That said, the audible effect of this polarity reversal is the same as you get with phase cancellation. Rcc propane software. The easiest way to check your speakers is to sum your mix to mono (more on this later). Many stereos and most mixing consoles allow you to do this, but even in stereo, there are some telltale signs of phase problems. Note: If you're wanting to learn advanced concepts about FL Studio 20, view my intermediate course: If you're looking for a course to teach you THE RIGHT WAY on how to use FL Studio, you've finally found it! This is THE COURSE to take in regards to FL Studio Beginner Courses!

These are the best VST plugins that can be used with music software like FL Studio, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Reaper, and more. VST instruments give you additional sounds to create with like Pianos, Synths, Organs, and Bass. The Send switches in FL Studio's Mixer take the audio after the Mixer Track fader, so this is known as a post-fader send. To create a pre-fader send you need to extract the audio from a point before the fader, in this case, any of the Effects slots. Usually Slot 1 is best since it won't have any preceding effects. To do this use Fruity Send.

As we get caught up in using all the wonderful tools available for mixing in the modern world, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the most basic. After level adjustments, panning—positioning different tracks between left and right in the stereo soundfield—is one of those basic mixing tasks that contributes a lot more than it may seem. And while panning is a pretty straightforward mix move, it’s still possible to do a less-than-optimum job of it. This article covers 7 things to look out for—potential positioning pitfalls when panning, that could contribute to a less-than-perfect mix.

1. Don’t Hard-Pan

Fig 1 Top: Tracks/Instruments panned 100% (Hard) Left & Right; Bottom: Tracks/Instruments panned 90% Left & Right (better)

Basic panning in a DAW is amplitude-based—a (mono) track is sent to both the left and right sides of the stereo master, and the Pan Pot (Panoramic Potentiometer, for the technophile) adjusts the relative levels between left and right. At center, left and right levels are equal; panning to the left or right simply turns up the level to one side while simultaneously turning down the level to the other. Pan positions in the center or part of the way between left and right have sound coming out of both speakers—even though the signal seems to be positioned at a particular spot between the speakers, it’s a phantom position—an illusion.

Naturally, there will be slight phase differences between the two actual signal sources, and this is a normal part of amplitude-based stereo panning. But if you pan all the way left or right—“hard” left or right—then that signal will be coming out of only one speaker. A track with only a single physical sound source may not sit in the mix as well as the rest, with their dual sound sources and slight phase differences. Such hard-panned tracks can sometimes stick out of the mix, and sound more two-dimensional—like they’re coming out of the box—the speaker—rather than being positioned in the virtual three-dimensional soundfield between the speakers, with the other tracks. Many mixers avoid this by panning around 90% left or right (when they want a very wide pan position) rather than 100% (hard panning).

This maintains at least a little sound in both speakers, and keeps those wide-panned tracks in the virtual soundfield, where they’ll blend better with the rest of the mix. (Incidentally, the same issue comes up regarding the use of the center channel when mixing music in Surround).

2. Don’t Bunch Up

Fig 2 Top: Panned Tracks/Instruments bunched up at Hard Left / Center / Hard Right; Bottom: Better, more evenly-spaced stereo Panning

In smaller studios, sometimes the speakers may be positioned fairly close together, and when a mixer wants different tracks to be clearly separated at different positions, this can lead to the tendency to pan things to the center, far left, and far right only. But a mix with this kind of panning, when played on a set of speakers that are more widely positioned (at, say, the recommended 60° angle), may end up having “holes” in the left-right soundfield—gaps around the half-left and half-right positions, with all the instruments and vocals bunched up at the far left, far right and center spots.

Psychoacoustically, this mix won’t achieve as much clarity and detail as it could—even though the apparent source position of panned tracks is an illusion, the subtle increase in clarity and detail from assigning different tracks to slightly different locations in the left-right spread is real. It pays to make sure to space the mix speakers at the proper width (a 60° angle), and assign various tracks to slightly different virtual locations between the speakers—not just wide left, center, and wide right, but positions like 20%, 40%, 50%, 70%, 90%, etc., between center and either side, filling in the stereo spread. If it helps, imagine players on a stage, each one in his/her own spot, when constructing the virtual soundstage.

3. Don’t Confuse Stereo Panning and Balancing

Fig 3 L to R: A) Proper stereo Pan controls ; B) A stereo Balance knob ; C) An imaging plug-in (Logic’s DirMixer) that does stereo true panning

The concept of panning is straightforward with mono tracks (as described above), but possibly less so with stereo tracks. Some DAWs feature two pan controls for each stereo track—one positions the left side of the signal, the other the right. For standard, full stereo, these would be set hard left and right (which is fine—since it’s a stereo signal, there will be audio coming out of both speakers). Alternatively, you could reverse the image—pan the right side hard left and vice versa. Or you could partially-pan the stereo audio (e.g. Left: 50% left / Right: 50% right), for a narrower stereo image, or pan one side and leave the other at or near center (e.g. Left: 100% left / Right: 0%-Center), for a non-centered but still somewhat wide stereo image. This is the most flexible way of implementing stereo panning, as it’s done in Pro Tools.

But other DAWs may take a different approach. For example, Logic features a single Pan control for both mono and stereo tracks—only it’s not really a Pan control on the stereo tracks, it’s actually as Balance control. A Balance control doesn't reposition the left and right sides of a stereo track—as the name suggests, it rebalances the relative levels of the two sides. So with true stereo panning, the relative levels of left and right are not changed, only the positions of each half of the audio. But if you “pan” a Balance control to one side or the other, you’ll be raising the level of that side of the stereo track and reducing the level of the other side. A stereo signal with both sides properly panned all the way left will become a mono signal containing both left and right sides. A stereo signal with a Balance control “panned” all the way left will consist of only the left side of the audio—not the same result at all!

Reverse Polarity Fl Studio

Of course, a Balance control has its uses, but not as a substitute for a true stereo panner. It’s important to be aware of which you’re dealing with when confronted with a single “Pan” control on a stereo track. In the Logic example, if you wanted to actually stereo-pan your signal, you’d need to leave the channel strip balance knob at center, and instead open an (included) imaging plug-in (Direction Mixer), where you can perform the kinds of stereo adjustments I described above (that you could do more directly with the dual stereo Pan knobs in Pro Tools).

4. Don’t Phase-Flip for Fake Stereo

Fig 4 Don’t flip the phase for fake stereo! Try dedicated widening or stereoizing processors

Sometimes, instead of panning a mono track in the mix, you may want to widen it—create an artificial stereo soundfield. This can be a good idea, and there are several ways to go about it, but also at least one technique that should be avoided. Possibly the easiest way to generate a stereo image from a mono track is to duplicate the track and flip the phase (actually reverse the polarity) of the copy. With two versions of the same signal, with opposite polarities, coming out of different speakers, you’ll get a wide, diffuse image. But you should never do this for a mix! It only works as long as the signal is always heard in stereo—if that mix is ever played back in mono (quite common even nowadays), the two reverse-polarity signals will cancel completely, and the track will disappear!

If you do want to generate fake stereo from mono, there are safer ways to go about it. You could duplicate the track, slightly pitch-shift (micro-shift) the two copies a few cents up & down, and delay the copy—a subtle form of widening that produces a broad image without necessarily sounding doubled. Or you could use one of the various frequency-based stereo imaging processors, that divide the signal into different frequency bands, and then pan adjacent bands left and right, for a subtly wider image.

As long as you avoid the phase/polarity-flip trick, you should be able to achieve a wider soundfield while still maintaining mono compatibility—but whatever approach you try, you should still always check it in mono anyway, before signing off.

5. Don’t Forget to Pan for the Song

Fig 5 As tracks/musical parts drop in & out throughout an arrangement, balanced panning choices must factor this in

When deciding on pan positions for the various tracks in a mix, it’s important to take into account how the arrangement changes throughout the song. I’ve seen novice mixers spend some time carefully adjusting pan positions while looping one section, only to realize that in other sections, the instrumentation changed enough to invalidate their choices at those points. Here’s an example…

You usually want to try to maintain a good overall left-right balance when assigning pan positions—that is, you don’t want to pan too many parts to, say the left side, with fewer arrangement elements on the right, making for an overly left-heavy mix (that may be uncomfortable to listen to, especially in headphones). But different parts may drop in and out in different sections of the song, and you need to address this. If you have, say, a keyboard part panned partly left that balances out a rhythm guitar part panned partly right in a verse, what happens if the guitar kicks into overdrive in the chorus, and the keyboard drops out, or is (intentionally) swamped in the musical mix?

In situations like this, you’ll need a more dynamic approach to panning. You could either create extra duplicate tracks, and divide and distribute the parts to these different tracks, panned appropriately to address changes in the arrangement from section to section, or you could, of course, use pan automation to accomplish the needed dynamic adjustments. You may prefer to avoid having a particular instrument or sound shift positions in different sections, but you can also employ selective doubling and stereo widening to maintain a good overall left/right balance, as the need arises (in my example, the guitar might be doubled or widened only in the chorus, with the copy filling in for the missing keyboard, avoiding a sudden dropout on one side of the mix).

There are no hard and fast rules for dealing with musical panning considerations like this—each song will likely present its own issues and solutions. But a little attention paid to it, as well as to the other panning issues I’ve described, may go a long way to achieving a better, clearer, more well-balanced mix.

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If you’ve been listening electronic music at least to some extent, I’m quite sure you have heard a reverse reverb effect in a form or another. Basically, it’s a reverb effect with a quite long decay turned backwards and it usually appears just before vocals or melody riff. It’s a nice trick that can be used – for example – preparing the listener to the introduction of a new sound, melody or vocals in the mix. And it sounds COOL when used right.

This tutorial will show you two slightly different reverse reverb methods in FL Studio. I’m also sharing FL Studio project files for this tutorial. You can download them at the bottom of this article.

Now to the tutorial. First, method one.

Electrical Outlet Reverse Polarity

Begin by dropping a vocal sample into the FL Studio Playlist and assign the sample to a free mixer track. It can be a melody sample or effect sample or whatever, but I’m using vocal sample in this tutorial:

Open the Mixer and load a Fruity Reeverb 2 to the vocal sample fx slot:

In the Fruity Reeverb 2, load a preset called “Large Hall”. Reverb with a long decay and no damping works well in situation like this.

Tweak the “Large Hall” settings as follows:

• Adjust the Decay to something like 4.0 – 6.0 sec or even more.
• Set the Damping OFF.
• Set the (H.CUT) High cut to OFF as well.
• Set the Predelay to 0 ms.

Of course you can use your own settings as well, but I’ve found something along the aforementioned working pretty well.

Now, set the Fruity Reeverbs Dry level to 50%. This drops the input signal of the vocal sample to a half, but leaves the actual reverb signal there as it’s full level. This is exactly what we wan’t as we are going to render it to WAV, import it back to FL Studio, reverse it and mix it with the original vocal sample and in a special situation like this we wan’t the DRY signal of the reverberation to be only slightly audible, but the reverbed signal to be normal as it is going to be mixed with another dry signal.

This is how it sounds:

Now, double click the vocal sample to open the channel settings and REVERSE it:

This is how it sounds now:

Next, record the reversed and reverbed vocal sample to a WAV file by making a selection in the Playlist view. The recorded WAV file will be as long as the selection is and this will make sure that the “tail” of the reverb will be recorded to WAV:

Arm the mixer track of the vocal sample for disk recording and choose a folder where you wan’t the WAV to be recorded:

Enable the Auto-create audio clip -function via Mixer options (enabled by default). This setting will import the rendered WAV back to Playlist automatically when you’re in Song mode (enable the Song mode via Transport Panel):

Press ALT+R and click Start to start the rendering. After it’s complete, the rendered WAV will be imported to a Playlist:

(Assign the imported reverse reverbed sample to an empty mixer track as later on you need to balance it’s levels with the original vocal sample to make them play nicely together).

Now, double click the original vocal sample to open it’s channel settings and DISABLE the reversing to make it sound normal again. Also, go to it’s mixer channel and open the Fruity Reeverb 2 and raise the Dry level to 100% and set the mix level of the Fruity Reeverb 2 (in the fx slot) to something like 20%. We wan’t to leave a little bit of reverb to the original vocal sample as well to make it blend better with the reverse reverbed sample:

Next, reverse the reverse reverbed sample (hehe):

Okay. Now you need to position the samples for smooth transition. This is a bit of a meticulous task, but very important to make it sound right. Disable snapping by holding down ALT while you drag the samples in the Playlist.Line up the reverse reverbed sample with the original vocal sample in a way that the reverse reverbed sample LEADS to the original vocal sample. The reverse reverbed sample should be positioned in a way that the words or syllables stop just before the corresponding words or syllables start in the original sample that is played forward. This will make that “sucking” effect if you know what I mean.

Now, balance the volume levels between the two samples to make them play nicely together:

If you wan’t, you can cut and delete the spare sample material:

And create a volume automation for controlling the volume behavior of the reverse reverbed sample:

Okay. That’s it, and this is how it sounds:

This was the first method. Now I’m going to show you the second method.

Start a new project, and again, drop a sample (same vocal sample in this example as well) into the Playlist, assign it to a free mixer track and open the sample into the Edison:

Zoom in a bit if necessary, and as this is a vocal sample, select the first word or syllable and drag the selection to a new track in the Playlist using the Drag / copy sample / selection -feature in Edison:

Assign this sample (let’s call it word-sample) to a free mixer track and add Fruity Reeverb 2 to it’s fx slot. Choose “Large Hall” from the preset list and use these settings: Decay 4.0 – 6.0 sec, Damping OFF, H.CUT OFF, Predelay 0 ms and set Dry level to around 85%:

In the Playlist, move the original vocal sample to around bar 5 or further and leave the word-sample at the beginning of the Playlist. Make a selection of two or more bars, open the Mixer, arm the word-sample mixer track for recording and press ALT+R for rendering it to WAV:

Now, double click the re-imported reverbed word-sample to open it’s channel settings and REVERSE it. Also, assign it to a new mixer track and delete the word-sample from the Playlist as it’s not needed anymore:

Now, line up and position the original vocal sample and the reverse reverbed word-sample to make a smooth transition. Also, add a reverb to the original vocal sample as well to make it blend better with the reverse reverbed word-sample (use pretty much same settings as you did with the word-sample):

Tweak the volume levels via the Mixer to make the samples play nicely together, and you should get something like this:

That’s it. Experiment with different settings with the reverb. Also, you can take this to a bit further by adding flanger, phaser, stutter, etc. to the reverse reverb. Use your imagination and you can create killer effects!

Finally, here’s a video showing how to create this effect. Adobe photoshop cs6 portraiture plugin free download. I have to admit that in the video my sample positioning wasn’t perfect, but you’ll get the idea of this method for sure.

Here’s the FL Studio project files for both methods:

(Thanks to Warbeats and Audiotuts+ for the inspiration, you guys rock!)