24/06/2010
Processing space separately
So you have watched my video on separating bass frequencies and processing them differently?
If not you may have heard about it. Essentially what I did in that tutorial is had 2 chains in an instrument rack playing the same thing. In one of the chains I had an EQ cutting everything below around 350 hz and in the other chain I had an EQ cutting everything above 250 hz (or round about there). Then I effected the high frequencies differently to the lows (i left the low's dry). If i remember correctly i processed it with some slight distortion and phaser and most likely used a stereo delay to create 'inter-aural time difference' (which is where one speaker plays the sound at a slightly different time to the other one and it is perceived as being really wide seems we cant differentiate delays that close together)
Well processing multiple area's of space doesn't have to stop there!
For instance. You can process the left and right channels completely differently by creating an audio effect rack, creating 2 chains, panning 1 left and 1 right and putting completely different effects in both! Sounds crazy but it works, and it sounds awesome! (Fig 1 and Fig 1.1)
Fig 1 : Right channel processing has a Phaser, an EQ pushing some mids and Erosion.
Fig 1.1 : Left channel has Redux and Chorus.
So this is just one way to go about it. You don't have to process left and right. You can also use Utilities 'width' function to process the mid and side of the sound. Mid being the sounds we hear as the centre image and side being what we hear as being out to the sides or the width of the sound. You can kind of perceive Mid as being depth and side as being breadth.
So we would do this by again creating an audio effect rack but this time name them mid and side and in the mid chain put a Utility plugin with the width on 0% (Fig 2). This will make sure that all the sound your processing on this chain is the stuff directly in the centre. On the side chain put another utility plugin here put this time put the width to 200% (Fig 2.2) this will make sure that your just getting the very widest parts of the sound. (You might find it turns to silence. This will be because your sound has no sides to it. To fix this add a filter delay and turn L+R off. Turn L and R both to 'time' instead of 'sync; and make one around 1ms and the other at around 10ms and this will add width to your sound.)
So you see here :
Fig 2 : Utility on 0% to make sure your just getting the middle of the sound. (same effects as on the left channel earlier)
Fig 2.2 : The same effects as on the right channel earlier although this time it has a filter delay (to add width) and a utility to make sure we are just processing the sides of the signal.
Hear the difference here!
This is the dry signal before processing left and right channels separately. (a frog?)
And this is after i processed the left and right channels separately. (notice it sounds much wider and it much more interesting to the ear. It has also added a lot of clarity to the higher frequencies)
And finally this is after i processed the mid and side channels separately. (unlike left and right processing it retains more centre image yet still gives it width and keeps it exiting. it also sounds like it has kept more of the punch and 'phatness' to the sound)
These are just a couple of ways to process audio to keep it new, fresh and interesting. It's completely up to you how you go about processing. There are no rules or limits. Try everything and if you like it keep it. If not scrap it and start again.
I hope this helps you in some way!
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