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Ok, I'm stuck at "pre-beginner" level in my production knowledge so far.
need to know something:
I used a surround panning on a track channel to make the sound "come from a far distance". I also used an aux send on this channel to an FX.. now when i play my mix, the problem i face is, the dry "comes from the far-off distant" and the aux return "seems to be coming from a near source".

I'm prepared for any one to laugh at me for being such a noob, but as i said I'm only a beginner.

Comments

Boswell Thu, 06/16/2011 - 10:04

I would question your assumption that you use surround panning to make a sound "come from a far distance". Notwithstanding that, have you tried mixing the wet effect return with the dry original and getting that mix acceptable as stereo before applying the surround panning? Once you have the mix, try using it as a stereo source. This will need a different treatment to go to surround than a mono source would do, but I'm sure you are up to the job.

Boswell Fri, 06/17/2011 - 02:38

It shouldn't do with normal routing. You don't say whether you are mixing on a console or with a DAW, but it should be possible to route the effect returns into the mix as though they were normal stereo channels. The Auxes are used for routing single channels or mixes of channels to an effect.

You don't necessarily need a separate bus that is the sum of the wet and dry from the channel in question, but you would need to be able to isolate those two components and mute everything else in the main mix to get the effect balance right.

When I've been doing surround mixes, I like to get things to work in stereo first, and then re-engineer for surround as necessary. There are things you can do with surround that work quite differently in mono or in stereo, and one of them is to put front-to-back movement on the tails of reverb effects. When carried out subtlely, that movement can present an unsettling effect on listeners, and used sparingly can be dramatic. In contrast, I have had performers at surround gigs wanting all their reverb to move rearwards, and that can get tiresome for the audience after a while.

Boswell Fri, 06/17/2011 - 09:50

It's a technique used in surround mixing where the L-R positioning is stationary, but the amplitude envelopes on the front and rear mixes are dynamic. This can be used to create an impression of movement from front to rear over the heads of the audience. It's very effective on reverb.

An easy but not exact way to simulate it is to feed a sound into two separate reverb effects that are set up identically except for the attack and decay times. The dry sound is mixed with the shorter attack and decay stereo effect return and sent to the front L-R, and the longer attack and decay effect return is wet only and sent to the rear L-R. Give it a try on a short sound like a snare hit or pistol shot and experiment with various front/rear attack and decay times - it can be quite un-nerving in a way that simply cannot be created in conventional L-R stereo.

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