression and then undo all that clarity of my drums. Right? So that's, where you can still take you another question. We got five votes on this one. How would you eat you, tom? So that they sit well in the mix with regard to individually miked tom's and overhead acting as acting as mohr as symbol mikes. Yeah, so, I mean, it depends on what you like. I mean, in this case, get rid of the parallel channel and just have the drums here in the overhead I've offended out a little bit because this is the overhead by itself. But you don't notice much and that's the cool thing is I scooped out a lot of low end without it really affecting the overheads I don't love overheads to be symbol mike's unless I really absolutely have to because to do that it sound like this and the problem with that is then my tom's have to sound awesome and natural by themselves in a microphone on a tom to me doesn't sound natural it can enhance what's in the overheads tom some pretty cool the overheads so what I've done with the close mikes on the toms here is they just going to have the weight so I I've I've got I found the sweet spot on both tom's that I like and I kind of boosted them a little bit and I took out some mid low mid range that made him sound really weird and I also emphasize a little bit of the smack on them so there's actually kind of unnatural but like hyped sound because this is going to blend with the overhead so I like tio if the overheads the tom sound natural I can hear it sounds natural that I want this to just sort of give me that modern punches by themselves they sound like this a lot of punch but not natural right so that's why I like both if I got rid of all the toms in the overhead then the's would sound a little unnatural to me but there's no real right or wrong I like to make sure that the overhead sound have a good blend of everything and then I'll use these close mike's the cakes near toms to just sort of enhance that. All right, we have a follow up question here. Speaking of tom's is comes from the maxwell who says speaking of tom's how important do you think it is that the stereo with between them isn't too far or too close when it comes to panning them? And what are your general panning positions? It's a great question I mean, I you could see here I've got my tom's paying hard left hard right? But my overheads are only panned halfway. Um for the longest time I always have my overheads oh, you know, completely out like that and I just felt like that over time I got tired of that sound thief like symbols are completely one side to me I started to feel like the drums were everywhere and I want the drums to live in one place so I brought I started to pan mei overheads about fifty because I also like the stereo spread. I want to hear a symbol over here in a symbol over here that's kind of unique unless I have a mano overhead I've done that on tracks too but if it's a stereo overhead all just bringing a little tighter but with tom's since there's hardly any tom's in a lot of songs and some people don't even hit the tomlin we might get up and they never even hit it but you know this song these were the tom tracks is there's no tom's for anything mostly just like phil's, right? So they just come in every once in a while and I love to pan them are out hard left and right sometimes because they jump out of a speaker a little bit just so you notice him for a moment so I'm ok with hard left and right on tom's and then if you followed me for any length of time you know I'm a huge advocate of what we call lcr panting left center right? So pretending like for the most part there's only three paying positions is either hard left up the middle, the center or hard right? And so you kind of see that I'll do like kicks near vocals up the middle I'll do tom's hard left and right you could see my like my main guitars or hard left and right the harmonics is hard left the organs I mean hard ride the organs hard right? I've got a guitar is right up the middle the doubles are hard left and right just about everything's hard left and right only things that aren't for me and the song are the slide guitar that comes in at the very beginning um it just comes in and out every once in a while and I like it to have its own little space for a moment because I've left all these pockets open, but I love hard panning because it gives you the most separation of everything's pan close together it's hard to hear everything so I might as well spreadem out as far as they can go and then you get more separation but it's more of a tastings I have a lot of people that push back on that with me do you think the on headphones that tends to when it pans something all the way is left or right? It seems more exaggerated than unmonitored, but I'm ok with that because I mean, just go listen to anything you like and you pay attention is impending and you'll you'll realize that people do this all over the place and yes, things do some or exaggerate on the headphones, but you always get that like, you know, I don't want things that exaggerate and if you don't like things that exaggerated that's totally fine, you know, then panic where you like it, but I'm a huge fan of just spreading it out because you get you get a wider, bigger sounding mix and I like that so you don't add, you know, use whiteners stereo whiteners not really ok I definitely don't do it in mixing and maybe in mastering if I'm mastering somebody else's mix and they panned really tight and everything sounds too on top of each other, I might widen it a little bit. Do you think that I I always had a wider on the master? We're on a stereo bus? Do you think that tends to ruin the bottom and it can and you know you're you're very so do magic when you mess with wider is because it's not really real, right? So to make it sound wider, how's it doing that sometimes it's turning up it's just turning up with with stuff that's, pan left and right, so it sounds wider, but sometimes it's it's doing a lot of face stuff, and then it starts to pull the base of pardon some plug ins like ozone it's stereo weidner allows me to do it on a band frequency band basis would just cool so you can actually take the low in band and actually make it narrower and take the mid range and top in bands, make them wider so the bases and messed up it's still, even then, that stuff like freaks me out, what is it really doing? You know? So I go back to simple like again, you don't need mixes to sound super crazy wide just, you know, uses much real estate is they give you which is hard left and hard, right? And if you've e cued properly you'll get more separation things will really start to sound wide because they're not covering each other up there's nothing against their your wide news but I just really try to avoid that stuff if I can, um because there's a little unnatural. Okay. All right. We have a follow quick follow question here from daniel brown who wants to know? Do you pan drums from drummers perspective or the audiences perspective? I tend to do drummers perspective. So if I'm you know you're watching me backwards then to me I think you know high heads over here. Hi, tom floor, tom you know, if it's a right hander drummer, so left crash, right, crash that's how I tend to panic. Ok, we have another one here from one of our users on facebook who says I usually double my vocals and they sound pretty well up front e q and compression I was wondering if there are any other techniques that you could use to make the vocals sound wider. We were just talking a little bit about widening techniques, but specifically to doubling up the vocals any any ideas there? Yeah, I mean, it sounds cool, it is cool what I've got like in this song you can see from the vocals my vocals up the middle and then I have two doubles and they're hard left and right so in the verses it's just the lead vocal bringing the band lead vocal of the middle but when the the vocal the course comes in here come the doubles stay terran means soon until you started breaking me teo teo three of me so a lot of times I like to do this if I'm recording I'll record the lead vocal and then if I really want to thicken up a part of a song instead of just one double actually like all of a sudden the chorus for the vocals to seem to go from the middle toe like everywhere it's have a cool change then our court two doubles and those will be paying hard left and right so you get that middle toe wide but there's no real right or wrong I mean I'll double right up the middle sometimes but just for a variety sick I'm thinking more like an arranger I want the mix to be interesting and so sometimes it's all in the middle so I want to change it up in the course of the bridge or something compressors like same settings for all three of you nice straight copy them for my leave okay? I mean because you know weird effects if you no the only thing that one thing to keep in mind with like double guitars or background vocals bg visas to sometimes I like tio if they're sounding too bright ill I didn't do it on this one literally this is the same acute curve is my lead vocal same saying I just copied it sometimes I will I will use a a filter to roll off some of the top end on the doubles or the harmony so they're not as bright as my lead vocals he feel the harmonies you feel the vocals but they're never competing for that nice sweet brightness of the lead vocal right? So that's something considers maybe like roll off some of that stuff on the doubles I was wondering ah so your opinion on stereo whiteners is that the same as like if you're using like the haas effect or something like that well that would be it would that be like doubling right that's like uh how I've understood I've started using it and mixes lately is I like I'll take something like my drum my drum bus I'll make a copy of it I'll flip the panning this ah to the opposite side and sometimes I have phase issues with it if I add a delay like something small like ten, ten milliseconds or something like that or if it's given me problems I won't but he usually feels like if I pan something hard left it kind of feels like it's there, but if I have that second channel, I hear it more and everywhere else in the stereo field, but I feel more focused in one particular spot does that kind of knows that sort of like cheating false technique, steve, you just blew my mind I don't know what you're talking about you I mean it's not cheating because there's, all of this is cheating this is I mean, this isn't really if it were really would just might get up press record and what you got is what you got you know, the fact that we can control all of this stuff is is amazing thing so there's no cheating there if what you're doing gives you a really cool sound and it works do whatever you have to do to get that sound I was trying to follow you on that and I just might bring but you're going to have a talk that there's not enough coffee in the world for me to drink tea follow that but that's more pollen, my personality and my lack of like thinking like that I wonder what would happen if I do this I experiment, but only to a certain degree there's no wrong and doing that at all there's a lot I mean there's so many were trickeration that are happening on records because people they're stuck on a sound basis and doing what I wanted to do and so they're playing around and they're adding harmonics and they're doing stuff until they get what they want and that's a wonderful thing so I don't ever want to rain on that parade of like I'll do the weirdest thing you have to do to get that sound I'm I'm all for that but as faras any time you have to mess with copying a signal and then delaying it slightly and creating a doubling effect in some cool stuff that can be cool but to a point because then you can start tio increase your chances of having more issues but and whereas if you keep it simple for the average person you're gonna have fewer problems and by that person I mean me ah fewer problems if I just leave it alone that's just me have a question from sergei who wants to know? He says should we bring in the top end in the individual parts e q it on the mix bus or leave it for mastering? He says I've heard that it's a good idea to leave your mix is sounding a bit dull and then breaking them up on mastering any truth so I think it's a bad idea yeah I like to pretend like there's no mastering stage you want why wait make your mix sound amazing in the mixed age and we're going into this final segment we're going, we're going to compare our mix to master track and we're going I always try to pretend like this is the last stage of the game. I know it's not I know it's going to be mastered but why? Why leave it for somebody else to decide how bright it should be you you decide how bright it should be your the mixing engineer if you're thinking it's a little dull make it bright it's too bright fix it now if it's not punch enough make it punching don't assume a mastering we'll make it punching and that's goes back to what we talked about in the recording with the q that's just deferring, delaying the decision making ah, well he can make it better later you gotta you know, have the guts to say I can make it better now. And even if you are the master engineer, I do this to like if it's something like a client's work with me I give him a disk if I'm record, if I'm mixing it and mastering their project they want me to do both. I give him a discount on mastering because I know I won't have much work to do in the mastering face, because I'm the guy mixing it. I'm going to mix it so that it sounds awesome. Is a mix. And then mastering is going to be more of a formality to make sure from song to song everything's balanced. And it doesn't take me much time to master something that I've made, because I already mixed it to sound like I wanted to sound. Um, that answers the question. So I would definitely not leave anything for later. If you're hearing something that's bothering you now.