Pretty basic concept. Low frequencies are less directional than highs. You also get more bang for your buck loudness wise if you keep all the low frequencies centred.

Good mixing should pretty much make this a null issue, but just thinking aloud here.

We put on a multiband for a dual band set-up. Put the crossover pretty low down and simply set it to mono. Using a pretty wide slope we could basically push all low frequency stuff into the centre allowing us to get a louder mix and maybe keep low frequency stereo in tact.


This could even be applied to general mixing. Eg you have a guitar which is filling say 200-1000Hz area and panned pretty hard to one side. Nothing else balances it on the other side (arrangement could/should be used to solve this, but we are forgetting that for now). So you basically multiband it and pan the low frequency stuff to the centre and keep the highs to the side. Essentially making an interesting frequency dependent panned track.


Not tried this yet but I wonder how it'll sound.

Ha ha. Yeah well it doesn't work very well!

Tried it on a muse song (so maybe not the best example as it's already professionally mastered) and went to a bit of extremes to here how it sounds. And I don't like it :)

Still might try it on single instruments and see how it sounds. Could be a useful mixing tool in the right situation. Maybe to tighten up the bass in a piano so it doesn't sound lopsided if that's all that is playing, and then stereo reverb on that to give it a wide but centred bass feel, but still maintain a nice stereo piano pan.

Just an option to keep in mind while mixing if the need arises!

Or a mastering tool for a not so great mix, but it should be fixed in the mix.

Theoretically, you're on the right track. Low frequencies anchor the song but contribute nothing to spaciousness and width. Upper-mids are where our directional cues are, so it makes sense to favor those in the Side component in order to maximize the sense of width. What you need for this is an equalizer that supports M/S processing, such as Ozone's or FabFilter's Pro-Q.

Yep, I just thought of processing this in M/S just after my last post!

A slight highpass on the S channel would do it. Could even just use channel tools, sends and any eq to do this job if a M/S eq is not available.

But you're right, those upper mids really make a strong sense to the powerful width. All the non bass instruments should be highpassed anyway so this shouldn't be any issue in the first place!

Voxengo's sonoformer multiband EQ has the feature I believe you're describing.

http://www.voxengo.com/product/soniformer/features/

I've been doing this on my bass buss using DMG Audio's EQuick, which has the M/S option on each node, in my mix and also in Ozone I bring the entire low end to mono with the stereo image section

Basslane: http://www.toneprojects.c...cts/plug-ins/basslane/

Yeah; applied theory is tricky for me.  I've given up on M/S ... but do follow your low-monofication-centralization schemes somewhat.  ... like LCR panning.

Off Topic:

Since we're pondering here I'll add.  Today (enroute from Birmingham to Dothan) I randomly listened to my pieces against dozens of pop pieces (oldies, motown, classic rock, hip hop, etc.) ... on my bose-15 quietcans

... and couldn't tell much difference quality-wise between different productions (theres and mine).  Many of my references were excellent ... but each mix had flaws that loving ears would overlook.

I learned 2 3 things (again):

1) The fact that your and my mixes are better than oldies on so many levels is not delusional, IMHO. 

2) Several of my mixes that I thought I hated sounded awesome compared to the references.

3) Several of my mixes that I thought I loved sounded homely compared to the references.

+1 to what Jimbo said, Ozone 4 handles this nicely with the stereo image page. It's multi band so you can really focus in on the frequencies you want tighten.