Mix Height

I think you bring up something that's very interesting. I've noticed, in some really excellent mixes, things sitting "up" or "down". Vocals "floating" on top of guitars, which sit "on top" of bass. Things sound tall, not just wide or deep. Its a pyschoacoustic thing for sure. I couldn't offer any specific ways of getting there but I can say I've accidentally stumbled into it with my own work.

As the diagram shows each instrument is high and low passed and put in its frequency range.
Spinal effects add the width and depth.
Also the monitoring environment plays a big part in the playback spectrum. When set up properly,
The highs on top, the mids in the middle and the lows at the bottom of the stereo image.
Thus the feeling of height and depth.  Not everything in the middle and flat in your face.
It's a science to get that monitoring eviroment and talent to mix in it.

I have no idea how to intelligently answer the question, but I've started playing around with the SPL Vitalizer from Plugin Alliance and seems like it stretches the soundscape wider and taller.

So by "height" you're referring to frequency balance?

Interesting - I never thought of it as "height", not in the way one thinks of "depth", which is forward or back in the mix (generally determined by a combination of level and delay/reverberation), as it would be on a stage. To me the music takes place on a stage, where there's depth, certainly, and right to left placement (unless you're in mono), but "height"? I've been on a lot of stages, but "height" never entered into the placement of instruments, unless you maybe had some instrument in a Peter Pan flying harness. Perhaps some sort of Pink Floydian effect, where you send a rocket over the heads of the audience (like they did in the DSOM live show), but that's not something you usually have in most music.

I usually see/hear frequency balance in terms of "color". if anything. It's hard for me to visualize it in terms of "height". And semantically "height" and "depth" are two directions in the same plane, not two different planes.

To me having more high frequency content on an instrument or vocal doesn't make it "higher", just "brighter" or in some cases tinnier or thinner. Color, not "physical" placement.



I don't understand. Maybe I'm too old, or maybe I just didn't take enough psychedelics when I was young and still did such things.


EDIT: Now, if your mixing for something like the Meyer Constellation system, which does 3 dimensional acoustic architectural modeling, THEN you definitely do have a dimension of height. But normal music mixing doesn't get near that sort of thing. (My friend Joey Swails is one of the engineers associated with the Constellation installation at Zellerbach hall in Berkeley...)

I think the height thing is an invention of mix engineering classes / sales programs / AE schools.. Honestly, I've never though of it that way in my life. Maybe I hear the same things, but think of them differently. But hey.....ready to learn something new if there is such a thing.

There is a book (and video tutorial) on this.... back when I was very gullible I actually bought the book looking for advice.
Unfortunately mixing, at least for me, did not turn out to be a series of placing computer generated 'bubbles' in some virtual landscape. 
In fact I feel mixing these days in general is way over-hyped.

But hey check it out, enjoy

I mix with height all the time







in Auro3D though...so...yeah..


Stereo...never think of it that way either.

What’s your verb setup now?

Or izotope visual mixer.

Bricasti for room?