I’m an almost absolte beginner in home recording and I’d appreciate very much you help.
I’ve heard a lot of recordings in which one can perfectly hear a single instrument in both channels (L and R), with almost exactely the same sound, e.g acoustic guitar. But when I try to duplicate a track in my multi-track software, and set the pan of the two tracks to hard-L and hard-R, respectively, I end up with a kinda centered sound again.
How is that “double” sound accomplished?
I am almost sure that’s a very obvious technique for many of you, but I’m stuck in this
If the sounds in Left and right are exactly the same, it will produce mono in the centre.
Try using the time shift tool to move the left OR right about 30 milliseconds later.
It worked perfectly. Exactely what I was looking for.
While looking for this answer, I’ve read somewhere that duplicating a track and inverting the phase of one of them would leave a “blank” space in between, so that other instruments could have more room in the mix.
I’ve tried it, together with the time displacement you mentioned, but I’m not sure if the result is good or not. I think I’d prefer an opinion by someone with a deeper technical background. Do you think it’s a good idea?
Thank you very much … I’ve already helped me a lot.
PeterAndTheWolf
Inverting one channel while leaving it otherwise synchronised with the other channel can cause some strange, and often unfortunate side effects, such as causing the two channels to “cancel out” and completely disappear on some mono equipment.
Moving one of the tracks will cause the phase of the two waveforms to be different, so inverting one of the waveforms will not usually make a lot of difference, although sometimes you may find that inverting a time shifted channel will sound better than without inverting - sometimes the other way round. Very small differences in how much you shift the channel can also have a noticeable difference. If one of the channels is moved too little, you can get strange “phasing” effects, particularly noticeable on low frequencies. Shifting a channel too far will cause a noticeable “echo” effect. Around 30ms usually works well, but depending on the actual recording, 29ms can sound quite different to 31ms.
The technique of “doubling” generally works better on natural recorded sounds rather than synthesized sounds. There are also many variations of the technique, such as using a little “pitch shift” on one channel, or using more than two tracks, with different panned positions and different amounts of shift.
Brazil ! Hey that’s cool - this site is so international - and your English is very good (I’m in England)
Experimenting and playing is a great way of learning - it’s impossible to explain all the subtle variations, but we gain from experience. Try looking up “Automatic Double Tracking” on Google - that may throw up some additional information and ideas.
It seems to be a very usual technique. I didn’t know that name (ADT) … that’s why I couldn’t find much information about it before. But as soon as I googled it with the proper name, I realized there’s a lot of information on the subject.
