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#50 Howlin - What did you say about Robert Pattinson? Take it back!
#11
Do the adjustments in mono. See if there's a difference. Then listen in stereo.

Also, screw all this it's your friday night and go out and stop thinking abut mixing. Because, that, really, is what will make you a better mixer. Hertz and dB and whatever aside, if you've lived then you understand art and if you understand art you get music and mixing. Or not. But atlas keep the sentiment in mind.
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#12
(19-07-2019, 07:08 PM)Deliza Wrote:
(19-07-2019, 01:11 PM)Monk Wrote: Firstly, what pan law are you using?

Reaper's default is 0.0dB so I guess that's it. Once ot twice I tried to learn the theory about it but just ended with a headache. Though I did think I understood pan law was relevant when automating pans only (but that could be wrong too, couldn't it?).

The pan law question is actually related to the problem of your mix, but it’s a long winded explanation. Suffice to say, when you understand what is happening within the various pan laws and how they can help or hinder you, the knowledge could offer you clues as to what is happening during downmixes too. The correlation I have in mind, is a major factor responsible for masking. Who’d have thought it?

For me, the guitar symptom points to significant masking in the stereo domain. The cause, or causes as I see things in your scenario, are numerous. I unreservedly point to the limitations of headphone mixing and suggest this to you as being the main culprit, due in part to channel isolation (it creates issues many users are oblivious to). It’s not difficult for a mix to sound quite good in headphones for this reason, despite being poor over a pair of speakers and definitely when the mono downmix is played over a single speaker.

Headphones mislead, and they don’t discriminate between your first mix, or the 400th. They all have a poor, uneven frequency response across the spectrum and this leads to mixing inconsistencies. You cannot fix their response, nor can the brain compensate for it. What you think you are hearing in the daw is actually the combined response, acting out in a subconscious, psychoacoustic manner during mix time. The brain cannot differentiate this. It all too often leads to odd results in the bass region, upper mids and treble, as you know.

The Habituation Effect is also playing a part, I dare say.

There is a phase issue of sorts here, but it’s not directly responsible for the collapse of the mix over speakers nor in a mono downmix played over one speaker. The channel correlation issue here could be avoided simply by narrowing the pan on the guilty element to help stabilise the mix. Eyes would do this a million times better than ears, but that’s a long discussion too; all daws have a correlation meter for good reason: So we can avoid it! There are, however, bigger things at play here IMO FWIW.

The distortion artifacts in the live piano are coming from within your signal chain and you should be able to hear this problem clearly, especially in headphones, and investigate the cause. I would also mention that the illusion I’m getting with the piano, suggests it’s in a different performance space to the vocal. The verb on the vocal is giving problems you’ve not assessed the severity or implications of.

If this is your 50th mix, it might be a good time to reflect on the question regarding your listening environment. I would.
"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal  audio  devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.
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#13
Thanks for the knowledge; as always, much to think about.
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