Spatialization

[arnoux]

I'm looking around for spatialization techniques lately, not an easy topic for my software aversion. I see there's a lot of software performing "3D" panning like

http://forumnet.ircam.fr/product/spat-en/
or
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/10/s ... ion-tools/

but I'd like to collect some techniques without involving computers.
Is someone into this kind of stuff? Just looking to move sonic objects in the "distance axis" like the stupid drawing I painted below.
Any good reading on this?

Thanks in advance for your time

[solaris]

doing this WITHOUT COMPUTERS (as you wrote) requires a digital mixing desk and many loudspeakers, the more the better.

[arnoux]

doing this WITHOUT COMPUTERS (as you wrote) requires a digital mixing desk and a shitload of loudspeakers, the more the better.

Let me explain better, sorry I was not so clear, I'm talking about only 2 speakers, giving a sound a placement "far from the listener", the opposite of "in face".. using mic placing, eq, reverb..

I.e. yesterday I was working on something like this, trying to push away some glitch-y pastic bag noises recorded and looped in my OP-1, eq helped on this but for some strange reason adding reverb gives to me the sensation to push the sound more near to you, I expected the opposite..

[solaris]

ahhh ok sorry, so you want to "fake" a "3D" sound with psychoacoustic tricks...

there are some plugins doing this kind of thing, normally they do tricky stuff to the phase in order to create the illusion.
beware that if you want to cut the results to vinyl, the use of this kind of plugins will seriously mess with the phase and the cut could be impossible.

the old-school-way of doing it is indeed, as you wrote, by using EQ and reverb but in my experience the effectiveness depends on the source material (it does not work with any sound, at least I had hard times in succeeding with some material).

another trick you may try (but quite time-consuming) is to re-record the sounds with either a dummy head or with binaural mics (those little mics you put into your ears as if they were earbuds) - it's quite unorthodox but could yield to interesting results.

if you want to do this in a live setting, you will loose less time and patience by employing a computer.

[arnoux]

Thanks for sharing your experience solaris!

I found this article on SOS, looks interesting
https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb09/ ... pspace.htm

[solaris]

yep, tweaking EQ and carefully applying reverb can work within a mix.

but don't expect dramatic effects. ok, you can always automate all that stuff, but anyway.

at least I personally never succeeded doing anything spectacular with just EQ and reverb,
so if someone here chimes in with suggestions/tricks for fine-tuning this technique, I'm all ears.

[flo]

There's tons of different techniques for just "spatializing" stuff. In terms of mixdown and "3D", I find that it helps to refer to the following analogies regarding the axes:

Left / Right = Stereo (Panning)
Up / Down = Frequencies (EQ)
Front / Back = Volume (Loudness Control)

Three things that are easy to manipulate (or automate in modular land) and usually associated with each spatial dimension. Try what you can do with just those parameters. E.g. move something from front-top-left to back-down-right or whatever and see what happens.

Cheers

[sam]

Playing with phase seem to work for some, the other day i heard stuff were sounds felt travelling behind yourself, that's something i'd like to master and also learn about how to keep mono compatibity ! That amazes me.

Stuff like toying with phase inversion on one of two paralleled tracks while filtering both differently, etc.

I feel constrast play a big role too, one large stereo sound over mono sounds can works better than mixing with many stereo tracks.

I have read an awesome tip from Dom&Roland ages ago on gearslutz about phase tips, and could never find it again, what a shame.

[arnoux]

Playing with phase seem to work for some, the other day i heard stuff were sounds felt travelling behind yourself, that's something i'd like to master and also learn about how to keep mono compatibity ! That amazes me.

Stuff like toying with phase inversion on one of two paralleled tracks while filtering both differently, etc.

I feel constrast play a big role too, one large stereo sound over mono sounds can works better than mixing with many stereo tracks.

I have read an awesome tip from Dom&Roland ages ago on gearslutz about phase tips, and could never find it again, what a shame.

Really interesting, thanks for sharing, I have to try the parallel thing with my P10, it's a dual chanllel strip with variable phase and eq.
http://www.tfpro.com/p10.html

+ I agree about contrast, I feel the less is in the mix the more you can achieve the effect

[GGW]

In the "old" days of serious stereo sound, there were several hardware boxes for stereos that did this to varying degrees. I can't recall a lot of specifics of the products right now. They were usually quite expensive and mysterious but you may find things like that on eBay.

[MindMachine]

In the "old" days of serious stereo sound, there were several hardware boxes for stereos that did this to varying degrees. I can't recall a lot of specifics of the products right now. They were usually quite expensive and mysterious but you may find things like that on eBay.

I think Orban made a box like this in the 80's.

[???]

I like to use an enveloppe follower (or normal adsr) that modulate a very short delay (say between 0ms to 6-7ms, maybe shorter) on the left or right channel while the other channel remains undelayed. Then I just mess with the pan to get the feeling that the sound is in the middle of the space (or equal L/R volume) when the delay is at it's highest point. That's it. The sound appears to move forward as it get slightly more "stereo" as the volume increase or backward when the sound fade away. It's a a stereo trick though, but I really like it. I'll try messing with the phase too, seems very interesting.

I usually do this with a plug-in named volcano, I guess it could be done with hardware too, but it would be more complicated. Just my 2 cents...

[flo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedence_effect

Watch out for mono compatibility though...

[felixer]

Playing with phase seem to work for some, the other day i heard stuff were sounds felt travelling behind yourself, that's something i'd like to master and also learn about how to keep mono compatibity !

if you're doing that with speakers it's very dependent on placement/room and mostly the listening position. several boxes where made over the years but most where banned by broadcasters as it indeed fucks seriously with monocompatibility. cutting vinyl could be tricky too ...
with headphones you can do amazing stuff though

getting close/distant is pretty easy: just get a crossfader between dry and reverb/wet. a variation that sounds more natural (not always better!) is to have a panner to send the dry signal either into the reverb or to another/dry mixerchannel.
this is monocompatible without any problems. working with phase or short delays you have to watch out.

[ignatius]

i once was assistant on some mix sessions and the producer had one of those old roland system RSS 8048 something 3D spatializers that were $30,000 when first released.. they didn't make/sell many of them but they're out there and much cheaper these days.. if you can find one. they work on stereo signals and only require normal stereo listening set up.

it's 3 2u 19" rack mount devices + controller. to my surprise it worked really well within a limited sweet spot.

i sat with my eyes closed in the mix position to listen to some of the mixes it was used on and it's very clear there were sounds far far outside the stereo image and things behind me and above etc. really impressive.

however.. once you move a foot out of the sweet spot all of that just disappears. it's all dependent on phase trickery and only works when conditions are very controlled.

i have heard delays and other effects that managed to jump way wide of stereo image thru some blind luck of phase manipulation. these things only happened in certain listening environments and weren't noticeable in others.

you can also experiment recording with Mid Side techniques but you'll either have to record with mics or have M/S encoder/decoder and at least a mixer that has phase flip buttons on each channel to make it work.

or you can just get some binaural processing and use headphones. that stuff works really well. as 3D as anything i've ever heard. there's different ways to do it.

an engineer friend of mine recorded using a binaural head.. had ear plugs in the head that were mics and would center it in the room adn put the sound sources around it. but you had to listen w/headphones to hear it.

the boss sx-700 has a tiny slice of the RSS spatialization in it. they're cheap used these days but are not nearly as sophisticated as the roland vintage thing..

this is the only thread i could find on the old roland

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-en ... dules.html

[sam]

I like to use an enveloppe follower (or normal adsr) that modulate a very short delay (say between 0ms to 6-7ms, maybe shorter) on the left or right channel while the other channel remains undelayed. Then I just mess with the pan to get the feeling that the sound is in the middle of the space (or equal L/R volume) when the delay is at it's highest point. That's it. The sound appears to move forward as it get slightly more "stereo" as the volume increase or backward when the sound fade away. It's a a stereo trick though, but I really like it. I'll try messing with the phase too, seems very interesting.

I usually do this with a plug-in named volcano, I guess it could be done with hardware too, but it would be more complicated. Just my 2 cents...

That's a modulated variation of the "Haas" effect! Good one, thanks for the idea.

i once was assistant on some mix sessions and the producer had one of those old roland system RSS 8048 something 3D spatializers that were $30,000 when first released..

Didn't knew there was a specific RSS machine, what a tank!

In the "old" days of serious stereo sound, there were several hardware boxes for stereos that did this to varying degrees.

the boss sx-700 has a tiny slice of the RSS spatialization in it

Also, Roland SDE330, SRV330, SDX330, SDE3030 and the mighty MV8000 or 8800 have RSS effects.

if you're doing that with speakers it's very dependent on placement/room and mostly the listening position. several boxes where made over the years but most where banned by broadcasters as it indeed fucks seriously with monocompatibility. cutting vinyl could be tricky too ...

Hell i have to found that Dom&Roland phase tip, because he definitely cuts vinyls and it was mono compatible. I'll dig gearslutz until i find it.

getting close/distant is pretty easy: just get a crossfader between dry and reverb/wet. a variation that sounds more natural (not always better!) is to have a panner to send the dry signal either into the reverb or to another/dry mixerchannel.
this is monocompatible without any problems.

Good one. Thanks!


Ok, here is a tip for E-mu EOS sampler's user, if there are still some.
Of course you can do it in any sampler with maybe the help of a sample editor, but that works easily in the E-mu because of the patch cords system.

Pick a stereo sample and listen to it as it is.
Copy it to another voice in the same preset.
Hard pan each voice L & R.

R voice:
- Move sample start by routing DC to SStart and add some but not too much + 5-7% works on my sample.
- Apply slow LFO1 to Fine Tune +15 +33% works on my sound.
- Apply slow LFO2 to Amp volume, like +5 +10%, more...depends.

L voice:
- Move sample start by routing Keyboard random triggering like +1-2%
- Apply slow LFO1 to Fine Tune -10 -20% ...whatever works for you.
- Apply slow LFO2 to Amp volume, like -5 -10%, less...depends.

Now listen to your new sound, phase is randomly modulated by moving sample start, thus creating a fake stereo space that is moving around.
LFO modulations of pitch and volume are making it more in the front or more in the back.
That's just a basic start, use modulation of z-plane filters , chorus ITD modulation with a 1% depth, pan modulation etc...
Maaan there is anything like those E-mu.
I'll record it once nicely set, but it already is seriously "expanded" with that kind of settings.

Forget mono compatibility though but that's so fun!

[felixer]

several boxes where made over the years but most where banned by broadcasters as it indeed fucks seriously with monocompatibility. cutting vinyl could be tricky too ...

Hell i have to found that Dom&Roland phase tip, because he definitely cuts vinyls and it was mono compatible.

biggest problems when cutting arise with low freq. that's when you risk throwing the needle out of the groove. so if you restrict your phase-adventures to the upper range (where it's more effective anway) you should be able to get away with things, methinks. but i'm no expert ...
might be a good idea to make one mix with and another without those fx and present both to the cutting engineer, see what he/she has to say ...

[flo]

I like to use an enveloppe follower (or normal adsr) that modulate a very short delay (say between 0ms to 6-7ms, maybe shorter) on the left or right channel while the other channel remains undelayed. Then I just mess with the pan to get the feeling that the sound is in the middle of the space (or equal L/R volume) when the delay is at it's highest point. That's it. The sound appears to move forward as it get slightly more "stereo" as the volume increase or backward when the sound fade away. It's a a stereo trick though, but I really like it. I'll try messing with the phase too, seems very interesting.

I usually do this with a plug-in named volcano, I guess it could be done with hardware too, but it would be more complicated. Just my 2 cents...

That's a modulated variation of the "Haas" effect! Good one, thanks for the idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedence_effect

[sam]

Good idea Felixer anyway, gives me some dub mixing ideas.

Ah ah thx flo! I think i learned it from here: http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/2-u ... udio-13099

Your link goes deeper, will read it.

[stk]

Old school tip: The brain tends to interpret sounds with less high end content as being further away (in spacial "depth"), because high frequencies decay faster than low frequencies.

So try playing with that, combined with reverberation (to simulate a real acoustic space).

[Vorg]

Delay and Haas effect are great allies in this.

[felixer]

Old school tip: The brain tends to interpret sounds with less high end content as being further away

yes, if you have a reference. in the pre-synth days you'd know how bright a trumpet or violin would be. nowadays it's not that clear.
if you move it around and use other clues, at some point you'll get a feel for it, but the unexpecting listener will have to get his/her bearings first.

[chrisryan15]

When Im mixing i definitely use loudness and delay/reveb to create that sense of depth.

These dummy head microphones are pretty nifty, but damn expensive im pretty sure
https://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=cur ... escription

[felixer]

dummy head microphones are pretty nifty, but damn expensive im pretty sure
https://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=cur ... escription

as with everything from neumann these come at a premium price but the principle is good. not that hard to make one yourself with some small mics and one of those foam stands for wigs. you need some leather to make ears and eg a towel to simulate hair (front/rear separation). bigger nose gives more/wider left/right separation, some shoulders get you better up/down imaging. made something like that years ago and it may not be pretty but it def works. alas only for acoustic sources. plus you need a good room ...

[chrisryan15]

dummy head microphones are pretty nifty, but damn expensive im pretty sure
https://www.neumann.com/?lang=en&id=cur ... escription

as with everything from neumann these come at a premium price but the principle is good. not that hard to make one yourself with some small mics and one of those foam stands for wigs. you need some leather to make ears and eg a towel to simulate hair (front/rear separation). bigger nose gives more/wider left/right separation, some shoulders get you better up/down imaging. made something like that years ago and it may not be pretty but it def works. alas only for acoustic sources. plus you need a good room ...

Damn! Props to you for doing all of that! that'd be a bit of work I bet! Really interesting about the nose, hair, and shoulders. I never thought about how those features would affect the sound, but it definitely makes sense