Need good advise for my backing tracks on the gig.....

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:18 am

I have played in many venues over the years with many different sound systems etc. and to stop having the backing tracks playing with guitar on one side of the room and strings or what ever on the other side of the room,(if you know what I mean) I mastered all my tracks in mono so I would have the whole track coming out of any speaker it was playing through. I am in a long term venue now which is straight up and down and my tracks have no life. Very centered and boxed in. I want advise on a good piece of rack hardware to open them up and give them space- enhance the dynamics-throw the tracks out into the crowd, GIVE THEM LIFE! I have hundreds of songs so re-mastering all of them again is not an option.

Does anybody now of a good miracle piece of gear that can do the job....PLS

Thanks

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 3:00 pm

You haven't tried the Moonbaby Magic Stereo Spreader yet?!?!?
Seriously, to ALL of you players out there, when you mix-to-mono, make sure that it doesn't COLLAPSE to mono! Sounds like there's some sort of phase anomalie going on that has wrecked the bass end. Maybe.
Short of remixing everything, there are (2) things that I can tell you to try.Both will be scoffed at by the "pro audio community", but, hey, ya never know.
I have, at times, been able to take the output signal from the playback unit, and instead of just running it into the mixer, run it through a digital delay line first, then take the "dry" and the "mixed" outs of that to 2 channels of the mixer. Set the time delay to about 30-40 milliseconds, play with the levels and panning of the 2 channels and see what you can get from that.
You can also try using a device like an Aphex Aural Exciter or a BBE Sonic Maximizer to help pump things up a bit. I personally hate these things, but have had to use them to get crappy backing tracks at church to sound....mediocre. I'll take the signal, route it through an old dbx 119 compander set for a slight expansion, then into the Aural Exciter. Sometimes that works. You tell anybody I do that (into a Midas Heritage 3000, no less!), and I'll have to kill you....
You can contact a local dealer for the Aphex or BBE stuff, see if they'll let you test one of these boxes.
And remember, next time you mix to stereo, make sure you ave good mono compatibility! Good luck!

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