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Post by drew571 on Feb 24, 2016 13:33:36 GMT -6
I've heard some well known mix engineers (Michael Brauer) talk about vertical space in a mix. Any suggestions on how to achieve this? I'd love to experiment around with stuff that sounds like it's above my head. I'm talking about in a stereo mix.
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 24, 2016 14:00:57 GMT -6
my 2 cents, vertical placement is a function of eq, mostly high freq's will appear up, mostly low freq's will appear down, it's more a function of rolling off the opposite than boosting, think about the laws of physics pertaining to human hearing and your environment, when it comes to mixing realistic images, every answer you could ever want can be found in that realm of thinking.
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Post by jdc on Feb 24, 2016 14:01:29 GMT -6
I believe one way is through compression attack time. The longer the attack the more the transients are preserved and your brain will equate that to being closer spatially to your head, as opposed to a sound where the attack is muffled and is most likely closer to the floor. It's all psychoacoustic, like the phantom center.
Would love to know of other techniques that help with this. Would also love to know if I'm way off base here haha
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Post by jazznoise on Feb 25, 2016 6:48:37 GMT -6
my 2 cents, vertical placement is a function of eq, mostly high freq's will appear up, mostly low freq's will appear down, it's more a function of rolling off the opposite than boosting, think about the laws of physics pertaining to human hearing and your environment, when it comes to mixing realistic images, every answer you could ever want can be found in that realm of thinking. To be specific, the 8Khz and 12-14Khz bands actually dictate a lot of our limited sense of vertical placement. Their are binaural encoders than can do this sort of positioning for you, but they usually sound pretty crappy on speakers. Audio has to sound pretty mangled to seem behind our heads or above us. Our spatial resolution in those areas is poor. |
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Post by jimwilliams on Feb 25, 2016 10:11:49 GMT -6
Stack speakers on end and mix laying on your side, works every time. Learned that from my cat.
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 25, 2016 11:57:55 GMT -6
my 2 cents, vertical placement is a function of eq, mostly high freq's will appear up, mostly low freq's will appear down, it's more a function of rolling off the opposite than boosting, think about the laws of physics pertaining to human hearing and your environment, when it comes to mixing realistic images, every answer you could ever want can be found in that realm of thinking. To be specific, the 8Khz and 12-14Khz bands actually dictate a lot of our limited sense of vertical placement. Their are binaural encoders than can do this sort of positioning for you, but they usually sound pretty crappy on speakers. Audio has to sound pretty mangled to seem behind our heads or above us. Our spatial resolution in those areas is poor. vertical perception is more a function of our memory conditioning through our lived environments, low energy high frequencies are blocked by almost any object, so the perception of them existing "up high" is very real, there are no objects above our heads to block or absorb them, so they travel well up high, not well at all down low. Bass lives low, and is very powerful, it travels through and resonates things, usually objects emitting bass are big and heavy, and sit on the floor, they rumble the floor first, and then DISSIPATE energy as they travel up walls toward a ceiling, we understand all of this subconsciously as we live it every day, vertical mixing is as real as depth and width mixing, just less obvious and more difficult to render vs a pan pot or fader. |
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Post by jazznoise on Feb 25, 2016 12:54:53 GMT -6
vertical perception is more a function of our memory conditioning through our lived environments, low energy high frequencies are blocked by almost any object, so the perception of them existing "up high" is very real, there are no objects above our heads to block or absorb them, so they travel well up high, not well at all down low. Bass lives low, and is very powerful, it travels through and resonates things, usually objects emitting bass are big and heavy, and sit on the floor, they rumble the floor first, and then DISSIPATE energy as they travel up walls toward a ceiling, we understand all of this subconsciously as we live it every day, vertical mixing is as real as depth and width mixing, just less obvious and more difficult to render vs a pan pot or fader. No, it's actually purely due to our physiology and the resultant HRTF: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_functionThe notches and peaks for most peoples heads are roughly where I said for a source above the listener. Conditioned things like bass "falling" is complex, because there's also distance factors. How does that correlate to moving a close mic'd source being positioned above or below you? At any rate, vertical resolution is very poor and varies wildly. I wouldn't lean on it as a tool. |
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Post by Ward on Feb 25, 2016 13:46:36 GMT -6
Learning how to "float" elements in a mix was quite the hail mary moment for me. Finding out how to move things outside the stereo field, psycho-acoustically was euphoric.
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 25, 2016 14:02:39 GMT -6
vertical perception is more a function of our memory conditioning through our lived environments, low energy high frequencies are blocked by almost any object, so the perception of them existing "up high" is very real, there are no objects above our heads to block or absorb them, so they travel well up high, not well at all down low. Bass lives low, and is very powerful, it travels through and resonates things, usually objects emitting bass are big and heavy, and sit on the floor, they rumble the floor first, and then DISSIPATE energy as they travel up walls toward a ceiling, we understand all of this subconsciously as we live it every day, vertical mixing is as real as depth and width mixing, just less obvious and more difficult to render vs a pan pot or fader. No, it's actually purely due to our physiology and the resultant HRTF: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_functionThe notches and peaks for most peoples heads are roughly where I said for a source above the listener. Conditioned things like bass "falling" is complex, because there's also distance factors. How does that correlate to moving a close mic'd source being positioned above or below you? At any rate, vertical resolution is very poor and varies wildly. I wouldn't lean on it as a tool. what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?, I was clearly not talking solely about binaural location cues in an anechoic chamber, understanding the functions of human hearing as an AE is an assumption, i'm talking our biological relationship with diff hz of sound waves propagating in the atmosphere, reflected, around and through objects in our environments, so 100% of everything i stated in the quoted post is absolutely true in virtually every environment including outdoors, if you don't understand binaural function pertaining to the shape of your own head as an AE, it's time to break out the books. edit; to be double clear, pour hot wax into one of your ears and kill it, everything i said still applies to one ear, frequencies are effected differently top to bottom by atmosphere and environment. |
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 25, 2016 14:24:30 GMT -6
Learning how to "float" elements in a mix was quite the hail mary moment for me. Finding out how to move things outside the stereo field, psycho-acoustically was euphoric. thats cool, so how do you accomplish this? |
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Post by jazznoise on Feb 25, 2016 19:22:17 GMT -6
what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?, I was clearly not talking solely about binaural location cues in an anechoic chamber, understanding the functions of human hearing as an AE is an assumption, i'm talking our biological relationship with diff hz of sound waves propagating in the atmosphere, reflected, around and through objects in our environments, so 100% of everything i stated in the quoted post is absolutely true in virtually every environment including outdoors, if you don't understand binaural function pertaining to the shape of your own head as an AE, it's time to break out the books. edit; to be double clear, pour hot wax into one of your ears and kill it, everything i said still applies to one ear, frequencies are effected differently top to bottom by atmosphere and environment. Well this is still perceptual science, so clearly it's not a given. Monoaural location of HF's is possible, but bass localization is extremely poor even with both ears, the wave lengths are just too long for ITD to really clarify and our heads don't offer much bass absorption for amplitude differences to inform us. It's flat out wrong to say we have any significant bass localization under any condition cause we just don't. Obviously high frequencies both decay quicker and have a tendency to fall, but unless we know the source that isn't relevant information. It doesn't mean we'd have a gestalt of an electric guitar amp floating above our heads or at our feet unless we experience it personally, and it's not in anything I've ever read that we'd remap this information to something else and nor have I experienced it. Indeed we struggle with this, which is why spatial recognition of unfamiliar sounds tends to be very poor. We can tell if a man is singing in a shower, or outdoors, or in a box. But synthetic sounds can be considerably more difficult. We have to experience the direct phenomena, or very very close to it. We also lose a sense of distance - which is also true of recordings where there is no reverberation. Our brain can't guess how bright the hi hat was before it hit the mic, it needs more clues than that. To reiterate: the HRTF is simply the dominant factor in vertical localization, which is why there's no "vertical EQ plugins". Cause everyone's head is different and they wouldn't necessarily work. Example: My friend used to jog with binaural ear mics to make field recordings. I had long hair, his was short, but other than that we're physically comparable. My front 120 was great, and I had some front vertical info, but as soon as a sound went behind me it would mysteriously fly to the top of my head. We tried processing it to mitigate it, but we never could resolve the discrepancy between the spectra and our own cognitive mapping. It's just how it be. |
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 25, 2016 20:17:27 GMT -6
what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?, I was clearly not talking solely about binaural location cues in an anechoic chamber, understanding the functions of human hearing as an AE is an assumption, i'm talking our biological relationship with diff hz of sound waves propagating in the atmosphere, reflected, around and through objects in our environments, so 100% of everything i stated in the quoted post is absolutely true in virtually every environment including outdoors, if you don't understand binaural function pertaining to the shape of your own head as an AE, it's time to break out the books. edit; to be double clear, pour hot wax into one of your ears and kill it, everything i said still applies to one ear, frequencies are effected differently top to bottom by atmosphere and environment. Well this is still perceptual science, so clearly it's not a given. Monoaural location of HF's is possible, but bass localization is extremely poor even with both ears, the wave lengths are just too long for ITD to really clarify and our heads don't offer much bass absorption for amplitude differences to inform us. It's flat out wrong to say we have any significant bass localization under any condition cause we just don't. Obviously high frequencies both decay quicker and have a tendency to fall, but unless we know the source that isn't relevant information. It doesn't mean we'd have a gestalt of an electric guitar amp floating above our heads or at our feet unless we experience it personally, and it's not in anything I've ever read that we'd remap this information to something else and nor have I experienced it. Indeed we struggle with this, which is why spatial recognition of unfamiliar sounds tends to be very poor. We can tell if a man is singing in a shower, or outdoors, or in a box. But synthetic sounds can be considerably more difficult. We have to experience the direct phenomena, or very very close to it. We also lose a sense of distance - which is also true of recordings where there is no reverberation. Our brain can't guess how bright the hi hat was before it hit the mic, it needs more clues than that. To reiterate: the HRTF is simply the dominant factor in vertical localization, which is why there's no "vertical EQ plugins". Cause everyone's head is different and they wouldn't necessarily work. Example: My friend used to jog with binaural ear mics to make field recordings. I had long hair, his was short, but other than that we're physically comparable. My front 120 was great, and I had some front vertical info, but as soon as a sound went behind me it would mysteriously fly to the top of my head. We tried processing it to mitigate it, but we never could resolve the discrepancy between the spectra and our own cognitive mapping. It's just how it be. Again, tea in China, I'm not talking about HRTF even at all, you need to go back and read my posts again,...you are flat out missing the point, 1st, everything is SPL dependant and subject to destructive and constructive environmental interference, bass certainly sits low on the vertical audio ladder, and you can certainly localize bass when it's low SPL, or emanating energy through structures as the energy absorbs and dissipates with distance, unless it's an overwhelmingly large amount of SPL that resonates everything constant. Clearly, big bass waves vibrate objects, and objects are generally ON THE FLOOR, NOT IN THE AIR, we REMEMBER THIS as instinct, again, big generators of low freq's send there energy into and through objects and structure, there energy is usually well dissipated by the time it reaches the upper portions of a structure unless there are insanely high SPL's present. For high freq's, they are normally heard up high on the vertical ladder, people and objects absorb high frequencies, and they stand 6'5" and under, and usually don't float up into the air, high freq's are weak, and only travel when unobstructed, which makes them normal fare for higher vertical recognition as they don't survive the obstructions down at lower elevations, hence being known as "AIR FREQUENCIES", these are simple everyday environmental realities that we all experience and memorize, when you recreate these realities psycho acoustically in a mix, it translates to the human experience... period, so I'm not sure what it is your saying here? but the idea that vertical manipulation is not possible is way off, dropping mixes to the floor and raising them above the speakers is normal for great mixers, your insistence to inject HTRF into the conversation has exactly 0 to do with the reality of what i'm talking about here. |
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Post by jazznoise on Feb 26, 2016 6:07:42 GMT -6
Air frequencies is a subjective term but whatever, Tony, as usual you're right and the world is wrong. I said where vertical resolution is, specifically (as specific as it gets, it is high frequency but it's 2 bands where the pinna tends to reflect vertical information differently to horizontal information. But that it varies, and so localization is not gaurantee'd. Which is why there's no plugins for it or nor "3 feet elevated from head position" presets, because they can't exist because that's not how HRTF works(and, since you seem to be confused, that IS basically our psychoacoustic map for positioning, including panning). It works purely for an individual and the closer the source position is to the Cone of Confusion, the less likely you are to get it right.
If you can demonstrate any of what you're talking about, I'll shut up. Actually I'll shut up anyway, I don't know why I'm getting into this.
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 26, 2016 9:53:56 GMT -6
Air frequencies is a subjective term but whatever, Tony, as usual you're right and the world is wrong. I said where vertical resolution is, specifically (as specific as it gets, it is high frequency but it's 2 bands where the pinna tends to reflect vertical information differently to horizontal information. But that it varies, and so localization is not gaurantee'd. Which is why there's no plugins for it or nor "3 feet elevated from head position" presets, because they can't exist because that's not how HRTF works(and, since you seem to be confused, that IS basically our psychoacoustic map for positioning, including panning). It works purely for an individual and the closer the source position is to the Cone of Confusion, the less likely you are to get it right. If you can demonstrate any of what you're talking about, I'll shut up. Actually I'll shut up anyway, I don't know why I'm getting into this. Ok, you're right, i'm wrong, you're good looking, i'm ugly, you're smart, i'm stupid... 8) Regardless, I'm just trying to answer the op's question, and you and I are STILL NOT talking about the same things at all, your insistence on conflating HRTF to my point is  , and has nothing to do with sound energy in regard to our environments, it also has nothing to do with mixing in 1.2 dimensions(.2 is tweet above woof), as location cues are useless emanating from a single source location/dimension, it's all psychoacoustic tricks in mixing, so if you want to wax on about HRTF, have at it, but it ain't in context of my point, or answering the OP's rather good question. here's all the proof i'm gonna give you,... go to a cocktail party with a bunch of people present, then squat down to the floor, and listen, take note of the freq's that are evident, then stand on a chair, and take note of the freq's that are evident, it's a relative study of where sound energy lives and dies, in ALL of our environments, we memorize this and file it in our brains as "familiar/safe", nuff said.... |
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, and has nothing to do with sound energy in regard to our environments, it also has nothing to do with mixing in 1.2 dimensions(.2 is tweet above woof), as location cues are useless emanating from a single source location/dimension, it's all psychoacoustic tricks in mixing, so if you want to wax on about HRTF, have at it, but it ain't in context of my point, or answering the OP's rather good question.