My rant about mistakes made in mixing in stereo

it seems to me that what many people here are arguing for is stereo mixes that in effect have so little separation so therefore may as well just be mono and there are some examples of this, some of the Spector produced solo Beatles albums for example.

Indeed many posters do confirm that they wish mono had continued into the 70's, if you hate stereo just be honest and say so, its a perfectly reasonable position, but just be honest, it seems to be the hate that dare not speak its name......

 

What makes people think that these stereo mixes are mistakes? Stereo not so important and number of tracks placed limitations on the mix. I would guess in most cases the wide panning is unavoidable or quite deliberate to give consumers the effect they expected. Actually different sounds coming out of each speaker was one of the wonders of early stereo. It's the equivalent to doing digital compression today for Ipod users.

 

Gorts need to change title of thread to something like...:

"Things I disagree with, ((looking back with 50 years of hindsight,)) concerning older stereo recordings"

 

Once again "How old are you?"
Most kids had mono players up to the 70s. And yet you will find amazing stereo recordings from the earliest 60s made for example by the team of Bert Kaempfert, who used to record live with lots of microphones. It was a time of learning and experimenting.

Interesting btw that todays young musicians make even more mistakes with stereo mixing, they widen many signals by phase shifting and ruin their recordings. Cause when played in mono (important still for radio) those things disappear....
That is even worse than two track stereo ever was.

 

I have wondered about this for a very long time before making this thread

 

So, now you know better.

It's never a good idea to assume that professionals, in any field, suddenly become idiots and prone to lots of mistakes.

 

My age doesn't matter here.

Saying that kids had mono players up to the 1970s is stretching it a bit. Mono was almost completely phased out by about 1969, at least in the US. Any recordings released from about 1968 or later are most likely fold downs from stereo mixes

 

I remember somebody on this Forum talking about this. I wish I could find the thread. When did EMI start using boards that had variable pan pots?

 

Okay maybe I need to stop using the word mistake. What I am trying to get at, is that hard panning of drums and bass makes a terrible mix. And I am NOT the only one who thinks so. Lots of people agree to NEVER hard pan bass and drums for reasons I've already explained

 

I don't hate stereo. I really do love stereo when it's done right. I also love mono, when it's done right.

And I'm not so much ranting about miniscule separation as I am about hard panning. Wide separation is a good thing. It's just when you separate bass and drums in opposite channels, it makes a terrible mix.

 

With all due respect, this is an old argument that boils down to subjectivity. I hear all the time about people who can't stand the panning back and forth between speakers, instrument placement, etc. These criticisms come based on now accepted modern recording techniques.

Did these professional engineers know what they were doing? You bet they did. Like others have previously mentioned, stereo was sort of unexplored territory. There was a lot of experimentation in the early days to give music lovers what they wanted. We actually loved all those panning techniques believe it or not. It showed to us what was possible with stereo mixes. I use to see records or recorded sound effects so that people with nice stereo systems could show off what their system was capable of.

Recording equipment was relatively primitive compared to what is available today. I think recording engineer did a great job with what tools they had to work with. My complaint was never with stereo mixes but rather the mono mixes of the day. There were a lot of bands that I liked live that never translated well to records based on rushed, cheap production efforts. They just wanted to sell a record with the least amount of effort.

Most of the complaints about the stereo mixes seem to come from the Beatles catalog. I am use to those records the way they were mixed and see no reason to change them. "They are what they are"
!

 

Are you being sarcastic?

 

But my using one's "Balance" control it makes a VERY entertaining way of disecting parts of a recording though!!

There is a clarity that is unmatched when things are on totally separate channels, and can be heard free from clutter and free from a mono signal or phase issues, with other sounds intermixing.

Try it some time, pan your balance hard left or right on those hard panned stereo recordings, and you will not believe the clarity and ability to hear stuff.

Maybe not a good stereo "Image" is created, but fun as hell!

 

The way I see it is... yes, stereo mixes can be annoying with the drums on one channel, vocals on another, etc, etc. But obviously the practice was the make stereo very stereo. There would be no point to two mixes (mono and stereo) if the stereo didn't have a major difference. Let's also keep in mind that most people's units weren't as nice and spaced around the room like many keep them today. Chances are they had a couple speakers sitting somewhat close to one another in one unit. Stereo actually makes instruments sound a lot clearer. I don't think the stereo mixes were really 'mistakes.' Some people even thought stereo would be a fad and didn't put a lot of effort into those mixes. Not sure if you want to call that a mistake though. Forgetting about instruments in the mix would be a mistake.

 

It was done so things could be summed to mono without phasing out any of the sound. It wasn't a mistake! Everyone has opinions, and I'm sure many agree with yours without realizing the reasoning for mixing that way back then.

 

That is only one kind of record player from the 60s. And it's a portable one at that.

You seem to have forgotten what a decent hi-fi setup would look like back in the day. Two separable, full-range speakers with a proper, dedicated power amp. Something where horrible panning choices would show and be quite annoying.

Also, studio engineers didn't mix with monitors that looked like that. In major studios, they had dedicated left and right monitors when mixing. So panning choices could be clearly heard

 

Now to add something to the mix.......((lol))

I have seen some very small time bar and club bands and artists, and VIOLA! ...

They had very small sound set ups, that literally at times, almost mimicked this exact thing.

The guitar was on an amp "Far Right"

Bass "Far Left"

And so on. Several totally separate signals each on its own distinct speaker and not in stereo at all.

Hearing it that way in real life though, you can see the players and it is NOT annoying at all oddly enough.

Hearing it on a record, it sounds very odd though.

 

You don't need pan pots to place a sound source anywhere you want it in the stereo soundstage.

In my early days I often mixed without pan pots and could put any source anywhere I wanted it. You just have to know how to do it.

My goal when recoding live was to put the instruments in the mix right where they were on the stage. In some cases drums were on one side and bass on the other. In that case that's how I recorded them. There is nothing wrong with that at all if you're trying to convey realism.

 

Something like that ?




That was 1969. The Beatles' stereo mixes that are problematics are the ones from 1963 to 1965. (more or less).

 

Many times hard panning sounds great. Example--The Who's My Generation LP tracks. First Steve did them for Who's Missing, using the hard-panning style from the '60's on I'm A Man & Daddy Rolling Stone. When Talmy did the Deluxe Edition in stereo, he used 2004 type-mixing, with very little separation. The early stereo versions, by Steve, slay Talmy's mixes, which are horrible. I wish we had an entire MG LP by Steve, with all '60's type stereo.

And, there is nothing I love more than separated, hard-panned vocals. Those Mamas & Papas split vocal mixes that Steve hates so much--I love 'em. Same with early Beach Boys stereo.

 

You somehow answered my question and I think any further discussion is pointless, cause you weren't there in those days and you also believe, that all the world is America. I tell you a secret: there were and are other countries as well......

 

I didn't say you mixed them. I said you "did" them. I meant you used the '60's original mixes. Shel felt he had to "improve" them. He didn't.

 

BTW, what are the little green triangles that have started appearing on the top right of some Avatars? I just noticed them.