Collyer wrote:The reason it is possible to pan left or right is because generally there are two speakers present in a system, one to the left and one to the right. panning up and down would be pointless even if it were possible because nobody is going to listen to it on a setup where they have a speaker on the ceiling and another underneath them. The closest you could get is by as mentioned by Hudson splitting it into frequencies as generally there is one tweeter that handles high frequencies at the top of a speaker and a woofer that handles mids/lows at the bottom although in the grand scheme of things when you're sat 4 feet back from your speakers you aren't going to notice that a certain sound is coming from 5cm higher than another... so basically no.
Hooray for common sense. Turn your head 90 degrees and L/R stereo sounds like up + down stereo, amazing isn't it!
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:11 pm
by sunny_b_uk
there would be no point if this was the slightest bit possible.. it could probably end up sounding like the processed sound went up if you did a very detailed filter sweep, however.. is it really going to sound like that on every system?
what if your speakers are on the floor? is it going to seem like the sound went a bit higher?
what about if the speaker is higher up (like in a club) is the sound going to sound like it moved across the room like a y axis rather than to the other speaker?
theres two speakers we have to work with and there's no throwing the voice tricks
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:20 pm
by 3rdeye
a combination of filtering and changing amplitude can create the psychoacoustic illusion of sounds moving up and down in the mix, most definitely yes
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:24 pm
by therapist
3rdeye wrote:a combination of filtering and changing amplitude can create the psychoacoustic illusion of sounds moving up and down in the mix, most definitely yes
Do you have any explanation of that?
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:39 pm
by Today
yeah man i dunno if others have better techniques. I didn't write the book on mixing, but i pretty much spelled out how you'd achieve this effect. I don't get why you'd claim it's pointless, or won't translate, or that there are no "voice-throwing" tricks.. good mix engineers do loads of tricks to add dimension.. and they do their best to get the mix they want to translate across playback systems
imo these little details are exactly what sets apart the great form the good. It's kind of boring to say "this effect isn't even going to translate so i won't try to achieve it"
Sometimes in mixes you get things to seem like they are occurring even if they're not.. Just because there's no knob that says "up" vs. "down" , doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it.
most likely the effect will be subtle.. its not going to sound like an instrument is shooting toward the ceiling. But if you draw in that automation you will get depth and movement in the mix that can suggest upward or downward motion
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:47 pm
by Today
if you want more detail, lets try automating a high pass filter to steadily move from about 200Hz up to the 1k mark. simultaneously ride the volume fader down by 6db, and a reverb send increasing from very low, to a medium level. pan very slightly from left to right, or vice versa and send a very small amount to a delay at the last second.. similarly to step one, HP filter-sweep the delay's output steadily from like 200 up to 1k or steeper if you prefer ***
depending on what other sounds occur at the same time (it's all relative) the element should "rise". experiment with the depth and shape of your automation curves. also try automating a stereo imaging plugin -- steadily decreasing the stereo width of the element could also help it get less "up-front" and sound like its going upward and away.
***numbers subject to dramatic change depending on sound in question
Read into it if you're interested but bare in mind that it isn't as simple as it looks. I wanted to do some stuff with it aswel and was overwhelmed with information.
i read that but i can't figure out for the life of me how it plays into vertical perception
this may be largely due to the fact i've never tried any of it
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 9:01 pm
by therapist
Today wrote:i read that but i can't figure out for the life of me how it plays into vertical perception
this may be largely due to the fact i've never tried any of it
Quite. I'm not rubbishing the vertical imaging thing but I don't know how much it can be applied as an effect. The binaural effects are created mostly through the difference between the left and right speakers; filtering/delays etc. that replicate how the sound changes between hitting your left and right ears. This works in headphones but is pretty limited on speakers, I'd guess this effect would always be kind of weak on speakers, unless perhaps they're set up 180 degrees to you.
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 8:09 am
by Cubicle
You also got to make sure you're on 5.1 to get the binaural effect.
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:14 am
by Depone
Cubicle wrote:You also got to make sure you're on 5.1 to get the binaural effect.
That's not true... at all.
Binaural recording requires stereo (2.0) headphones. As the way it works, there’s a dummy head (along with dummy ears) with microphones in this head ware the ears are. Recordings are taken with this dummy head with objects moving around the space. The playback of these sounds needs headphones, as the recordings were taken from an ears perspective.
The brain listens to the sounds, and fills in the gaps, and creates the illusion that sound is not only moving back, forward, up and down! Works very similarly in the way that our brain fills in the gaps and jumps to conclusions in optical illusions.
If you havnt already, listen to this (HEADPHONES ONLY, WILL NOT WORK ON YOUR SPEAKERS)
Logic pro has binaural panning for sounds that wernt recorded in a binaural fashion
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 11:41 am
by Ongelegen
Like Depone said, headphones only.
PS: for those who don't know, free binaural FX in the link in my sig
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 2:53 pm
by Cubicle
Depone wrote:
Cubicle wrote:You also got to make sure you're on 5.1 to get the binaural effect.
That's not true... at all.
Binaural recording requires stereo (2.0) headphones. As the way it works, there’s a dummy head (along with dummy ears) with microphones in this head ware the ears are. Recordings are taken with this dummy head with objects moving around the space. The playback of these sounds needs headphones, as the recordings were taken from an ears perspective.
The brain listens to the sounds, and fills in the gaps, and creates the illusion that sound is not only moving back, forward, up and down! Works very similarly in the way that our brain fills in the gaps and jumps to conclusions in optical illusions.
If you havnt already, listen to this (HEADPHONES ONLY, WILL NOT WORK ON YOUR SPEAKERS)
Logic pro has binaural panning for sounds that wernt recorded in a binaural fashion
But aren't these recordings made in 5.1?
If not, my bad!
I read around abit but every info is different elsewhere on the interwebz.
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:25 pm
by Hircine
I used to get some solid results from binaural. Two condenser / overhead mics positioned as human ears, works great.
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:45 pm
by Ongelegen
Cubicle wrote:
But aren't these recordings made in 5.1?
If not, my bad!
I read around abit but every info is different elsewhere on the interwebz.
No, binaural recordings require just 2 mics (omni) setup in the position like the human ears, preferably in a dummyhead. Why two mics? Well because we have 2 ears. The purpose of binaural recordings is to capture the sound just like we hear it with our ears. With binaural recordings you are able to tell, just like in real life, from which direction the sound is comming from and how far approximately the sound source is.
Re: Panning up and down?
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 6:30 pm
by venuq
http://freemusicsoftware.org/1625 Just found this free binaural simulator vst, not had a go with it yet but it claims to do 'vertical movement'.