Mixing and the stereo field

#1

right so i was herp derping in making a track and decided to play around the stereo field, when assigning a sound to a part of the stereo field some frequencies canceled out, so i boosted the frequencies in question and layered the sound with the dry signal eq’ing both the wet and dry to get a fuller sound, so my question is why does this happen with different sounds i.e. the higher frequencies of the drums cancelling out the higher harmonics of the bass, is it because of phase cancellation? or simple physics and algorithms either way what would you suggest i keep in mind for future references…

the track in question:
https://idmforums.com/t/the-what-did-you-create-today-thread/1210/115?u=bfk

#2

You answered it, Phase cancellation.

There’s ways around this such as,

Placing your sounds strategically,
Eq (cutting “preferred” to boosting),
Side chaining (Ducking)

#3

there are ways to invert phase but the best solution is to avoid stereo widening stuff in early production stage. it can be used, sure, but with moderation. In mixing stage, keep an eye on a vectorscope, then there’s a great idea is to narrow low-end quite a lot because it often causes phasing issues.

#4

I know I’m reviving a pretty dead topic here, but I picked up a trick about 3-4 months ago that has really helped me with stereo effects. You send whatever you’re widening (or destroying with randomly panned granular synthesis, whatever) into a mono distortion, and then mix that back in just enough to hold your sound together. It works.

#5

Interesting layer the stereo signal with the mono signal

#6

Split the sum and difference into different mixer tracks with something like MSED and then feed the sum into the difference a tiny bit,or vice versa.if you’re going to do crazy things in stereo that results in more difference than mid,this is one way of getting around that without the result sounding like a phasey, washed out mess when you fold it back down to mono and it keeps somewhat of a phantom center in stereo

The better way to get wide stereo though is get it from source sounds,then sculpt what you attained from that in mixing,rather than trying to artificially add stereo with linear delays(Haas)or whatever else during the mix phase

#7

How would you stereo mix something like 7 pads all at different pans playing the same thing in canon? So far I’ve just increased the stereo separation in the mixer but it feels off for some reason.

#8

You still need to EQ so the pads aren’t playing too many of the same frequencies. You don’t have to do it as much, but it still needs to happen, even in stereo, just in case this mix is ever folded down to mono for some reason. Also, if you’re working on headphones, then bear in mind that what sounds perfectly clear to you might not translate well onto speakers because speakers mix the left and right channels in the room between your ears and the speakers. So, stuff ends up having a lot of crosstalk between the left and right channels, and it still needs to be clear. The best test for this is to run your mix in mono as a most extreme case of 100% crosstalk.