Been listening to more pop music "in Side". Got a chuckle listening to Kelly Clarkson's "Breakway" - they went easy on the autotune on the lead vocal, but the BGVs are Cher'd up and full of artifacts! You don't actually hear that except when soloing the Side component. 

There are a lot of phasey artifacts heard on this song. I suspect this may be because they're doing some phase-shift tricks to exaggerate width. When they're panned apart it sounds good, but when collapsed to mono - which is what we're doing here - they exhibit comb filtering as if they'd all been treated by V-Vocal! Listen to the hats, which sound particularly awful.

The topic of LCR mixing came up in another thread. One of my references turned out to be a good example of the technique: "Bad Things" by Jace Everett, better known as the theme from the "True Blood" TV show. Bass, bass drum, tambourine and vocal are center, everything else is hard left or right. Hey, now I can learn that uber-cool organ part!

"Handle Me with Care" by the Travelling Wilburys revealed interesting techniques. The song is mostly down-the-middle mono except for two components: acoustic guitars and snare drum. This, I'm discovering, is a surprisingly common technique: pan the snare to one side and add a delay panned opposite. The snare on this song sounds like it's ten feet wide!

 

Funny how one line of inquiry leads to another and then another. I've been looking at stereo spread as a result of these Side-solo experiments, comparing the "stereo-ness" of various references and how it relates to what I hear in the Side component.

A nifty tool for visualizing "stereo-ness" is Ozone's vectorscope. (If you don't have Ozone there are some freebie versions out there for download.) That in turn got me thinking about the "width" or "diffusion" parameters on reverb plugins and what they actually do do the stereo spread.

The idea of this control on a reverb is to pan each artificial "reflection" to a different point, so as to simulate what happens in natural reverberation, with reflections coming at you from all angles.

So I put the Sonitus Reverb on and used Ozone's vectorscope to see what was happening with its "width" parameter. Check it out:





That was a 100% wet reverb at three different "width" settings. Here's a typical vectorscope snapshot from a very stereo-ish song (Dream Theater):





See how wide it is? That's largely due to the wide double-tracked rhythm guitars, but when you listen to the Side component you hear almost every instrument represented. They've gone out of their way to make this a wide experience.

 Compare to a classic-style pop/soul song ("It's a Man's World" by Seal):



This one is all about the lead vocal, right up the middle. There is an orchestra, and it's spread wide so that when the horns hit their accents the whole image suddenly bursts wide. It's a neat effect.


Here's what it looks like when the orchestra makes a big stab. They're panned wide so that even though they're making a dramatic statement they're never in the way of the vocal.

I guuss I'm still learning :)

Thanks!

Great information here!!

I'll look into this one, thanks!

Thank you for posting this Flipper, very informative.

There are a lot of phasey artifacts heard on this song. I suspect this may be because they're doing some phase-shift tricks to exaggerate width. When they're panned apart it sounds good, but when collapsed to mono - which is what we're doing here - they exhibit comb filtering as if they'd all been treated by V-Vocal! Listen to the hats, which sound particularly awful.

Well you're not quite collapsing to mono you are just isolating the mid or side component which will cause some comb filtering if listened to in isolation rather than the full context, so really it's an unfair judgement of quality to say the hats sound awful if you are not listening in context with the full picture.

I'll often use a tinge of flanging sometimes on library cymbal sounds to bring some movement back into them, in mono or stereo they sound fine, isolating the mid or side and they ain't going to sound as planned nor would I expect them too.

So mid or side listening may be an aid to hearing what choices were made at mix time but certainly not an aid to judging the quality or effectiveness of a mix, that you judge in normal listening conditions.

Actually, the hats sound pretty bad in the stereo mix, too. Soloing the side component is in fact collapsing to mono - the left and right extremes are literally folded into a mono signal when soloed.

bitflipper


Actually, the hats sound pretty bad in the stereo mix, too. Soloing the side component is in fact collapsing to mono - the left and right extremes are literally folded into a mono signal when soloed.

Ya, but without the mid component which is where the missing 'teeth' for what you hear in isolation as comb filtering maybe residing...

Remember the equation that Jimbo gave us here.

mid is the Sum (L+R) of the stereo channels and side is the Difference (L-R).

So the 'side' component is just the differences between left and right.

I meant to post this one here ---- I found this good article / site for those looking for good commercial reference songs:
 
http://www.digido.com/honor-roll-of-dynamic-recordings.html

Exactly. If, for example, the left and right signals are the same but phase-shifted, then they are part of the Side component. And they'll sound nasty when combined. They may sound great in headphones, but that comb filtering will be audible when listening to speakers off-axis, or in mono.