Stereo

Why is music always so symmetrical? We have so much stereo field we can use, but people rarely take advantage of that.

Lou Reed did some binaural recordings back in the day, but they really haven't stuck as industry practice. I get that when mixing, bass/sub-bass is simpler if it's in mono, and according to dance music conventions, the kick and the snare have to be in the middle. Even if we accept that, people could do all sorts of other things in the stereo field, yet I feel like it's kind of rare.
If you swapped the left and right channels, it wouldn't feel like the song changed all that much, for example. I mean, the Beatles did some terrible stereo mixes, where vocals are hardpanned and stuff, but you could do a good job with mixing, where things in your left ear are very different from things in your right ear, I think? It seems so artistically obvious, why do people not do this? It's as if every painting had to be symmetrical down the middle, or something. I don't get it.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=mGDKWr-jIVw&ab_channel=Squarepusher-Topic
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

bump

Switch your player to mono and you'll see the difference with almost every song you have

audio engineers put a lot of time into making you not notice what they've done to make a song sound great.
when you become really aware of stereo it detracts from the songs - unless you're doing it for effects like melt banana or two tracks like velvet underground.

>I mean, the Beatles did some terrible stereo mixes, where vocals are hardpanned and stuff, but you could do a good job with mixing, where things in your left ear are very different from things in your right ear, I think?

Glad you brought the Beatles stereo mixes up, because it really shows that hardpanning a pop that isn't build to be hardpanned doesn't work. Most bands compose works that will be preformed live, so music made to be selectively panned left and right wouldn't work (at least not as well) live. Still though, it's an exciting territory

>it really shows that hardpanning a pop that isn't build to be hardpanned doesn't work
Well, you don't have to hardpan things, you can just move them in different places in the stereo field, though.

The problem with the Beatles stereo comes from the fact that stuff like vocals are getting hardpanned. At least, if it was only rhythm guitars or something and was balanced out by strings on the other side, it wouldn't be nearly as bad (though hardpanning in general isn't recommended).

>Switch your player to mono and you'll see the difference with almost every song you have
Oh, I'm very aware with the appeal of stereo, mind you, it's just that people haven't taken a lot of advantage of what the stereo field provides artistically. A lot of panning has less to do with artistic intent and mostly to do with conventions based on things like expectations of the audience or the output equipment (speakers, headphones, etc.). I feel like this is true both for mainstream music, which it's understandable that they mix that way, but also for underground stuff that you'd expect to take more risks with this type of thing.
>when you become really aware of stereo it detracts from the songs
Sure, but…
>unless you're doing it for effects like melt banana or two tracks like velvet underground.
that's my point. You'd think it'd be more prevalent, especially in this day and age.

At this point I think people do that partially because that's what most people already do, but I also think mixing just naturally evolved to be symmetrical because it generally just makes sense most of the time. The things we focus on the most are in the phantom center between the speakers, both because it makes sense spatially but because the speakers each require less energy to get those things to the right volume if they're working together.

Then everything else in the mix is panned to more or less degree around that. We hear in stereo, so it sounds good for things to have a sense of space in the stereo stage.

Panning for FX at this point is kind of corny. It's like a 3d movie where someone points at the camera and their finger sticks out at you. we get it

>Panning for FX at this point is kind of corny. It's like a 3d movie where someone points at the camera and their finger sticks out at you. we get it
Yeah, you got a point there, I see what you mean.
Still, though, I also feel like you could compare it to a painter who decides to paint everything important right in the middle while leaving the sides of his paintings sort of blank, you know?

Like, take this, for example:
youtube.com/watch?v=mGDKWr-jIVw&ab_channel=Squarepusher-Topic
On one hand, a lot of the drums, bass, and vocals are in the center(ish), but he also uses the stereo space to do a lot of detailed, layered work. A lot of the artistry is tied to the way everything is panned. I think Squarepusher himself talked about how he wanted to make this song like a painting that looked like it never ended, that it went on forever? Well, his panning work helps with that. It (personally, anyway) doesn't strike me gimmicky at all when I listen to it.

though maybe that's not the best example since a lot of stuff IS panned in the middle, I dunno

lots of electronic music takes advantage of stereo

but in general it's good to have overall symmetrical volume levels in a song so as to not damage one ear more than the other (both as a producer and for the listener)

...

>>You'd think it'd be more prevalent, especially in this day and age.
nah
they did it in the 60s
listen to an electric storm by white noise
lots of stereo ideas - because it was exciting at the time. it's cheesy and tacky nowadays.
engineers use stereo to its most useful capacity nowadays just fine

not that user but
we all 'just read' about everything we ever learned at some point you fucking melon

most of us dont read about something and then come onto an indochinese karaoke board to fake ask questions about panning while rejecting every answer given just to show off some rudimentary knowledge of the subject

most of us don't come to threads without having anything interesting to say and just shit on it while pretending to be an interesting person who knows more than the OP or any of the posters

but you do you.

>"hey, I wonder why people don't take advantage of stereo more?"
>fake asking questions

what?
Are you just retarded?

People like you are literally the reason why the board has gone to shit.

Everyone else is having a legitimate discussion, and one guy just has to go
>muh you're all so retarded, look at me, I'm so cool for no reason!

It's true OP keeps rejecting answers he shouldn't be rejecting, but you're so full of shit.

Just because you haven't heard something doesn't mean it hasn't been done.

i despise hardpanning with a passion, it ruins so many otherwise great songs

pretty much and it really depends on genre, honestly. you can do some great panning in ambient stuff, even automate it if you wanted to and it would probably work, but for most things panning is kind of distracting.

hard panning is definitely distracting, and if you pan just one thing past 40ish you're really gonna hear it stand out unless you bury it in the mix, which at that point you're really just widening the stereo image anyway so... that's kind of what light panning is for, widening the stereo image without having to hard pan things.

light panning works if you have something like two different guitar tones doing similar but different things.

this thread is so gay and i cant be bothered to explain why, but op is indeed a faggot in this case

ur gay

just listen exclusively to Piper at the Gates of Dawn