How do I achieve spacious sound like this?, mixing mono or stereo recorded sources?

[OK1]

How do i achieve spacious sound like this?
https://open.spotify.com/track/70L68...3c9fe4393b440d

https://open.spotify.com/track/3jlF4rXX ... 45f7354b3d

https://open.spotify.com/track/70L68SZM ... 60edd74f1d

Please listen to these tracks by Adam Blackstone and the other songs on the album.

How do I achieve such natural flawless placement of mono sources in a "virtual room"?

I am listening on headphones, yet it sounds so lifelike. For mono sounds like a vocal panned to one side, my ear is obviously hearing the same cues as in real life, when audio is coming from one side, and whatever technique they are using has passed the delayed info to my other ear on headphones.

What kind of plugins or techniques can I use to achieve this?

Thanks

[The Elf]

Not listened to those links, but...

Beyond simple panning, a mix's sense of space comes from placing your sounds in a convincing (and sometimes surreal) place, most often assisted by reverb and/or delays. The type of reverb, pre-delays and tone are important to creating the world that each sound lives in - as it the tone of the dry sound itself.

Panned mono sounds can define width in your mix more strongly than ostensibly 'stereo' sounds, especially those that rely on stereo chorus, which includes many keyboard parts.

There's a lot to this subject, so what have you tried?

[James Perrett]

I felt that it was a bit artificial and "in your face". It sounded like they were using a cheap Chinese mic on the vocals - or maybe too much Aural Exciter. Maybe they were after that 60s sound where they only had 3 tracks to play with, one for left, one for right and one in the middle.

[Drew Stephenson]

Sounds to me like the wide stuff there is narrow sources, wide panned (95%) with reverb panned to opposite sides. Then the central sources have been made quite wide too (bit too much for my tastes but I refer you to my signature).

In terms of achieving it, resist the temptation to make your sources wide or apply width processing at a mix-bus level. Some of that sense of width also comes from having established a suitable range of depth as well.

[amanise]

I'm always surprised how much you can get by doing your first pass in mono and for EQ and relative gain balance. Then you don't have a lot to do for width unless you want to after that, and you can keep it conservative and occasionally throw sections out to the sides for radical effect in bursts. But we're all different. There's an article somewhere called something like "why you should be mixing in mono".

[OK1]

I felt that it was a bit artificial and "in your face". It sounded like they were using a cheap Chinese mic on the vocals - or maybe too much Aural Exciter. Maybe they were after that 60s sound where they only had 3 tracks to play with, one for left, one for right and one in the middle.

Thanks - will think about this in depth. I have my 1st paying client, as a mix engineer, and this is the sound he wants, he pointed me to this album !!, so if I can deliver it convincingly, I'd have pulled of a big win commercially, as well as improved my own skills tremendously - i.e being able to deliver what a client wants, no excuses.

[tea for two]

I have my 1st paying client, as a mix engineer, and this is the sound he wants, he pointed me to this album !!, so if I can deliver it convincingly, I'd have pulled of a big win commercially, as well as improved my own skills tremendously - i.e being able to deliver what a client wants, no excuses.

I feel you already know the important part of being a mix engineer : delivering what the client wants so you can pay the bills have a livelihood.
Putting aside our personal notions of what we would want to do.
Even Bob Clearmountain had to do this when he mixed differently to what the musician wanted.

I feel if you made clear in your first post : this is what the client wants : you would then have received specific ideas to help achieve this mix.
Several World Class mixing engineers on SoS foruume are not mind readers.

[Sam Inglis]

I must say that "natural" and "lifelike" aren't really the adjectives that come to mind when I hear those tracks. It sounds nothing like a band playing in a room. Everything is presented as very close up to the listener, and the width of stereo sources like the vibes and drum kit is exaggerated.

I think there is probably a lot of craft that has gone into making it sound like that, and it begins at the arrangement stage. Unless the arrangements, performances and recordings were spot on, I don't think it would be possible to mix those tracks in such an up-front way.

A few things that strike me, in no particular order:

The bottom end is very modern and nicely done, in that there's tons of bass but it never sounds boomy or muddy. (Those floor toms!)

The mixes are very bright, but just on the right side of being harsh.

I wonder if there's a fair bit of compression on the mix bus. It slightly has the feeling that you get when you set a bus compressor to Mid-Sides mode and hit it quite hard... but I could be imagining that.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

I must say that "natural" and "lifelike" aren't really the adjectives that come to mind when I hear those tracks.

Agreed. There is autopan on several things and a synthesised mono to stereo bloom on the handclaps all of which for me makes it very hard to listen to the actual music, it doesn't gel at all everything is over separated. And I thought I heard a post mix edit. In the change to the section at 1:55 where a reverb tail on the snare cut too soon. Maybe it was deliberate but it seems clunky to me.

[Lostgallifreyan]

I've not heard the samples but the descriptions in this thread remind me of a 'Phase 4' recording method used for LP's in the mid 1960's. (It's nothing to do with quadrophonics though, despite the name.) It was on a Los Machucambos recording that I liked so much I wanted a digital copy of my LP to listen to, but the sudden mis-timed switching of placement of mono sources was horrible. I ended putting my copy though an Acoustic Mirror reverb, a very short one that had little effect on the sound other than to make the sounds feel like they were in a real room. It made a huge difference to how pleasant it sounded, even though the switching of positions in the stereo field was still detectable. It sounded a bit odd on headphones but not hard and unnatural like it had before. On speakers it sounded great.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Decca's Phase 4 label was right at the start of stereo vinyl and intended to make people 'appreciate' the benefits of stereo. A lot of those recordings — especially the early ones — used gimmicky panning of sources. The music was arranged, recorded and mixed intentionally to create wide and wacky stereo images.

Those albums have a bit of a cult following these days....

[Lostgallifreyan]

Decca's Phase 4 label was right at the start of stereo vinyl and intended to make people 'appreciate' the benefits of stereo. A lot of those recordings — especially the early ones — used gimmicky panning of sources. The music was arranged, recorded and mixed intentionally to create wide and wacky stereo images.

Those albums have a bit of a cult following these days....

Do they now?! Ok, a recommendation: Mucho Machucambos, by Los Machucambos. Try 'Missionera', loud, the only player I ever heard who can rival that performance of the tune with a modern sound is Digno Garcia.. I imagine the experience is not dissimilar to that of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster at times.. It's a real rush...

[OK1]

Thanks all who left comments here. I have lots to reflect on, from the thoughts posted here.

1st thing I will say is, by painstakingly reviewing all the audio files, in my project, where all the instruments were captured via software plugin instruments and bounced to audio, and a few vocals recorded via microphones :

1. Using sparingly some convolution reverb (sometimes using more than one at the same time, via sends), and some plate reverb, that made a difference.

2. The other was simple panning, spreading things out in the stereo field.

I will review all the suggestions made here, and work through each of them, to discover the impact of the techniques suggested.

All thoughts highly appreciated. Thanks

[The Elf]

Reverb and panning are important, but there's more you can do.

Don't underestimate tone, delays and subtle 'smearing' with modulation. Consider 'balancing' wide-panned elements with opposite-lock effects. Also make careful choices of which sounds need to go out wide, and which should remain nearer to stereo centre.

Putting all of this together will begin to take you past the ordinary and toward mixes that stand out from the crowd.