In Summary

When done right the best mixes can have a real sense of space, perspective, and depth to elevate the music and the listener experience. With a number of techniques available to engineers, here we explore ways to get mixes that convey the full dimensionality of real spaces and performances.

Going Deeper

Recording techniques of the last 60 years or so have strived to improve all the good stuff such as clarity and intelligibility with great success, but that can sometimes be at the expense of some of the contrasts in recorded elements that make them engaging to listen to. This can be heard where everything sounds like it’s lined up in a single row across the panorama a bit like books on a shelf; there might be a lot to absorb but behind them there’s nothing…

When you think about it, the idea that any mix can evoke the impression or image of a real performance might sound a little far-fetched. Even so, that is exactly what the very best mixes can do. Rather than being like a row of books, mixes that seem to extend backwards and forwards as well as across the panorama give a listener’s ears room to explore and engage with the mix. This makes for a richer experience that is better than what might be expected from a single pair of earbuds or speakers.

Engineers can use their medium to give the impression of anything from an intimate gig (or studio recording for that matter!) to a symphony hall, and we’re definitely not just talking about reverb. Here we talk about some ways to help deliver music mixes for stereo that have a sense of depth and perspective.

Level And Dynamics

The level of elements is so intrinsic to any mix that it can be easy to forget that even they play a part in conveying depth. Although it’s common to mix snare drums and kicks loud and proud, this is also one way to suggest that they exist on the same plane as the vocals. This explains why vocals still have a natural place at ‘the front’ of the mix, reflecting their placement in real performances. Levels can reflect these real-life relationships where realism is needed. Certain styles, however thrive on rhythmic power above all else, where sparser arrangements let drums and voices coexist at the front.

The closer things are in nature, the more dynamic they can be. That tambourine or shaker might get louder and quieter as it moves towards and then away from the mic, but move back and it can be heard at a much more even level. Allowing elements to breath dynamically to keep them up front while maintaining their consistency is the art of the engineer; compressing too much might suggest things are less dynamic and further away. Yes you can push the fader up on compressed sounds for effect, but naturally close sounds are louder and more dynamic.

Tonality

A well known acoustic phenomenon is high frequency damping or loss through the air; the further away something is, the duller it will sound (to a point - things never roll off completely). How much darker it gets will also depend on things like temperature and humidity, but any loss can be heard as a gentle roll-off rather than a huge cut-off. The type of mic and its position (more on which later) can be used to play the top end up or down as needed, and for everything else there is everyone’s favourite fixer: EQ. Gentle shelves with 6dB per octave slopes are a good place to start to simulate HF loss, or to restore brilliance on sounds that have taken an unintended back seat.

For the ultimate in authenticity for the mix, using a specific solution like Sound Particles’ Air can get the job done with more accuracy. This works on the gentle shelf principle, however it has controls for things like distance, humidity and temperature for engineers who haven’t got time to spend at Harvard to figure out the numbers. It should be noted that really significant roll off only occurs at distances greater than those found in a studio.

Ambience

The human ear uses ambience among other things to sense depth, and most engineers know that ambience is more than just an effect; it is significant in creating an impression of a sound’s distance from the listener. Aside from ambience in the capture which I’ll cover later, in the mix there are tonnes of audio plugin reverbs that can evoke distance or closer proximity.

Very close sounding elements can benefit from very little or no ambience. Further sounds can be pushed to the back of an imaginary hall which is easy enough to do with the vast majority of audio plugins. It could be argued though that the place where nuance really counts is for sounds that need to appear to be somewhere between the front and the back. The best reverbs go far beyond a splash of room or hall, and for sounds that need to sound partially further back, a reverb’s early reflections and their realism is where it’s at.

A sound’s ‘critical distance’ (the point beyond which reflected sound is louder than direct sound) can be judged by ear where there is no real acoustic to refer to. Not surprisingly, this distance is closer to the listener in livelier spaces with lots of reflected energy; the less reflective an environment, the greater this distance is. At the other end of the scale there is no point at which ambience can take over in a completely anechoic space because there is no ambience.

Width

Recording in stereo can make more realistic recordings with a sense of depth, which I’ll talk about shortly, but applying similar principles to existing sounds can make stereo techniques indispensable for tuning a mix’s perspective and depth.

To think for a minute about the way we see things in real life, objects appear wider and bigger the closer up they are, and ‘disappearing into the distance’ is something we’ve all witnessed for ourselves. To take that further, our stereoscopic vision sees a greater difference between images close up, and less difference further away to help us figure out how far away that baseball or large predator is.

At its simplest, panning mono sources wider can make them appear ‘bigger’ and sound nearer. It also goes that progressively pulling sounds inwards towards a ‘vanishing point’ can help to push sounds back into the distance, especially when combining that with some of the spectral and ambience tricks mentioned earlier.

Width audio plugins can play a part in controlling the perspective of stereo sources, bearing in mind that going narrower is usually easier than going wider. In an ideal situation the recording itself already has all the width that’s needed and maybe a little more in reserve. Stretching narrower stereo elements can be done, but as always, check in mono. This is also true for large amounts of wide-sounding reverb.

Binaural recordings can possess uncanny realism for headphone listeners, but conventionally recorded sounds can still be processed in the mix to get similar qualities using specialist tools. For example, Wave Arts Panorama 7 replicates 3D sound propagation within physical spaces in a similar way to a real binaural recording. This uses Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF)-based binaural synthesis.

The Ultimate Way

For some styles, such as Jazz or Classical, getting depth and perspective can be an intrinsic part of the recording process. With the right source, in the right room, recorded with the mics in the right place, tonality, ambience, and width all conspire to deliver real perspective as standard.

Although it might sound a little low tech, not only moving the mics, but also the performers themselves can be used to regulate balance and perspective. Mic type can also affect tonality - is that super bright mic the best choice for something that needs to sit back a little? This is easy enough to understand for something like a mono overdub, however, a true friend of realism and depth for larger sources is stereo recording done right. With stereo comes a few considerations that affect tonality, ambience, and width, and balancing the relationship between them for the format is one of the true arts of recording.

Moving the array closer will exaggerate the closeness of frontal things giving them precedence, width, and a drier immediacy. Moving back will do the opposite. That’s just assuming an array with fixed angles and/or spacing. Adjusting these against each other for the desired effect takes some experimentation and listening. Near-coincident arrays especially afford a lot of adjustment; angling further in and countering with increased spacing can dry up the capture without narrowing it, for example. Like so many things in audio, changing anything can change everything!

Anything Else?

It’s true to say that it’s usually easier to move things back than it is to pull them kicking and screaming towards the front. Ambience is harder to remove than it is to add, top cut often sounds more convincing than top lift, and extra artificial width almost never sounds better than narrowing. Sometimes, it’s better to bring something forwards by taking something else back.

Whether it’s in record, in the mix, or hopefully both, the trinity of tonality, ambience, and width, can be exploited to create a sense of depth and perspective. For some recordings, this will happen almost exclusively at the mics. For others that are made in spaces that are drier than most, more creative techniques might need to happen mainly in the mix.

Ultimately, crafting and keeping a relationship between tonality, ambience, and width to place sounds will elevate recordings. That way the mix can take on a real sense of dimensionality and perspective that could take your listener to another place.