Hi friends,

I have been working on a trance track and would appreciate any advice regarding how to achieve a wide and thick atmosphere like in the following tracks:

Cosmic Gate - Crushed
https://youtu.be/Jpc0rMKeIec?t=4m8s

Gareth Emery - Citadel (Super8 & Tab Remix)
https://youtu.be/kXPMJaX48b0?t=4m22s

I've been able to produce pretty nice pad sounds, but I've found it difficult to make it sound large and wide. I've been primarily messing around with the Waves Stereo S1 tool and basic panning. Let me know about any tricks you all have with regards to this!

Regards,
MNW

This is another great example:


https://youtu.be/pwjonDrFp-4?t=3m28s

Cheers,
MNW

Use layering.

The higher the frequency of the layer, the wider you make it.

Use stereo width plugins or mid/side EQ for widening the higher freq's

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Panning. Use it.

Layer and pan sounds that occupy the same frequency range to opposite sides.

Another way to get a wide mix is pan a part hard to one side and add a very short delay (e.g., a few ms) that is panned hard to the opposite side. This works especially well for shorter, stabbier sounds, vocals, etc. that have short attack and release times.

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Yes all of the above, and keep everything else in the middle.

quote:

Originally posted by tehlord Use layering. The higher the frequency of the layer, the wider you make it. Use stereo width plugins or mid/side EQ for widening the higher freq's

Gotcha, I've been delving into mid/side EQ so I'll see if that helps!

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Panning. Use it. Layer and pan sounds that occupy the same frequency range to opposite sides. Another way to get a wide mix is pan a part hard to one side and add a very short delay (e.g., a few ms) that is panned hard to the opposite side. This works especially well for shorter, stabbier sounds, vocals, etc. that have short attack and release times.

I've been trying to do this, it seems like I just need to do more of the same to get a really fully mix. Thanks for the advice!

quote:

Originally posted by mnw479 I've been trying to do this, it seems like I just need to do more of the same to get a really fully mix. Thanks for the advice!

Yes a timing delay on one side works well and I would also suggest slightly different pad sounds to either side, and to keep those pads moving with phasers, automation etc - again different in each side (maybe a layer with similar moving FX and then a layer either side with varying and different FX).

Always keep in mind that people were getting great spatial pads in the ealy 80's and before just using a bit of imagination (not spatial fx persee). One example I've studied was from an early gay album where the pads on either side sound awful on their own, but immense when heard together.

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quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Panning. Use it. Layer and pan sounds that occupy the same frequency range to opposite sides. Another way to get a wide mix is pan a part hard to one side and add a very short delay (e.g., a few ms) that is panned hard to the opposite side. This works especially well for shorter, stabbier sounds, vocals, etc. that have short attack and release times.

^ this. duplicate the track with your pad so there's 2 identical tracks. pan one of the copies hard right, pan the other hard left and set a track delay for one of them to 15-25ms and leave the other with no delay. by delay I don't mean adding a echo, we mean that one of the hard-panned tracks starts 15ms later than it should. so either zoom in and just move the notes for "hard-panned left" back by 15ms or you can do it another way thru your daw. for example in ableton there's a "track delay" option for each track in session view, i'd just set that to 5ms then 15ms then 20ms then 25ms etc and see what sounds best to you. too much delay and you'll start to perceive it as it really is.... 2 separate tracks where one has latency. but a little less and it doesn't sound like 2 separate tracks it sounds like one big, wide track. it tricks our perception of the sound, not unlike how detuning makes a sound seem bigger... until there's too much detuning.

there are tools out there to look at the stereo width like izotope ozone 5's meter bridge. another tool I use for increasing width alot is nugen's stereoizer which is a vst, I highly recommend giving that one a trial run and see if you like it.

adding chorus will spread out the stereo width also, there are multiple techniques but the biggest difference is thru the technique I mentioned above and my fav plugin for stereo width is def nugen stereoizer

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Good advice here - I would suggest not using widening FX until you've really learned the "normal" techniques for getting stereo spread, reason being that FX are usually just combinations of those techniques. Not to get all 70's kung fu moving plot on you but you have to carry the water jugs to the well and back a 1000 times, before the old master will teach you the drunken style.

in other words, learn to walk before you try to fight the clan that killed your family when you were a child.

First off think about the stereo field (let's just talk 2d for now) as it relates to frequency:

The low the frequency the more centered you want to have the sound. Why because this is the inherent nature of sound - LF is omnidirectional and the most powerful - it's difficult for us to even tell where LF comes from and most is felt rather than heard.

As you go up the spectrum, these sounds can be panned outwards - again for the same physical reasons - we're able to tell where mid range and hi's come from far better due to their frequency, so these can be moved further out.

So think of your sounds in terms of content of frequency, and think of your guideline for panning as a giant "V" - Low frequencies go at the bottom and as you scale up in frequency you can pan them further out.

Now bear in mind that to achieve these placements, your sound selection is critical, and EQ is vital to help keep sounds to their bandwidth - so many synths these days make phat sounds that people love to use but often these sounds are multiple layers of sounds that take up large parts of the frequency spectrum.

Try to use sounds that have their specific function and in general keep the frequencies tight. Less overlap = more separation and ability to place in the mix.

So one trick is that if you love a certain big patch which happens to occupy a large swathe of the the frequency spectrum, make say three instances of that same synth with same patch.

EQ one so it has a LP filter on it and pan center, the next do a band pass in the middle and the last use a HP filter. You can now pan each part of this independently and then as suggested before, place a little track delay (5 to 25ms on the mid and hi instances to taste and hear what happens )

The reason for the delay thing is that up to a certain point (at around 128 bpm) anythign beyond about 30ms track delay makes our brain start to recognize that they are two seperate sounds, not one sound.

Think of it like a flip book - the human visual cortex starts to be unable to tell that related images are not individual slides beyond 16 frames per second. Lower than that and we differentiate each slide as a discrete image.

Same with similar sounds - small enough delay between them and they are one sound with slight differences, too big a delay and the are two discrete sounds.

Third dimension:

I'll keep brief so as not to get too complex but think of sounds not just left to right, but also forwards/backwards and up/down.

I know this is for traditional rock enginnering but the same principles applies:



Doing this sort of thing relies heavily on your ability to understand and use time based effects, especially reverb, delay and chorus.

Long tails, long echo or multivoice chorus = "larger" sounds

More wet to dry ratio for these long sounds = further away

we also perceive further away sounds as quiet more dull so think about rolling off some hi's for those sounds place away or above.

Jaytech has a bunch of great tips on this subject and his panning field is always flawless - I'll try to find the tips form him.

id hazard a guess that the width in a lot of those trancy type tracks comes from Unison spread or pan spread (virus)

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^ DJ RANN's post above is gospel, dead-on.

quote:

Originally posted by evo8 id hazard a guess that the width in a lot of those trancy type tracks comes from Unison spread or pan spread (virus)

yeah the unison spread in the virus would be one of the ways to go if you want a quick way to get just one particular sound to have alot of stereo width. likewise for stereo widening plugins like the nugen one i mentioned. those are quick ways to get stereo spread from one particular sound, alot of these methods may not be mono-compatible if that matters to you. this is due to phase cancellation when the left + right channels are combined to mono.

DJ RANN's post is important to understand for a good stereo mixdown where your song can be looked at similar to a 3-dimensional painting that has multiple objects in it (which would be like the multiple sounds that make up your song). the importance of understanding what DJ RANN said and being able to mixdown your song/sounds in that manner is very important. because if you just use a unison spread or any number of stereo widening fx then you might have another different sound that inhabits the same frequency range in the same position of the stereo spread... then the result if you layer it too much is that it gets muddy, none of the sounds cut through the mix with clarity. that's why RANN mentioned a layering technique of isolating more simplified (EQ'ed) synth sounds because layering "big" sounds will end up with too many different sounds fighting over the same frequencies.

IMO it's good to have some type of analysis tool to see the stereo spread. you can use izotope ozone 5's meter bridge, one of the meters shows the stereo spread. i find myself using Blue Cat's StereoScope vst: http://www.bluecataudio.com/Product...StereoScopePro/
there are probably free ones out there too but i'm a big fan of the Blue Cat stuff for audio analysis

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Last edited by Dj Dizzy on May-20-2015 at 22:19