How to keep an instrument centered in soundstage?

Either of those books will give you a good base for using reverb. As for smearing the sound, that's what reverb does, unless you pan the effect to one side. If you are just loading the preset, and leaving it alone, that's part of the problem right there. Do some experimenting with the reverb settings, especially diffusion and room size. These can help you dial things in a little clearer.

Randy

rsp@odyssey.net


Also should mention that dialing the "mix" level on the reverb down will help clear things up.


Randy

Agreed, in fact I would suggest adding the reverb to a bus and use a send to dial in the amount of trumpet going to the reverb. You may need just a smidge to bed it into the track.

Bounce it to a mono track.

All good ideas.  Just realize that most preset have the reverb set too loud, "wet" in the parlance.  Reverb is stereo, so it is likely taking your nice mono trumpet (etc.) and splitting it into stereo after the reverb.  the reverb is spread across the speakers, and even turning up the "dry" sound still leaves the flute sounding more stereo than centered.

Put the mono centered instrument on a aux send/bus.  The send goes to a bus with reverb on it, while the bus goes back to the master.  Make sure the reverb is 100% wet.  Gradually raise the output of the trumpet to the bus - you'll get more reverb in your master output.  Adjust to taste, using the output of the track and the level of the reverb bus.  You should end up with a nice centered trumpet with the illusion of space from the reverb bus.  As others have said here, it is easy to overdue it.  Raise the reverb until you hear it - then back off.  If it doesn't sound like enough reverb, mute the channel and see if you notice the difference.  If you do - you have enough reverb.  Unless you are doing pyschodelia - then just keep on slathering the reverb ;-)

Yeoowww!  I've just discovered that I don't really have a clue about using the tools available to me in SHS7 (or PA9 either).  Just looking at the suggestions so far I can see lots of fun experimentation ahead for me!  Thanks for giving me even more reasons to play with SHS7!
If I make some progress I might post some mp3s of the original mixes and the new and improved ones!
--Larry

As feedback50 suggested - channel tools!

No-one actually answered your question directly except for feeback50 and marcos69 (though bouncing to mono is not necessary, just hit the mono switch - and it is limited as you may still want a little bit of spread). Everyone just started talking about reverb. But you said you want to narrow your stereo image, then channel tools is what you need to look into to do this. If the reverb you are using allows you to, there is also the option of adjusting reverb parameters to eliminate or reduce the stereo spread. Sonitus reverb allows full control over this. If your reverb only outputs in a set stereo width, then you need something like channel tools to narrow the image.

Channel Tools was my kneejerk response, too. But on reflection there is a problem with that solution: it won't (can't) do the job.

My initial thought was that StudioVerb2 might be producing a stereo output, in which case subsequent narrowing via Channel Tools would make sense. But unlike many plugins, StudioVerb2 preserves the interleave. If the incoming signal is mono, the plugin's output will be mono, too. Channel Tools cannot narrow a true mono track.

So if the trumpet track is true mono, why would it sound "smeared across the soundstage"? There could be some non-obvious answer, such as additional processing of the reverb return (adding a chorus or stereo delay, for example). But since Larry didn't mention that, the more probable explanation is that it's a purely psychoacoustic effect - the ear thinks the sound is spread when it really isn't.

If that's the case, then the proper way to address this scenario would be altering the reverb settings. Some combination of a shorter reverb tail, longer/shorter predelay, high-pass filtering the return, raising/lowering the Density and Room Size settings.

I'd also point out as an aside that perceiving reverberation coming from another direction than the instrument is normal. In a real, live performance, acoustical reflections come from many directions. This accounts for some of the sense of width that we work so hard to reproduce (or fake) in recordings. Maybe narrowing the reverb isn't the best approach.

I just did mattplaysguitar's test.  I actually did it two different ways.

1.  Bounced the track WITHOUT any effects to a stereo track, then split to two mono tracks, flipped one, played back the two mono tracks panned center.

2. Bounced the track WITH reverb set (no other effects).  Other steps the same.

In test #1 I got total silence (as expected).
In test #2 I got some low level reverb sound.

Does that say that the output of the reverb is not mono?

I have the mono source track output going to an AUX bus with the reverb in the AUX bus's effects bin.  In these tests the reverb effect should have been seeing a mono signal.
How does it know it is a mono signal?  What if I have two source tracks routed to the AUX bus and one source is mono and the other is stereo -- what does the reverb effect see then?

--Larry

PS: I used the Studioverb2 Piano Room Small effect

If you have it, it's much easier to just use Channel Tools to see if a reverb or other effect is stereo or mono:

1. If it's a stereo source, set track interleave to Mono.
2. Insert Channel Tools after (below) your reverb.
3. Set Channel Tools "Input Mode" to stereo.
4. Turn Mid Gain all the way down. This will remove all of the mono information and leave only the stereo. If you have no stereo FX before the Channel Tools, the Out meter should show nothing. Add a stereo reverb and the meters will show you.

Larry - Are you sure you don't have too much reverb on your instrument?  The mixing books you are considering will tell you that if you want the instrument to be more up front on the soundstage, you need to dial back the reverb.  If you want your instrument to be further back on the stage, you need to send more of that track to the reverb buss.  If you've got too much reverb, it will "smear" the sound intentionally.  If you want a real direct sound in the front of the stage you only need a hint of reverb.  This should not produce a sound that seems like a "smearing" of the signal.

It will be interesting when we can hear what you are experiencing.

larry, too much reverb is a hard thing to kick.  Dial it way back.  I just put studioverb (from P5) w/ dark plate on a guitars bus.  I dialed it back from 100% to 18 and still wonder if it is too much.

Less than 20% is almost always what I go with.

@

Larry - A common way to handle reverb is to put it on it's own buss.  Then create a send from your instrument track.  You may have already done this.  Now on the reverb plug in that is in the FX bin of the buss, make sure it's mix is set to 100% wet and the buss fader is set at 0db. 

Now, control the amount of the instrument's reverb by it's send only.  The send will default to 0db, but of course this is way way too much.  Bring that down to -10db, or -15db, or whatever the appropriate amount is.  Use only the instrument send to control the amount.  Do not fiddle with the reverb buss fader or the internal mix level in the plug-in.  You control the sound / size of the room by manipulating the Reverb controls.

With this approach you can use the same reverb for all instruments (so they are all in the same "room").  Now you have 3 dimensional control over the soundstage.  Using the Pan, you can move the instruments left and right on the soundstage, and with the reverb send and volume you can move the instruments front to back on the stage. 

For example, for vocals, I'll put the lead vocal in the middle with an appropriate amount of reverb.  I'll put the background vocals left and right of lead singer using the pans.  I'll move the background vocals behind the lead singer by 1) setting the volume fader -3db (relative to the lead singer) and 2) increasing the reverb send +3db (relative to the lead singer).

So I've done some work on backing off on the effects.  Below are links to before and after samples.

The "before" example (mixed in PA9) has chorus (ugh!) and reverb (PA9 built in effects).

The "after" example (mixed in SHS7) has no chorus and much less reverb.  I used the Sonitus reverb with a modified Short & Sweet preset.  I set the output to MONO and also dialed back the room size and diffusion settings.

The background piano and bass (JV-30 synth) are the same in both recordings.  I believe that I used the default JV-30 settings for these but I'm thinking the JV-30 effects need to be dialed back there too.

http://lmmweb.home.comcas...ing-example-before.mp3

http://lmmweb.home.comcas...xing-example-after.mp3

Each sample starts with about 4 bars of piano and bass leading into the first few bars of flugel ad-lib of the chorus of Have You Met Miss Jones.  I think the flugel part is much better.

--Larry

EDIT:  The tracks also have drums from the JV-30 -- forgot about them.

Thanks for the nice words, guitartrek.

I think I'll try recording the JV-30 output with the instruments placed around the soundstage and with modified effects.  I suppose I could record each instrument dry on separate tracks and then mix them in Sonar.  What a thought?  I guess the only cost is that I have to record the whole song multiple times, once for each instrument.  I'll see if it's worth it.  More fun!

--Larry

If you really want to hear more of my recordings check out the Music page on my website.  The mp3 player lets you select any song and will continue playing through the others until you wake up and stop it.  I think a lot of what I do would be considered "Lounge Music".  All of the recordings (except for Thad Had and Closer to You) were done some years ago in my computer room using ProAudio9, most with midi driven backgrounds originally played by real musicians. 

And thanks to all for the hints on using effects.  I've got a lot of stuff to try.

--Larry