Bit of an oblique one this and it may even be a stupid question, but bear with me:

Does anyone have any ideas for increasing the sense of stereo DEPTH in recordings?

I record in a typical project studio which is nothing more than a converted Potakabin. Because of these space restrictions, the only element recorded "live" is the vocal. Everything else is either software instruments (ie, BFD for drums) or overdubbed (guitars going through a Line 6 pod)

We record all kinds of music but regardless of style or arrangement, the mixes always turn out spacially flat because everything has been recorded in the sonic equivalent of a hermetically sealed box. I hear commercial recordings that sound much more "airy" because they've had the benefit of good mics recording in good rooms. I've tried to emulate space with some good quality "ambience" reverbs but still everything sounds squashed together and two dimensional. Any tips?

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As an impeccably dressed sage once said, "all art is quite useless".

Potakabin!!!!

What is it?

I have a feeling that I need one!

I can't remember what it is. Hold on, let me get high, then I'll remember what it is.

Do you wanna get high?

Towelie
South Park, Colorado.

The perception of depth is governed by several things. The most obvious is room reflections. You can create a sense of depth by using a good reverb to create realistic room reflections -- it is the early reflectio pattern, density and level that are important. The reverb tail doesn't contribute to the sense of depth at all.

Try using a reveb program with very little rverb tail -- an ambience setting of some sort.

Next, EQ affaects depth perception. Distant sounds tend to be duller and thinner than close sounds -- so some gentle and subtle EQ can help to create the illusion of depth too. Conversely, bright, bass-heavy sounds appear to be very up-front in the mix.

Finally, compression. A lot of people over-compress everything -- and a lot of samples are compressed at source too. Compressed sounds are inherently very 'up-front' too.

Hope that helps

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Hugh is right - just to add that in your case and in order for the digital reverb to give its best it must be fed with a source that has as little colouration from the recording room as possible. Whereas this is not a problem with good sounding rooms as they tend to enhance the tone of the source (vocal, guitar etc), in small recording rooms things must be mic'ed so as there's minimal room sound entering the mic. Baffles are your friend here. You can even use the humble duvet or commercial solutions like Auralex.

Quote Funky Pie:

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We record all kinds of music but regardless of style or arrangement, the mixes always turn out spacially flat because everything has been recorded in the sonic equivalent of a hermetically sealed box. I hear commercial recordings that sound much more "airy" because they've had the benefit of good mics recording in good rooms. I've tried to emulate space with some good quality "ambience" reverbs but still everything sounds squashed together and two dimensional. Any tips?

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First question - what are you monitoring on?

Two bits of advice:

1. Try recording more live sources
ie Percussion, drums, guitars and keyboards; use real amps and good mics & pre's. Even it the room isn't great there's nothing like a mic'd-up sound to add space and depth where a sampled equivalent can't

2. Mix through a good analogue board
Opens up a whole can of (analogue vs digital, mixing ITB vs OTB) worms I know, but IMHO there's nothing like a real mixing desk to give a mix the air, depth and gel you seek. I'd suggest starting with (1) but after you've tried that you could easily take some tracks into another studio for a few hours and throw a mix together on a decent board with a good engineer and see if you value the difference.

Of all the many tracks I listen to in the "My Sound Files" section of this Forum, the vast majority would merit the same treatment outlined above; recordings that use only software instruments and mixed 'in-the-box' rarely cut it for me.

Good points so far, this may also be relevant. I have had this problem with Cubase in the past. Just did a swathe of mixes in PT LE (with 002 and NS 10 M) and not only was it much quicker to get the mixes to the "roughs" stage I had them in Cubase, but they sounded far better. There was much more space in the soundstage. The mixes were wider, and the top end was more open.

Basically, PT sounds much better than Cubase VST!

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madtheory creations
Synths and pianos for Kontakt

uh oh....

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Battenburg to the power of 20 - said by Richie Royale in a moment of genius. 4pm. Wed 16th Nov 2011. Remember where you were....

You may already be doing this, but keep an eye on the gain structure within Cubase.

I use Sonar, which prevents signals clippig by applying some sort of limiter. This is both a good and a bad thing - if it's going on and you don't know about it it's mainly bad.

I'm not sure if Cubase is similar in this respect, but it's certainly worth keeping individual channels with their outputs low enough to avoid overloading any of the mix busses.

On the first SOS DVD Paul White had a good technique for blending an ambience and a plate reverb to precisely control the ratio of early to late reverb present in the tail. Pyschoacoustically speaking this gives you control of depth of field very nicely.

A nearby sound will be brighter (as Hugh mentioned), and contain less early reflections (back off the ambience reverb).

A far away sound will contain proportionally more early reflections (increase the ratio of ambient reverb), as well as being duller.

Also you could try panning the early reflections on individual tracks while leaving the plate centred, giving the impression of different locations of the instruments.

You might be able to get some nice pyschoacoustic effects going on to really create a sense of depth.

Cheers,

J

The answer comes in several parts, but the first is to exclude as much room sound from your vocals as possible, which means duvets or acoustic treatment. I think several other readers have pointed this out too. The next requirement is a good quality reverb as these enhance the sense of space and depth in a way that low horespower plug-ins can't match. If you are working in a software environment, then I recommend the basic PowerCore systems as these come with some seriously good reverbs. The last part of the equation is to try to pick the best sounds at source rather than beating them into submission with EQ and not overcrowding the mix with too many sounds. The holes are as important as the music. You can add a little more transparency at the mastering stage by dipping the mid-range slightly and adding boost above 10kHz to restore some shimmer, but this is more likely to work if your mix already sounds great before you try to master it.

Quote Jcar81:

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You may already be doing this, but keep an eye on the gain structure within Cubase.J

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You're right, I am. The same techniques used in PT simply give a much better sounding result. And I am not convinced that good gain structure would affect the width so dramatically. I might post examples, but as I said I have not done an "Awesome DAWSum" type comparision. Perhaps it's time I got that CD to check if I can hear a difference between different summing busses.

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madtheory creations
Synths and pianos for Kontakt