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  #16  
Old 01-24-2012, 07:12 PM
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Originally Posted by mc1 View Post
does this mean that only one side of each stereo track is used? i mean if you have stereo track A from mic 1, then pan it hard left, are you only getting the left channel from this mic. or is track A mixed to mono and then panned left? thanks.
No, I do no panning at all. A stereo track sends the left side to the left and the right side to the right. There is a "pan" control, but it's set to the center, which has no effect on the signal. The right mic is coming 100% out of the right speaker, the left mic is coming 100% out of the left speaker. On a stereo track, the pan control would have the effect of turning down one side or the other. You might think of it more as a balance control, just like the Left/Right balance you probably have on your car radio.

If I recorded to two mono tracks, I'd have the left one panned hard left and the right track hard right. With most modern DAWs, you can record on a single stereo track and have the equivalent of that on a single track.
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Old 01-24-2012, 07:25 PM
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No, I do no panning at all. A stereo track sends the left side to the left and the right side to the right. There is a "pan" control, but it's set to the center, which has no effect on the signal. The right mic is coming 100% out of the right speaker, the left mic is coming 100% out of the left speaker. On a stereo track, the pan control would have the effect of turning down one side or the other. You might think of it more as a balance control, just like the Left/Right balance you probably have on your car radio.

If I recorded to two mono tracks, I'd have the left one panned hard left and the right track hard right. With most modern DAWs, you can record on a single stereo track and have the equivalent of that on a single track.
sorry for being so daft. i thought you were using 2 stereo mics, and ended up with 2 stereo tracks to combine. but in fact you were using 2 mono mics and recorded a single stereo track, correct?
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Old 01-24-2012, 07:27 PM
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You could reach out to Rob Poland at Candyrat.
He is the "man behind the scenes" for many of the Candyrat artist videos.

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  #19  
Old 01-24-2012, 07:37 PM
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sorry for being so daft. i thought you were using 2 stereo mics, and ended up with 2 stereo tracks to combine. but in fact you were using 2 mono mics and recorded a single stereo track, correct?
No, I'm using 2 pairs of stereo mics, recording 2 stereo tracks. You should be able to see it on the video pretty clearly, with both tracks's waveforms, the mixer console, meters moving, etc. But forget the 4-mic setup, just start with 1 pair of mics, and record them on a stereo track. Add some reverb, if you want. That's about all there is to "mixing" when there's only a single instrument to mix. There can be an element of EQing or processing to improve the sound, of course. We just had a discussion/demo of that, here:

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=238876

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You could reach out to Rob Poland at Candyrat.
He is the "man behind the scenes" for many of the Candyrat artist videos.
There's no magic "candyrat" technique here, just basic acoustic guitar recording techniques that a ton of people on this forum do all the time.

I've talked to Andy about what he did on his last CD - he recorded with a single mic and a K&K, 2 separate tracks. He sent that to a studio to be mixed, and he doesn't know (or didn't know at the time I last talked to him) what the engineer did as far as the mix. But it's not magic, there are only a few options.

Last edited by Doug Young; 01-24-2012 at 07:56 PM.
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  #20  
Old 01-24-2012, 08:30 PM
DarkestDreaming DarkestDreaming is offline
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Hi Doug,

when you record with a stereo setup and you pan extreme L and R you have no signal from your left mic to your right speaker and vice versa. Am i right?
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  #21  
Old 01-24-2012, 08:54 PM
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Hi Doug,

when you record with a stereo setup and you pan extreme L and R you have no signal from your left mic to your right speaker and vice versa. Am i right?
Correct. "panning" a stereo signal to the right basically turns off the signal going to the left, and vice versa. Do you have some type of recording software? You should be able to try this yourself to make it clearer.

But when recording in stereo, really, I all but ignore the pan control. That's not really something that gets involved in a proper stereo recording. You create the image with the mic placement. if you have to adjust the pan control, you set up the mics wrong or set your preamp levels wrong.

Last edited by Doug Young; 01-24-2012 at 09:04 PM.
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  #22  
Old 01-24-2012, 09:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Doug Young View Post
Correct. "panning" a stereo signal to the right basically turns off the signal going to the left, and vice versa. Do you have some type of recording software? You should be able to try this yourself to make it clearer.

But when recording in stereo, really, I all but ignore the pan control. That's not really something that gets involved in a proper stereo recording. You create the image with the mic placement. if you have to adjust the pan control, you set up the mics wrong or set your preamp levels wrong.
What is described above is a "balance" control. It will allows for biasing the sound from one side or the other to whatever degree desired but it cannot change the width of the field.

Technically speaking, "panning" has to do with where you place a mono signal within a stereo or multi-channel soundfield.

It's my usual practice to send each mic of a stereo pair to it's own mono channel so that I can have total control of the final stereo width of what was recorded.
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  #23  
Old 01-24-2012, 10:19 PM
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What is described above is a "balance" control. It will allows for biasing the sound from one side or the other to whatever degree desired but it cannot change the width of the field.
Agreed, that's what I've been trying to explain. There is no "panning" of a stereo signal, and the control on most DAWs that acts as a "pan" on a mono track becomes a "balance" on a stereo track, just like the Left/Right balance on your car stereo. The problem with recording two separate mono tracks on most computer DAWs is that all the nice stereo plugins expect to work on a single stereo track. You can use busses, etc, but for solo guitar, it seems easier to me to just use a single stereo track. In any case, I'm still puzzling over why we've now had a dozen posts about "panning" :-) It's a non-sequiter for a simple stereo acoustic guitar recording.
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  #24  
Old 01-24-2012, 10:52 PM
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Agreed, that's what I've been trying to explain. There is no "panning" of a stereo signal, and the control on most DAWs that acts as a "pan" on a mono track becomes a "balance" on a stereo track, just like the Left/Right balance on your car stereo. The problem with recording two separate mono tracks on most computer DAWs is that all the nice stereo plugins expect to work on a single stereo track. You can use busses, etc, but for solo guitar, it seems easier to me to just use a single stereo track. In any case, I'm still puzzling over why we've now had a dozen posts about "panning" :-) It's a non-sequiter for a simple stereo acoustic guitar recording.
Ask me again why I use an analog console for mixing. Regardless of stereo or mono tracks, I can pan anything anywhere I choose. It often comes in very handy to narrow a stereo sound source a bit. Guitars aren't really meant to be six feet wide.
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  #25  
Old 01-24-2012, 11:41 PM
DarkestDreaming DarkestDreaming is offline
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I was always trained to record stereo as two mono tracks so all this is new to me.

If you record it as a single stereo track, and 'pan' that track, you are essentially making L louder than R and vice versa, yes? As opposed to sending a bit of left's signal to the right?

And one of the reasons you do this is to avoid phase issues.

Does this sound about right?
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  #26  
Old 01-25-2012, 01:02 AM
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I was always trained to record stereo as two mono tracks so all this is new to me.
Sure, you can do that, too. But in digital systems, most plugins are designed to work on a stereo track, so for example, if you want to EQ your stereo track, you'll have to EQ the left track and then also EQ the right track. That's ok, too, you could even argue that it's more flexible. It sounds like Rick, with his analog console, would have no choice. But it's not needed in Logic, which is what I use, because stereo tracks work great. There's no right or wrong here, but I think most computer-based systems support stereo tracks because it's a convenient way to work. Beyond effects, it's easier to edit, and do other operations that need to be done on both channels. But if you prefer to work with two mono track and pan them however you like, that's perfectly fine, and all systems I know of support both.

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If you record it as a single stereo track, and 'pan' that track, you are essentially making L louder than R and vice versa, yes? As opposed to sending a bit of left's signal to the right?
Correct, as both Rick and I have been saying, a "pan" control on a stereo track is a balance control. If you turn it to the right it has no effect on the right channel, but turns down the left channel. Exactly like the L/R balance control in your car stereo. I think I'm sounding like a broken record :-)

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And one of the reasons you do this is to avoid phase issues.
Well, that's an aspect, but the real point is that when you record in stereo with stereo micing techniques, the entire point of the mic setup is to create an appropriate stereo image. There's no need to "pan" if you set up the mics right, and you are to some extent destroying the math behind the way stereo micing works.

Of course, that's ok, too. The bottom line is what sounds good. If you get the best sound by putting up two mics, recording them to separate mono tracks and panning them however you want, the results speak for themselves! Do what sounds best. What sounds best to me, so far, is recording a stereo track and getting the sound I want by mic placement. Therefore the need to "pan" simply never comes up. But there's a reason they call recording an "art". You can do anything you like, if you like the results, it's great.

You asked about mixing solo guitar, and the examples I posted show how I did it in a couple of cases. It's not the "right" way, it's just what I do, so if you like the results, you might experiment with the same approach. If you don't think it sounds good, avoid my techniques. I do think that the basic approach I use is pretty common among solo fingerstyle guitar recordings, which is why I brought it up. I didn't invent any of this :-) I came up with what I do by studying lots of fingerstyle recordings, talking to lots of recording engineers and other guitarists, and so on. I hope it's helpful, but if it doesn't make sense to you, that's ok, too. There are tons of ways to do things, if it sounds good, thats what counts.

Last edited by Doug Young; 01-25-2012 at 01:16 AM.
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  #28  
Old 01-25-2012, 02:19 AM
mcoliver77 mcoliver77 is offline
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Awesome links! Thanks for sharing.
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  #29  
Old 01-25-2012, 06:37 AM
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... In any case, I'm still puzzling over why we've now had a dozen posts about "panning" :-) It's a non-sequiter for a simple stereo acoustic guitar recording.
i'm afraid i started us down that path. for some reason i misremembered/misunderstood that when you made teoaagr (the evolution of an acoustic guitar recording), one mic was on the left and the other on the right. meaning that if i panned the recording left or right i would be hearing only one of the mics. given they were stereo mics, i was wondering if you had mixed them into mono first.

but i've slept, reread and rewatched, and i now understand that both mics are in stereo and are blended, and one side of each mic can be heard on the left and right channels, and there is no way to hear each mic separately.

i hope i explained this well enough to not cause further confusion. thanks for the information and sorry for panning the thread hard left.
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  #30  
Old 01-25-2012, 11:10 AM
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i'm afraid i started us down that path. for some reason i misremembered/misunderstood that when you made teoaagr (the evolution of an acoustic guitar recording), one mic was on the left and the other on the right.
The 4 mics in that example is a little confusing. If I was making a "how to record" demo, I'd have stuck to simpler and only used a single stereo pair. But since this was more of a "what I did" example, I wanted to really show what I did. For me, using 4 mics just started out as wanting to have options, maybe I'd like one pair, maybe I'd like the other. Two different approaches to stereo micing. But then, of course, I liked both for different reasons, and it was natural to say, what if I used both pairs? Seemed to work. I just played with different blends of the two pairs until I liked what I heard.

You can take the same approach with a pickup - going back the original "how do I sound like Andy McKee" question, record with mics, and also record a pickup. You can record the pickup on a mono track, so you can actually make good use of that pan control :-) Blend with the mics to taste.
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