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Hey guys,

I recently listened to some tracks from 501 and i was amazed by a characteristic :
All his tracks (well the recent ones, less than 10 months), sound very "close", or at least much closer than "regular" tracks from other people.
When you listen to them on headphones it almost sounds like the sound is coming from behind your neck. It sounds very define, neat and "close to you".

Here are some tracks so you can make yourself an opinion :
https://soundcloud.com/501dubz/koobra-f ... -something
https://soundcloud.com/501dubz/protohype-fly-501-remix

Am I the only one to have this impression ?
Do you have an idea about the processing being involved in order to get this ? I believe it's some overall processing, maybe total absence of reverb in anyway or oads of stereo width, but I didn't yet manage to get that same "close" feel.
Or maybe it's just great EQ and mixing ?

I listened to the tracks quickly on my monitors, to me it sounds like the majority of the mix is really central, aside from the real high end which is really wide.

mthrfnk wrote:I listened to the tracks quickly on my monitors, to me it sounds like the majority of the mix is really central, aside from the real high end which is really wide.

As it should be?

Sounds like you inverted the phase on one side of your phones (L/R) somehow..

Icetickle wrote:

mthrfnk wrote:I listened to the tracks quickly on my monitors, to me it sounds like the majority of the mix is really central, aside from the real high end which is really wide.

As it should be?

Imo they're a lot more central than some mixes, maybe why they sound so focused on headphones?

mthrfnk wrote:

Icetickle wrote:

mthrfnk wrote:I listened to the tracks quickly on my monitors, to me it sounds like the majority of the mix is really central, aside from the real high end which is really wide.

As it should be?

Imo they're a lot more central than some mixes, maybe why they sound so focused on headphones?

He said that the sound is coming from "behind his neck"...

Icetickle wrote:Sounds like you inverted the phase on one side of your phones (L/R) somehow..

sounds like you don't know what you're talking about..

Maybe some binaural panning algo, or just very little to no reverb.

Check out Wavearts "Panorama" it is very good for this kind of effect. Alternatively you can use a reverb with a very short decay and small size.

Here is a demo of panorama from the wavearts website (use headphones):
http://wavearts.com/sounds/PanoramaDemo ... hones).mp3

Thanks for your input, i'll have a look at those panorama vsts.

I was also thinking about some frequency splitting (with like at least 5 bands) on each instruments (bands being set differently), with some bands mono and others very very wide. I'll see how this sounds.

imo people are taking the panning stuff too far - to me it just sounds like he's panned stuff hard centre/right/left and then the dry reverb is making stuff more stereo (e.g. pan a lead hard left and add reverb and you'll get some reverbed stereo information on the right making it wide)

I actually didn't even listen to the song in question, I probably should. Although I am probably going to end up agreeing with mthrfnk...

You can achieve an effect like this with stereo phase offset as well.

Well. i would go with mthrfnks answer too. but tbh im just posting to say how horrid that sounded. my ears are still ringing.

Sinestepper wrote:Well. i would go with mthrfnks answer too. but tbh im just posting to say how horrid that sounded. my ears are still ringing.

Your ears can ring?

what a stupid question,