Guys, have you ever heard of this? Once in the mid-70s I heard someone play a pop song in stereo in a way that supressed the main vocals until they were almost gone. (A poor man's karaoke, before it hit the States.) He didn't fiddle with the recording (I think it was right off a vinyl record). I couldn't imagine how he accomplished this. He explained that with two tracks, you can produce any of four different signals: the left channel; the right channel; left plus right, a monaural mix; and left MINUS right, letting you hear instruments that were panned over to one side or the other, but since the two sides cancelled each other out, the instruments that were featured in stereo center (such as vocals) would nearly vanish. He discovered this by accident, fiddling with the output wires. He said it didn't work well with album-oriented rock, where the vocals were panning all over the place for artistic reasons, but was very effective with formulaic pop songs, that put the vocal at stereo center as a matter of course. This technique is what was behind the whole quadrophonic sound craze, so he said. Anyway, that's what I thought you were going to reveal as having the technical name "mix minus." Have you ever heard of this? Was that guy just pulling my leg?
Rob Blatt
· 7 months ago
We'll be talking about this in a future episode. Thanks for the idea! What you're talking about is possible, and we'll show you how in a future episode.
Rick Wolff
· 7 months ago
Wow, thanks for the royal treatment, guys! One thing, though: in the samples of the music with Brad Sucks (I hope not his real name — "Mr. and Mrs. Sucks, congratulations, it's a boy"), when you flipped the phase of one channel in the stereo playback, I swear I couldn't tell the difference. (I don't doubt there was one.) Then I realized, this is the equivalent of you putting a 1000hz tone in both my ears, but reversing the phase of one channel, and expecting them to cancel each other out IN MY BRAIN. (You didn't try that experiment, but kept the tones mono.) Only in a mono mix were the two channels (one with reversed phase) actually doing something to each other. In the mono mix of the music, the effect was dramatic, and just like I remembered. I think you only really get the cancellation effect in mono. I'm sure that's what my friend did in the 70s with analog gear. Also, if you guys are recording your podcast double-ended, how did you get Chris to react to the samples? How could he hear them in stereo in Skype? Or did Rob send them to him ahead of time? Just wondering.
ChrisCavs
· 7 months ago
Rick, as for the first part, I'll leave that to Rob.
As for your other question, we do double end the show & use Skype to talk to each other. Using Dropbox, Rob sent me the files, and when it was time to play them out, he just did a countdown (which he obviously edited out). Everything synched up in the end.
All Comments
Anyway, that's what I thought you were going to reveal as having the technical name "mix minus." Have you ever heard of this? Was that guy just pulling my leg?
One thing, though: in the samples of the music with Brad Sucks (I hope not his real name — "Mr. and Mrs. Sucks, congratulations, it's a boy"), when you flipped the phase of one channel in the stereo playback, I swear I couldn't tell the difference. (I don't doubt there was one.) Then I realized, this is the equivalent of you putting a 1000hz tone in both my ears, but reversing the phase of one channel, and expecting them to cancel each other out IN MY BRAIN. (You didn't try that experiment, but kept the tones mono.) Only in a mono mix were the two channels (one with reversed phase) actually doing something to each other. In the mono mix of the music, the effect was dramatic, and just like I remembered. I think you only really get the cancellation effect in mono. I'm sure that's what my friend did in the 70s with analog gear.
Also, if you guys are recording your podcast double-ended, how did you get Chris to react to the samples? How could he hear them in stereo in Skype? Or did Rob send them to him ahead of time? Just wondering.
As for your other question, we do double end the show & use Skype to talk to each other. Using Dropbox, Rob sent me the files, and when it was time to play them out, he just did a countdown (which he obviously edited out). Everything synched up in the end.