I checked that stereo imaging part of his book and I get what he is saying. But remember Bob is more conventional in many ways and tends to be involved with recording, mixing and mastering music that maybe involves the use of a lot of microphones and recording monophonic sources in a stereo ambience situation. And he is right it does sound better often.
I find M/S micing techniques works well on strong monophonic sources because you have the Mid mic pointing directly at the mono source and the S channel is created from the side information only. Also you have lots of control over the width later in mixing.
I work with a nice singer/guitarist and she tracks herself playing guitar with one mic. It sounds great but a little flat. I use the SHEPPi Bob Katz free plugin to add a sense of ambience around it and it does a great job actually. As it is a driving part of her music I feel it needs some slight tight ambience around it. And some work on its sound and depth overall.
Bob Katz may not be so experienced for example in mixing electronic music where many mono synth sources exist without any ambience applied at all and it is easy to create a flat image across the stereo spectrum. Some of Bob's ideas like the techniques applied using SEHPPi on that mono guitar track can also be applied to VST synths etc.. And to great effect.
sharke, are you using the internal effects from Prism itself. Because many VST's and hardware synths actually worsen the sound by over doing it with reverbs and silly things. Get used to finding the built in effects and shutting them off and have a good listen without. Then you can either add more later on in your DAW or start applying them from within the VST itself
(which I like to do) but get that wet/dry balance much more on the dry side and shorten the reverbs right down to just adding a sense of something behind that sound. Change the reverb types around and really modify the reverb times and pre delays to create a slight sense of depth. Not only will it become clearer and louder but in the end you can turn it down in your mix to get that maximum illusion minimum voltage thing happening.
This is a good interview overall and well worth a listen. But he does not give anything away either and actually refuses to mention any actual ref levels and figures especially for iTunes mastering. He wants you to buy the book on Mastering for iTunes and stuff which I think would actually be a great book to read and digest.
https://www.digido.com/products/shop/all-products/itunes-music-mastering-high-resolution-audio-delivery-detail.html Also I think it would be smart to re-order the Mastering Audio book too. I have the 2nd edition but it is at its third edtion now apparently with a lot of extra information added:
https://www.digido.com/products/shop/all-products/mastering-audio-by-bob-katz-detail.htmlThis is one of the great audio books well worth owning.
post edited by Jeff Evans - 2015/03/24 18:25:29