And now we are coming up on 8 years later. Since no one seems to have shared how to ACTUALLY BALANCE a stereo signal that has severe correlation issues in a mix, or mentioned the fact an unbalanced stereo field will lose mono compatibility, as well the compatibility with 2 channel surround systems (Dolby) and pro-audio gear. If you disagree with that statement for what ever reason, check out the Creative Lab Pebbles, which have a
“Far-field drivers and passive radiators, custom-tuned far-field driver solution with rear facing passive radiators for excellent audio and enhanced bass reproduction, and a 45° elevated drivers for enhanced audio projection and an immersive personal listening experience.”
It’s surround sound that doesn’t violate patent laws, or I would assume, either way, if your mix isn’t mono compatible, it won’t be “Far Field” compatible either.
IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE TECHNICAL BS OR THE CONCEPT… SKIP TO “THE METHOD”
(You could just buy the software that does it, and hope one of the presets works, but I am broke and OCD)
It is important to shift your paradigm a bit for this to make sense, because there are in fact 5 different stereo modes, which I only figured out because WinAmp will display the stereo mode, and I noticed that it sometimes said Pseudo Stereo, and other times it said True Stereo. And when programming audio software, the wave writer does contain 5 different flags, granted there in no explanation anywhere that I found other than 0 is Dual Mono, and 1 is Mono or Pseudo Stereo. However there are 5, according to WinAmp there is MS Stereo and True Stereo, and I never learned what the last mode was, but I am pretty sure it is used for stereo signals that contain an LFE channel.
I have concluded that True Stereo is the same thing as having a Balanced Left and Right channel in the professional audio world, which means you have 2 parity signals channels that accompany your left and right channels… I am going to start calling them voice channels since that is how the computer sees them, the change in paradigm is this.
Balanced Mono and L/R Stereo are the same, because they both contain 2 voice channels, Mid Side signals have 3 voice channels,1 for your mid, and 2 for your side. The Mid Side signal still uses the same 2 voice channels, but it processes that signal differently. The Left channel is processed as a Mid signal, and the Right is processed as a side signal. True Stereo contains 4 voice channels, and CANNOT be achieved by summing to 2 channels in a digital environment, because the inverted signals will cancel out the L/R signals. I feel another paradigm that has to shift is what the 3rd prong on an XLR is for, as a consumer, the only benefit to using an XLR is that it cancels out line noise, or so we are told, however professionals use XLRs for multiple reasons, none of which anyone seems to want to share. So lets us deduce how balanced stereo is achieved with 2 XLR cables, but not with a stereo 1/4 inch, even though a 1/8 inch aux cable can carry a balanced stereo signal from your computer to your “Pebbles.” Which means the Pebble’s are using the parity signals to generate the Mid, SLeft, and SRight channels using only the left and right channel. This is why correlation is important, I use the Correlmeter from Voxengo, which allows you to view any problems with correlation in your stereo field as well. the difference between your Left and Stereo Left should either be at +1 across the board, indicating a mono sound, or be dancing around 0 evenly, which seems to mean it is balanced. Long story short, you need to account for all 4 voice channels in your mix if you want a balanced stereo mix and not a pseudo stereo mix.
THE METHOD!!!
Ok, so first you are going to want to set up some busses. I use : Drums, Bass, Synth, FX, and Pre-Master. Then throw a correlmeter on all the busses. Lets assume you see a problem with your Drum Buss, first, you want to find which channel is having the issue, the correlmeter will have a rhythm to it so it should be easy to spot the issue right away. Let’s say you notice a glitchy drum loop is culprit, you could toss it, but it happens to be the glue holding the drums together. Your mind set at this point should be you are going to use the Left channel as your Mid, and your Right channel as your Side in order to eliminate the the phase issue between L and R. You are going to need MSED.
This will require you duplicate the channel with the problem and then send both output to the same bus.
METHOD #1 - Hard-pan one channel all the way left. On the other channel, you want to invert the right signal and then add on an MSED set to encode.If for some reason this doesn’t leave you with just a right signal, you will want to hard-pan right after MSED (which happens in you don’t start with a balanced mono).
on the bus, drop another MSED on and set it to decode. Basically you are encoding the parity signal into the wave file so the DAC doesn’t combine the signals and cancel out all your sound.
METHOD #2 - Render or bounce the LR channels into separate files, drop those file onto separate channels, and again, send the output to the same bus. On the Left channel, just drop an MSED set to encode. On the Right, invert the right channel, and drop on an MSED set to encode. This should make it so the channels appear hard-panned, and then on the bus, you want to drop on an MSED set to decode. As a side note, you can add a stereo delay (haas effect) to your side mix before it is decoded back to LR to increase the width without destroying mono compatibility.
So now that channel is now longer having issue, and your Drum Buss Correlmeter is mostly even at 1, you move one, you probably had to do the same thing to your FX bus… But now you are having problems on your pre-master Bus in the low frequencies. This is probably do to line noise in one of the recording. This is why you want to adhere to the Rule of 300, which states, if it is not a Kick, a Snare, or a Bass, then you want to highpass the channel at 300 hrtz. I make Bass music, and I am part of a fairly large community of electronic music producers, and i have attempted to share the rule of 300, which is a term coined by Nyquist I believe, and every time I am told that that would destroy my mix, by people that are 100% “experts” on the subject. I personally will use the rule of 300 every time, and mixes are always perfect… even when my mixes are crap.
Anyway, I had to change the way I understood what Stereo was, which is to say stereo is 4 channels, pseudo stereo is 2 channels.
