Hello, my name is Jonathan Wyner. I'm here in the critical
listening room at Isotope in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Welcome to season two
of Are You Listening? Before I launch in, a couple of reminders. If you're interested in this
video and other videos like it, click the subscribe thing down
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when new episodes come out. Please feel free to go to Isotope.com and have a look at other
videos that we have there, blogs, articles about artists. Pro Audio Essentials
is an ear training tool that we (murmurs) to level up your skills. There's lots and lots of
interesting things to do there. And, of course, you can
download Ozone and follow along with this episode. Today, I'm gonna spend a
little bit of time talking about width in the context of mastering. So let's get started. So when we talk about width,
what are we talking about? Before we even dive into
some of the subtleties and nuances in mastering, I think it's worthwhile
to remind ourselves that the environment within
which we make decisions about our mixing and mastering, just what we're hearing, depends on so much on our playback system. There's some basic
principles, some basic ideas, that you can use. If you're listening in
headphones, obviously, there's not a whole lot
you can do about adjusting the stereo width of what you hear. But if you are listening on speakers, which is recommended at least
some of the time in your work, it's a good idea to observe
the equilateral triangle idea where the position of
your head is equidistant from each speaker and the
speakers are equidistant from each other. This will put you in a
position to have the best shot at having an even distribution of energy across the stereo field. If you hear anything when
you're listening routinely that comes out of the stereo field. In other words, you think
you're hearing sounds coming from outside of the left speaker or outside of the right speaker, you might wanna think
about what's happening in terms of reflected
surfaces in your room, which can color the sound and also cause you to make
some less than ideal decisions, And the decisions that you
make in mixing are going to have a lot of play in the decisions that we make in mastering. When we think about width, I mean there's sort of a neat aspect to panning things around, creating sense of depth and reverb, putting accompanying
instruments on the left side and the right side, so that's part of what goes
into creating a sense of space in the mix. And when we start thinking
about adjusting width in mastering, we have to think about what those decisions were in the mix, which will, to some extent,
determine what we end up doing in mastering. If you wanna understand the
way people use stereo width in mastering, you can do what's called
an A minus B technique in listening to some of
your favorite tracks. Let me show you how to do that. So I've got a session here
with Ozone instantiated and I am going to put the
equalizer into mid/side mode so that we can monitor
just the side channel. What that allows you to
do is to hear anything that's been panned off center. In some cases, you'll hear, very clearly, that certain instruments have
been panned very wide left and right. It's not atypical to hear
a percussion instrument or a guitar or a keyboard, or
sometimes background vocals, panned off to the side. So listen to this track for a moment and I'll give you a demonstration of that. So here's the whole track. And this is just the panned information. Back to the whole track. And now this is the
information that's not panned or what we like to call mono. So it's interesting when
we do this to discover that the important elements
in our mix, by and large, are panned to the center. Now this is an interesting
example because the vocals are somewhat spread out. We have background vocals,
that are very strong, panned to the left side
and the right side, but the kick drum, the
snare drum and the bass are all dead up center, and when I solo'd the side channel or the panned information, you didn't hear any bass. I'll come back to this
concept in a little while when we talk about the idea of stereo bass or monoizing the bass. But for the moment, suffice it to say, that just by understanding
what's in the middle and what's in the side, that will help us
understand what we're doing when we start changing
the sense of stereo width or the balance between the mono signal and the side signal. When we're making decisions
about whether or not to do any kind of width
adjustment to a mix, then you have to ask
yourself, why am I doing it? What do I hope to achieve from it? Remember, if we hear
instruments that are panned wide and we start to increase the
signal in the stereo width, those instruments are gonna
come up in the balance, which may be cool and
interesting and even exciting if we have a lot of reverb and we bring up the side information, we may get a greater sense
of spaciousness and reverb in the mix. But there's a flip side to this decision that you're gonna make,
which is that if all of the important instruments,
at least in terms of the rhythm section, are
panned right up the middle and we increase the sense of
width around the stereo image, are we going to lose
the focus on the center, on the groove? So every time you make an adjustment, you wanna make sure,
at least for a moment, to pay attention to what's
happening with a clear, focused center of your stereo image. One of the things that
you hear people talk about a great deal is, "Should I center my bass? "Should I mono the bass?" And there are many ways of doing this, many products include monoizing functions. You can certainly do this in Ozone by using the stereo width tools. Let me show you how. In the stereo imager, I
can create a crossover so that I'm focusing
the effect of the imager just on the bass region. I'm gonna solo the bass
region so you can hear what I'm talking about. So right now, we're listening
to only energy below about 110 Hz, okay? So you hear the kick
drum, you hear the bass. If I take the stereo width slider and move it all the way to the bottom, I've created a low end
that's entirely mono. And if you look at the
vector scope over here on the right side, you can see the orientation
of it is straight up and down. If I return the slider back to zero, you can see that there is an
orientation that's slightly less or slightly more diffuse, slightly less up and down, and it includes a little side-to-side or phase different information
between the two channels. So you'll notice, when I
was playing that example, that there certainly is a difference when we take the low end
region and sum it to mono or restore it back to
its original orientation, but you'll also notice
that in the side channel, there was no kick drum
and there was no bass, which leads to the question, "When I mono the bass, what am I doing?" You're not actually monoizing the bass, and if you were to look at
common examples of pop mixes or your favorite mixes in
most genres that include drums and bass, you'll discover that the mono
contains all of the kick drum and all of the bass energy. So monoing the bass isn't
really gonna help tighten the bass. It's not really gonna
help bring those elements more into focus because
they're already incredibly well focused. They are panned right up the center. What is going to happen
is you're gonna take the low frequency energy that's contained in accompanying instruments
like guitars, keyboards, pads, even perhaps male vocals
or background vocals that have lower pitches to them, and those are going to be
brought into the center. That may or may not be a good thing. In doing so, you're gonna
lose a little bit of a sense of depth and space in the low mid range, and you're gonna gain a
little bit more clarity because we've taken
some of that low energy out of the side or the difference channel and brought it into the center. So it's important to
understand what you're doing and to think about why you're doing it before you engage in monoizing the bass. When I'm thinking about
adjusting the stereo width, I have to think about where
I position the adjustment that I'm making. Do I want to do something
to the stereo width at the beginning of my mastering chain or at the end of my mastering chain? My take on this, and I think this applies
to other tools as well, EQ and compression and so on, is if there's something
I need to do to correct the stereo image, in other words, if it just feels too narrow, I'm going to make the correction first before I do any other signal processing because when you think
about sequencing modules, there's a dependency when
you go from the first to the second to the third. The level will affect the compressor, what you do with the compressor
will change your decisions about an EQ that's next and so on. So I wanna make sure that I do
all of my correction upfront. If everything seems
pretty good but I think, "Gee, it might be kinda
cool to create a little bit "more stereo width, "a little bit more
energy out on the sides," I might leave that until my very last or next to last module, just
before I get to the limiter. So my decision about where to place the image processing is
dependent on that decision, on that criteria. Coming back to the idea of
stereo width and balance. So let's go back and
think a little bit about what kinds of instruments are panned, what kinds of instruments
show up most often in the stereo image, and what making adjustments
in the stereo image or to the stereo image, are going to do to the recording. Starting with the kinds of instruments that are most commonly
panned off of center, they tend to be tonal
instruments that carry harmony, that are complementary to
the featured instrument, like guitar, like a keyboard, like a pad, and then we have percussion instruments, like hi-hats, shakers, anything that's sort of
the ear candy that we use to define the edges of the stereo field. Thinking about the mix
this way will lead to us to think a little bit
harder about what we do in mastering when we adjust stereo image. If we bring up the side information in, say, the mid range frequency bands, between 500 and 2000 Hz, chances are we are going
to be changing the balance between those guitars and pads, and whatever's panned in the center, the rhythm section and
possibly a lead instrument, lead vocal. So if you bring those up too much, they're gonna create some
competition for the listener between those elements. Further question is, is that good? Is that we wanna do? Maybe the answer is yes,
maybe the answer is no but we tend to be a
little bit more careful about raising the uncorrelated
or side information in the middle of the frequency spectrum. The same is also true with
the high frequency information like percussion and hi-hats. If we boost the high end
of the side information, we're gonna bring that forward. But that information
that's musical signal is, generally speaking, less
competitive with the vocal and with the drums, and with the bass. And so, at least in my experience, I find you can be a little bit more... Aggressive isn't the right word. You can make bigger
changes to the high end of the uncorrelated or the side signal. So if we take a look at Ozone, you'll see we can split the bands and think about making
changes to each band according to the nature of the signals
that live within the band. So first, let's listen to
each one of these bands that I've created. I'll set one crossover at about 500 Hz and set one at about 200 Hz. So this is all the low
frequency information. Here we have the body
of most of the vocals and the snare drum. And here we have the
percussion and the high end of the reverbs, and some of that ear candy that I was talking about. So when I'm making
decisions about how much to widen a track, I might make different
decisions in each band. I might decide to add a little bit of stereo width in the mid range, but not so much that I cause
some of that competition that I was referring to before, and I might add a little bit more to the high frequency information. I could even add a fourth band
and go a little bit further with the really ultra-high, even the high end of the hi-hat is missing most of the body of the
hi-hat, for instance. And so the result will
sound something like this. I'll start with it bypassed
and then we'll add it. So even with this example, I think you'll notice if
you go back and listen to it again that when I turn on the imager where I'm creating a sense of width, we're getting some
excitement in the high end. Everything feels a little bit
wider and a little bit broader but the warmth of the lead
vocal has been pushed back a little bit as a result. So there's a trade-off
there and we have to manage that trade-off as we're
navigating the decisions about how wide to make a track. There are other tools that we can use to enhance stereo width. Thus far, I've been using the imager, which is a mid/side tool,
to adjust the difference between mono and everything that's panned. Many modules allow you to go
into mid/side mode in Ozone. You can do so in the equalizer,
put it in mid/side mode and only enhance the high
frequency energy on the sides, for instance. You can adjust the mid versus
side in the compressor module. Some modules don't let
you go in mid/side mode, like the tape module, that
just wouldn't really make much sense. It would create such a weird
difference between the mono and the side, that it would probably
produce a bad result. If you look at the imager module, you'll see that there are
four different ways of viewing the stereo image, of metering the stereo image. The three that you see here, the polar sample, polar
level and, to some extent, Lissajous, or Li-ssa-j-ew, depending on where you're from, displays, let you see the information
slightly differently. Let me... But they all let you see
pretty much the same thing. They let you see the difference
between the mono compotent of the signal or the
in-phase between two channels and the out of-phase version. The more you have a vertical orientation, the stronger the mono component. And the more you see the
horizontal orientation, you'll see a vertical component. When you're looking at your
mix, if you see a, persistently, if you see a stronger
horizontal component compared to the vertical component, you may wanna step back and think about, "Do I have too much information panned "or should I bring up my rhythm section?" It's not always the case but that can be a visual clue
to lead you to investigate this relationship. So I'll play a little bit of the track and I think you'll notice
that when the drums are in, you see... Every strong beat, you
see a strong vertical kick if you will, and when the vocals come in, you see the whole image pull
out wide, left and right, because the vocals are
widely panned in this track. So as you watch this display, you'll also notice that there is nothing that's exclusively panned
all the way to the left or all the way to the right, at least nothing that's
very high in amplitude so it's pulling the entire
stereo image out to the sides. The meter to the right is
also interesting to talk about for a moment. There are three positions,
or three compass points, on this meter. There's zero, which represents a completely diffuse phase orientation. In other words, not in
phase, not out of phase, just equal energy across
left, right and center. If you have a purely mono
signal, you'll see this meter go all the way up to the top. In fact, let me put the signal into mono and you'll see what that looks like. So now I've solo'd just
the mono and you see that we have no phase
disparate information compared to stereo. If you look at this correlation meter, when I solo just the
side channel as opposed to the center... You'll see that the indicator
is pulled all the way down to fully phase incoherent. In other words, we have nothing in phase in what we're hearing. If you are mixing and you're listening to your full stereo mix and you ever see this
meter trending strongly towards minus one or
towards that position, that's an indication that you
might be creating a problem for the listener. What kind of problem, you say? Well, let me solo the side channel and say that your mix is
being listened to in mono. Somebody is listening on their phone, they've got a low bandwidth
feed from whatever their favorite streaming service is and it's being collapsed to mono. Watch what happens. The music disappears. That's probably not what you intend. So... That's a good reason to pay attention to your correlation meter
while you're mixing. I can't emphasize enough that
what we're doing is making art or engaging, at least,
in a creative activity, and it's important for us to
be able to engage in artistic and sonic adventures and try things, and see what works and doesn't work. My intention is to give
you some guidelines and ways to think about
managing the mono versus stereo, and I think that all of
these tips are relatable to, sort of, common decisions
that we make in the context of music production. But that doesn't mean
that you can't try things. You can try panning the
kick drum to one side and panning the bass to the other side. You can try taking the
low end and widening it in a mastering context, and see what happens. The two things you always wanna keep in mind is your listener. Is the listener going to hear
what you want them to hear? And one way to ensure that
is to check your mixes in mono, especially if you
start playing in this sandbox of stereo imaging. When you go to mono, if you notice that your
important instruments either disappear or vary
wildly in terms of the level in the mix, that's the time to go
back and think about, "Can I be a little bit more strategic "in making these decisions? "Could I pan a little less extremely "or maybe I can create
a sense of stereo image "or stereo depth doing something else?" But I wanna encourage
you all to happily pursue whatever wacky, creative ideas
you may be coming up with because, sometimes, those are the coolest. I'll give you just a quick exemplar of where I think stereo image
adventures have been problematic for me. Way, way back, there was
a band called The Beatles. They made some records in the 1960s, just when stereo was invented. And in order to sell stereo,
the record labels thought it'd be really cool to have
mixes that demonstrated the power of stereo. So they wanted something
that wasn't so subtle. "What if we put the lead
vocal and the drums over here "and the bass and the
main guitar over here, "just to demonstrate the
power of having two speakers "as opposed to one?" I remember finding this
problematic when I was working out in a gym some 30 years ago. It was a big, wide, open space, and they had a playback system
that was arranged in stereo, and when I was working on
my legs over on one end of the gym, all I could hear was John Lennon's voice and a bass guitar. I was missing half the music. And then when I went over
the other side of the gym, it was Paul and the
rest of the instruments. So that's just a way of
illustrating this idea of keeping the listener in mind and making sure that,
no matter what you do, that the people who are
listening to your music will get the heart of your musical idea. Another thing to consider
is when you de-correlate a musical signal, you will make it softer, okay? "Why is that?" You may say. Because there's an
efficiency, there's a power that comes from two speakers
doing the same thing at the same time. If you take the kick drum and pan it all the way to one speaker, well, a pan in a mixing
engine would compensate for the loss of level
between the two channels, you still arrive at a point where you only have one speaker
doing something at a low end and not the other. When they're both doing the
same thing at the same time, there's more sound pressure level, there's more energy, there's more level, there's more loudness for the listener. So there's also a... A cautionary note that if you
spread out the image too much, you might have to do other things to make your record sound loud enough or impactful enough for the listener. As far as artistic adventures go, you may find it interesting
to click the link here and listen to the playlist
that I've put together of interesting adventures
in stereo imaging, in some recordings. Some of them are a little
bit more conventional, some of them are a little bit wackier, but they're all interesting
and fun to listen to, and maybe they'll stimulate
some creativity for you. So thank you so much for
listening to this episode and watching this episode
of Are You Listening? And I look forward to
seeing you in the next one.
