[LAU] How is the bass mixed? Per-channel frequency analysis? Histogram?

[Dan S]

2014-02-06 Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org>:
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 03:54:26PM +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 12:17 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 10:41:33AM +0200, Vytautas Jancauskas wrote:
>> >
>> >> One of the first rules of mixing you learn is to mix bass to the
>> >> center.
>> >
>> > There is no such rule.
>> >
>> >> Also when mixing for vinyl if bass is not centered it will make
>> >> the needle jump out of the groove.
>> >
>> > No, it won't.
>
>> http://www.resoundsound.com/mixing-for-vinyl-dont-fall-for-these-traps/
>>
>> "Make the bass mono when mixing for vinyl. Always and absolutely. With
>> bass I don't only mean the bassline. I mean all low frequencies - the
>> bassline, the low end of your drums, percussion, any bassy effects,
>> etc. No panning, no stereo effects. Make it mono.
>
> A DJ talking about the type of music he works with, probably rather
> heavy on bass.

Hi all,

At the Audio Engineering Society conference last week in London, there
was a great talk presenting an analysis of all the number one chart
singles since the 1950s.* I wish the data was online because it
demonstrates very clearly the point about bass and centre-panning: in
the 1950s things were mono; in the 1960s there was plenty of
experimentation with stereo; from the 1970s onwards, a very strong
convention emerged in the production of these tracks, where the <100Hz
part of the mix was extremely consistently centre-panned, while in the
upper ranges things get panned around plenty. This pattern doesn't
appear to have changed as we entered the CD/MP3 era.

My point here is not that the "rule" Fons denies is not an unbreakable
rule but it's an extremely strong convention, empirically demonstrated
in this pop dataset at the least. So yes it's a "rule" in the
colloquial sense, and not just in bass music. I have no idea if the
jump-the-needle argument is plausible or urban myth - I had always
thought it was motivated by perceptual considerations, not by the
medium.

Dan


* Pestana & Reiss (2014). ftp://ftp.idmt.fraunhofer.de/aes53_abstracts.html#S2-2