# Alan Meyerson tips for mixing sampled orchestra



## synthetic (Mar 12, 2009)

In case you haven't noticed, Alan Meyerson (recordist/mixer behind most Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard scores) posted some mix tips on Gearslutz. Someone asked about his Michael Clayton mix, and along the way the topic drifted to sampled orchestra mixes. I'm trying this tonight! I've always been interested in Haas panning but never tried it on a mix. 

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-end ... ton-2.html



> Sample Orch trix
> So, first of all, none of this is based on anything other than my opinion and experience. I don't claim to be an expert on anything. Nuff said.
> 
> Some of the stuff I do to sample orchestras.
> ...


----------



## Peter Emanuel Roos (Mar 12, 2009)

Very cool Jeff!

Alan is apparently playing with perception tricks (which I like very much as being trained as perception researcher).

All the best!

Peter


----------



## Fernando Warez (Mar 12, 2009)

Cool find!

Thanks a lot!


----------



## Andreas Moisa (Mar 12, 2009)

Thanks!


----------



## synthetic (Mar 12, 2009)

I messed around in Logic 8 today and it looks like a combination of the "Sample Delay" plug-in and the pan pot (which is just a L/R balance control) gives good results for Haas panning.


----------



## Rob Elliott (Mar 12, 2009)

What does he mean 'walls'? I have been really listening to REAl string mixes of late and there is space between the listener and the attack of the strings - with samples I can't do that without making it muddy????

Know what I mean ( I don't want to put the strings are far back as the WW's or brass) - but I also don't want them in my ear. o/~ :? 

Rob


----------



## Hannes_F (Mar 12, 2009)

With a delay you can imitate the slapback of a back wall or side walls, I guess this is what he means.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 12, 2009)

But not usually with 8th note delay. If you want to create walls the delays are going to be in the 15 - 45 millisecond range...although of course it depends on the size of the room; 15 - 45 ms is more like a studio.

I'll have to try that idea, though. It wouldn't have occurred to me to use in-tempo delays on orchestra.

Also, it's interesting that he rolls off the highs going to the reverb. It's common to roll off the lows, but I've never heard that.

Thanks for the link, Jeff.


----------



## Fernando Warez (Mar 12, 2009)

synthetic @ Thu Mar 12 said:


> I messed around in Logic 8 today and it looks like a combination of the "Sample Delay" plug-in and the pan pot (which is just a L/R balance control) gives good results for Haas panning.



I cant remember what haas means, do you mind telling me?

Cheers!


----------



## Frederick Russ (Mar 12, 2009)

Cool find. True Stereo Impulse Responses (four mono mic sources) can also give you the slap back effect bouncing off walls. Bricasti M7 also has true stereo so a lot of of the chaotic room reflections are captured in a superb hardware unit.


----------



## jsaras (Mar 12, 2009)

The "Haas effect" is a technique that is covered in considerable detail in the new book "The Composer's Approach" by Mike Novy. However the left/right time differentials the he advises are MUCH shorter. They range from 0.37 ms to 0.63 ms. He's done all the math to back up the values he suggests for the various zones of the orchestra.

The short-shrift of the book is that your ear gets its spatial cues primarily from a combo of panning, early reflection time, and left/right time differential.


----------



## Thonex (Mar 13, 2009)

jsaras @ Thu Mar 12 said:


> They range from 0.37 ms to 0.63 ms. He's done all the math to back up the values he suggests for the various zones of the orchestra..



I'm guessing that those numbers are more related to the distance between your ears?


----------



## Hans Adamson (Mar 13, 2009)

Creating phase differences with delays to emulate stereo position would be redundant if the lib is recorded with a mic configuration that gives a natural phase difference between the channels, and the players are recorded in position. I guess many libs are recorded in mono, or with x/y mic configurations if there is need for such techniques? No? (o)


----------



## bryla (Mar 13, 2009)

Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> Also, it's interesting that he rolls off the highs going to the reverb. It's common to roll off the lows, but I've never heard that.
> .


I have set up an EQ for every section according to the distance from the listener going in to the reverb on physical principles according to high frequencies roll-off over distance - which they do much faster than low frequencies. The longer away the source, the lesser high frequencies. Low frequencies you roll-off because of mud, but high to create distance. 

http://resource.npl.co.uk/acoustics/tec ... bsorption/
Ned posted this a couple yes ago.


----------



## Hannes_F (Mar 13, 2009)

Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> But not usually with 8th note delay. If you want to create walls the delays are going to be in the 15 - 45 millisecond range...although of course it depends on the size of the room; 15 - 45 ms is more like a studio.



A bigger delay is clearly listenable in many records, especially effective for pizz. I love that.


----------



## jsaras (Mar 13, 2009)

bryla @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> Nick Batzdorf @ Fri Mar 13 said:
> 
> 
> > I have set up an EQ for every section according to the distance from the listener going in to the reverb on physical principles according to high frequencies roll-off over distance



This is covered in "The Composer's Approach" as well.


----------



## ComposerDude (Mar 13, 2009)

Thonex @ Thu Mar 12 said:


> jsaras @ Thu Mar 12 said:
> 
> 
> > They range from 0.37 ms to 0.63 ms. He's done all the math to back up the values he suggests for the various zones of the orchestra..
> ...


Yes. Picture a triangle whose corners are your two ears and the instrument sound source. If the sound is directly in front of you, the long legs of the triangle are equal length, and the sound arrives at your ears at the same time. As the sound source moves left or right, those long legs of the triangle change slightly in length. Sound in air travels roughly a foot per millisecond, so a third of a millisecond is about four inches difference.

There are also "head related transfer functions" as incoming sound from various angles wraps around your head; these form the basis for SRS stereo expansion.


----------



## Dietz (Mar 13, 2009)

Quoting Alan Meyerson from gearslutz.com: "If I have the low strings separate, I often add a tiny tiny bit of my favorite saturation plugin."

Yes!!! ... listen to the man, people. I've said it a dozen times, but no-one believes me: DISTORTION IS YOUR FRIEND! (o)


----------



## synthetic (Mar 13, 2009)

I read Alan talking about using Sonnox Inflator for saturation. I also know he has a rack of 3 Manley Massive Passives and at least 5 Bricasti M7s! (The main reverb on the Dark Knight score.)


----------



## lee (Mar 14, 2009)

> I try to get people to give me separate high, mid, and low string stems. Instead of panning them to try to simulate the positions of sections, I'll use small amounts of delay to simulate sort of a "Haas effect".



Alan *kicks haas*.

There´s also this: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... t=kickhaas which perhaps could turn into something useful.

/Johnny


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 14, 2009)

The Haas effect is also called the precedence effect, and the idea is in this context is that if you take a sound panned hard left and right, then delay one channel, the image will shift toward the earlier one. It works in the tenth of a millisecond range, and only on sounds below about 10k.


----------



## Stevie (Mar 14, 2009)

That's how we learnt it at the university:

There are 2 ways to change the stereo panorama of a signal: 

- volume differences (that's what we daily use in our software/hardware)
- runtime differences (the monitor that reaches the ear first determines the panorama)

http://kore.noisepages.com/2008/09/28/i-can-haas-stereo/ (http://kore.noisepages.com/2008/09/28/i ... as-stereo/)




R.I.P Carlo Bäder


----------



## Peter Emanuel Roos (Mar 14, 2009)

On this track I ran the strings through some serious saturation and tape plugins:

http://www.samplicity.com/peter/music/Peter%20Emanuel%20Roos%20-%20Riding%20Out%20At%20Dawn.mp3 (http://www.samplicity.com/peter/music/P ... 20Dawn.mp3)

(posted it a number of times before, it's not new)

I have also experimented with slap echos on the brass to the opposite channel. 

Fuzz guitar from Alex Waywyn.
Horns switching from Dan Dean to ProjectSAM to EpicHorns (I matched them with EQ and ERs).


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 14, 2009)

The advantage to delay-based panning is that the image is more stable. The disadvantage is that it's not mono-compatible.


----------



## PaulWood (Mar 27, 2009)

I'm waiting (impatiently) for Mike's book to arrive, but in the meantime, without giving away book "secrets" could someone please tell me if therefore it is recommended to use a combination of panning/imaging AND selay (the Haas effect) on a signal for spatial positioning.

I only ask because Alan's tips post mentioned that he often uses delays "instead of" panning...


----------



## bryla (Mar 27, 2009)

synthetic @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> I messed around in Logic 8 today and it looks like a combination of the "Sample Delay" plug-in and the pan pot (which is just a L/R balance control) gives good results for Haas panning.


Pan pot is that the track panner?

If so I have found that yes it turns down the delayed side, but it also sends the delay over to the wrong side. How do you do it?

I have experimented with the binaural panner, which gives VERY good spatial results, but somehow it messes up the sound quality. Also after diffuse-field and the binaural post-processing


----------



## PaulWood (Mar 28, 2009)

Bryla - I haven't tried this myself but I would imagine that the best way is to use a panner/imager tool (Flux StereoTool is Freeware) *before* the delay, and in the case of a stereo audio source, simply reduce the level of one channel... Then apply the delay after that.


----------



## PaulWood (Mar 28, 2009)

In point of fact, what Meyerson utilises isn't actually the Haas Effect, as that applies to *mono* sound sources.



> Instead of panning them to try to simulate the positions of sections, I'll use small amounts of delay to simulate sort of a "Haas effect".


----------



## bryla (Mar 28, 2009)

PaulWood @ Sat Mar 28 said:


> Bryla - I haven't tried this myself but I would imagine that the best way is to use a panner/imager tool (Flux StereoTool is Freeware) *before* the delay, and in the case of a stereo audio source, simply reduce the level of one channel... Then apply the delay after that.


"Of course" I have tried that, and for some reason which I can't understand it doesn't work


----------



## PaulWood (Mar 28, 2009)

Hmm.... for a true Haas effect one has to use a mono sound source and pan the channels HARD left and HARD right before applying the delay - the implication being (I think) that the amount of delay on the "opposite" side allows you to control where the perceived image is coming from.

However, I have read in several sources that this should be applied along with pan (for a not-quite-but-almost-better-than-Haas Effect). As you seem to have discovered though, it doesn't work entirely correctly.

Hopefully someone more knowledgable will chime in, as I am very interested in where this discussion is going too!


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 28, 2009)

"one has to use a mono sound source and pan the channels HARD left and HARD right before applying the delay"

It doesn't matter where you place the delay as long as one channel arrives before the other. The Haas effect is also known as the precedence effect for this very reason.

However an 8th note delay is simulating the back walls and has nothing to do with positioning or Haas. Remember, at anything slower than 1200 BPM an 8th note is outside the 50 millisecond Hass window.

In other words two copies of the same sound less than 50ms apart are heard as one; over 50ms they're heard as two discrete sounds.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 28, 2009)

And if you think I did the maths to figure out the 1200 BPM tempo you're giving me too much credit. 

I have a free Widget called Audio Calculator:

http://lensco.be/projects/widgets/

(Actually, I could have done the maths for this simple calculation, but I'm way too lazy.  )


----------



## PaulWood (Mar 28, 2009)

Thanks Nick.

So there are 2 separate delay "methods" here, and each is for a differòç   › 1ç   › 2ç   › 3ç   › 4ç   › 5ç   › 6ç   › 7ç   › 8ç   › 9ç   › :ç   › ;ç   › <ç   › =ç   › >ç   › ?ç   › @ç   › Aç   › Bç   › Cç   › Dç   › Eç   › Fç   › Gç   › Hç   › Iç   › Jç   › Kç   › Lç   › Mç   › Nç   › Oç   › Pç   › Qç   › Rç   › Sç   › Tç   › Uç   › Vç   › Wç   › Xç   › Y


----------



## synthetic (Mar 30, 2009)

bryla @ Fri Mar 27 said:


> Pan pot is that the track panner?
> 
> If so I have found that yes it turns down the delayed side, but it also sends the delay over to the wrong side. How do you do it?
> 
> I have experimented with the binaural panner, which gives VERY good spatial results, but somehow it messes up the sound quality. Also after diffuse-field and the binaural post-processing



I inserted the sample delay on an audio track or return, then used the pan pot on the mixer channel (above the fader, not a plug in) to adjust the left/right balance. I didn't realize that this control affected the plug-in?


----------



## bryla (Mar 30, 2009)

Well you can try it this way:

Insert the sample delay and give right side a long delay. 2000 samples maybe. Then pan

The result will be the same with sample delays of 20 samples


----------



## maxime77 (Jul 19, 2016)

Pulling up that thread from the abyss, but how do you do exactly to make that "Haas Effect" with delay? I have actually never used delay plugins, but for example with Violins, do you use delay as a send, pan the delay track all the way to the right, and set it to 10ms?


----------



## Farkle (Jul 19, 2016)

maxime77 said:


> Pulling up that thread from the abyss, but how do you do exactly to make that "Haas Effect" with delay? I have actually never used delay plugins, but for example with Violins, do you use delay as a send, pan the delay track all the way to the right, and set it to 10ms?



Nope, it's not a send, it's an insert.

Okay, take a Kontakt orchestral instrument... like, take the Flute that's built into Kontakt, and send it out into your DAW.

Now, on the output track, put a delay plugin, one that allows you to delay the right and left channel independently. (Sonar has Channel Tools plugin for this).

Do not delay the left channel, but delay the right channel by 10-15 ms. The left channel will hit your ear first (at 0 ms), and the right channel will hit your ears second (at 10-15 ms delay). The sound will suddenly "feel more left".

It's not the same as panning, panning reduces the volume on one side, and increases on the other. This physically makes the sample hit your ears at different times.

Mike


----------



## maxime77 (Jul 19, 2016)

Farkle said:


> Nope, it's not a send, it's an insert.
> 
> Okay, take a Kontakt orchestral instrument... like, take the Flute that's built into Kontakt, and send it out into your DAW.
> 
> ...



Thank you for explaining this! So, I do not have a delay plug-in that allows me to delay right and left channels independently. However, what I did in Reaper, is using the delay plug-in as an insert, and thanks to the "Plug-in pin connector" (which I've just discovered), I unchecked the "Stereo out L", so that it affects only the Right channel.







I guess that you let the output signal of the delay plugin to 100%?

I've tried it so that you can tell me if I am doing it right, I have put an exaggerated delay so that it is clearly audible: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ilaFCsy9PtM2JieU1MVU5iczg/view?usp=sharing


----------



## Farkle (Jul 19, 2016)

maxime77 said:


> Thank you for explaining this! So, I do not have a delay plug-in that allows me to delay right and left channels independently. However, what I did in Reaper, is using the delay plug-in as an insert, and thanks to the "Plug-in pin connector" (which I've just discovered), I unchecked the "Stereo out L", so that it affects only the Right channel.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Yes, that is EXACTLY how you do it in Reaper. In my old Reaper template that's what I did. You have to make sure the plugin is set to 100% Wet, which is what you did. Output signal of the delay plugin is 100%. No dry (non-delay signal) running through at all.

Now, when you do a smaller 10-15 ms delay (and try it for values up to 50 or 60 ms), you'll not only get a "shift of location" in the stereo field, you get a bit of fake "room slap" which can go a long way towards faking early reflections from a dry sample. And, the CPU hit is negligible. It's a single delay. Nothing big for processing power.

Oh, don't forget to turn the delay feedback down all the way, or almost all the way. You want one delay only, not a ping pong'y thing. Which you did on this example, I'm just reminding you. 



Mike


----------



## kmlandre (Jul 19, 2016)

There's a freebie Haas effect plugin that I've been messing with lately that I'm liking the sound of:

http://dotec-audio.com/deepanpot.html

Super simple to use and it may do everything you're looking for...

-- Kurt


----------



## Brendon Williams (Jul 19, 2016)

kmlandre said:


> There's a freebie Haas effect plugin that I've been messing with lately that I'm liking the sound of:
> 
> http://dotec-audio.com/deepanpot.html
> 
> ...



On that note, here's another free one that works well for the Haas effect:

http://www.voxengo.com/product/stereotouch/


----------



## maxime77 (Jul 19, 2016)

Farkle said:


> Yes, that is EXACTLY how you do it in Reaper. In my old Reaper template that's what I did. You have to make sure the plugin is set to 100% Wet, which is what you did. Output signal of the delay plugin is 100%. No dry (non-delay signal) running through at all.
> 
> Now, when you do a smaller 10-15 ms delay (and try it for values up to 50 or 60 ms), you'll not only get a "shift of location" in the stereo field, you get a bit of fake "room slap" which can go a long way towards faking early reflections from a dry sample. And, the CPU hit is negligible. It's a single delay. Nothing big for processing power.
> 
> ...



Yeah I heard that the Feedback knob modified the sound in an unwanted way so I turned it all the way down 
Thank you very much for clarifying everything. It may seem very simple to you, but no one has ever explained this to me, and I am glad I understand it now!


----------

