Recording question from a home demo jackass

FinsburyParkCarrots

I'm only using the free audacity program here. I recorded a track and made some simulated synthy bird sounds. I faded out at the end, but with headphones, I can hear the birdsound fade downwards, literally as a downward vertical plunge from the top of the speaker/headphone to the bottom. I would love to get a directional upwards sound on fadeout, given the cheap (cheep cheep) kit I've got. Anyone got any suggestions? Can it be done, with one guy at home and a lot of beer?

FinsburyParkCarrots

And no, I won't turn my headphones upside down for the end bit!

IDgotI

Absent dedicated and non standard technology all stereo sound placement, and for the most part even 5.1 sound placement is consistent across a horizontal plane. You can pan left and right, but realistically, not up and down.

The reason for this has to do with the physics of standard speaker design where tweeters are on top of wooffers. Since high frequency drivers tend to be placed at a fixed vertical ratio above and apart from low frequency ones, there is no real way to pan sounds up and down.

Exceptions to this rule can come from proprietary modeling software (Rick Wright was involved with some semi gimmick called "Q sound" in the late 90's) and of course speaker placement. If you stack your speakers, a left right pan will be essentially an up down pan.

The problem with trying to work with any of these work arounds is that while you might come up with a way to make things sound as though they are going up and down in your playback environment, you won't be able to count on anyone else hearing things the same way unless they stack their speakers the same way.

So unless you want to distribute your recording with speaker placement instructions and ask your listeners to rearrange their living rooms whenever they put on your music, you're locked into panning options acrooss the same plane as your high frequency drivers.

With headphones the physics are at least *potentially* different, but most mixing technology and software is built around the concept of making a mix that will translate across all playback systems, not systems of a particular type.

It would definately be interesting to try and use tools designed to take advantage of the different playback properties of headphones as opposed to speakers. I'm not aware of any such software, thought it's such a basic and obvious idea I'm sure it exists somewhere, but probably not as a feature set for the basic kit you are working with.

DiRtyFranK38

hey i have audacity too. it's a pretty cool program. i just have a standard computer mic to record stuff though. i think i need to upgrade

FinsburyParkCarrots

IDgotI wrote:

Absent dedicated and non standard technology all stereo sound placement, and for the most part even 5.1 sound placement is consistent across a horizontal plane. You can pan left and right, but realistically, not up and down.

The reason for this has to do with the physics of standard speaker design where tweeters are on top of wooffers. Since high frequency drivers tend to be placed at a fixed vertical ratio above and apart from low frequency ones, there is no real way to pan sounds up and down.

Exceptions to this rule can come from proprietary modeling software (Rick Wright was involved with some semi gimmick called "Q sound" in the late 90's) and of course speaker placement. If you stack your speakers, a left right pan will be essentially an up down pan.

The problem with trying to work with any of these work arounds is that while you might come up with a way to make things sound as though they are going up and down in your playback environment, you won't be able to count on anyone else hearing things the same way unless they stack their speakers the same way.

So unless you want to distribute your recording with speaker placement instructions and ask your listeners to rearrange their living rooms whenever they put on your music, you're locked into panning options acrooss the same plane as your high frequency drivers.

With headphones the physics are at least *potentially* different, but most mixing technology and software is built around the concept of making a mix that will translate across all playback systems, not systems of a particular type.

It would definately be interesting to try and use tools designed to take advantage of the different playback properties of headphones as opposed to speakers. I'm not aware of any such software, thought it's such a basic and obvious idea I'm sure it exists somewhere, but probably not as a feature set for the basic kit you are working with.

Thanks immensely for this post. I'm very grateful.

harrisonmerwin

yeah as it is a "rule" that audio moves "horizontally" there is a way to trick listeners...if there is phase options in that program, save your work first!...then mess around with them...bouncing somethign out of phase, then adjusting EQ's, pans, and volumes, can really place a sound where you didnt think possible. try it out. or...double a track, keep one in phase, the other out...it may blow your mind (or your speakers) haha just kidding.