Mixing techniques for CLARITY

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ruairioflaherty said:
Arrangement.

Everything else is a band-aid.

(Spoken as someone who applies band-aids daily, sometimes long after the patient has already died :)

Sorry to post a reply to an old thread. But that is the key - Arrangement.

 
I just had a quite interesting expirience switching from prismsound orpheus to metric halo uln8 with 3d. I have very good monitors and I always thought stereo image was great on my system with orpheus. But now with the ULN8 3d which has 1.5 ppm jitter vs 15ppm on the orpheus I have such an incredible stereo image that I can set up a stereo like never before, I can also phase align the drums like never before and all this serves clarity

I was pretty surprised, I didn't think my ears where that precise.
 
ruairioflaherty said:
Arrangement.

Everything else is a band-aid.

I couldn't disagree more. Overlapping frequencies that interfere with one another is what makes a mix cloudy. Learning to EQ is what it's all about.

I see people talking about panning, and my first question would be... how did they ever get clarity in mono mixes then?

Sure. You always want to capture great tones to tape. So mics, and mic placement and other gear stuff (preamp choice) is big. But if you've got a ton of instruments sharing the same spectral space, those things aren't going to fix it.

Unfortunately there is no quick fix for mixing with clarity. It took me more than a decade to be really happy with my mixes.
 
john12ax7 said:
The frequency balance is a big part of it,  but not necessarily the fundamental frequencies.  Things like bass and kick drum need a lot of select mid and high end to poke through.  Don't worry too much about what things sounds like soloed.  Adding 15 dB at 4k to a kick drum might be just the thing in the context of a full mix.

I was taught to try and get the balance right (in the first instance) by listening in mono so that the spread of levels and instruments/frequencies sounds 'right'. 

Having done that, then set about positioning the instruments, singers etc. in the 'stereo' image.  The idea being that most listening is done in mono, (e.g. radio), unless you are sitting down comfortably for a serious listening experience.  Listening in mono will also pick up any accidental phase funnies.

Cheers, Mike

 
madswitcher said:
The idea being that most listening is done in mono, (e.g. radio)

Thats not true, most listening is done in Stereo.

Also Radio is not mono, it's stereo.

There's hardly any mono playback systems around. The only I can see at the present are the internal speakers of some phones and tablets, the tiny speaker is fed with a Stereo Summed to Mono singal.
 
madswitcher said:
I forgot to add that "listening in mono" is actually that - listening from one loudspeaker.

If someone is listening a Stereo Systems, but it's closer towards one speaker, that person is not listening in mono.
It's listening more one side, or just one side of a stereo signal
 

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