Studio One S1 Mixdown Question

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Thanks. I couldn't figure out how to separate the L&R unequal recording. IS "Splitter" A Studio One tool? I'm not seeing it under Presonus.
The split tool isn't a separate plug-in, but lives inside the Inserts window. You can't activate a splitter until you have at least one plug-in inserted in the channel strip.Splitter-HotelCali.jpg
Click the routing symbol which shows the routing within a channel strip. It is normally a straight line with whatever plug-ins you choose in the order they appear for processing. Grabbing the Splitter (the little hand) and drag it into the signal chain.
I did a video on using the splitter to biamp a guitar solo. While it isn't exactly on point for what you're doing, it explains how it works well enough that you can figure how it applies here.
https://youtu.be/JMMFC8H_Q00
 

dvs

Green Mountain Blues
There's a pretty easy way to split a stereo track to two mono tracks. Go to Files in the Browse pane, navigate to the Media folder for the song you're working on. Right click on the stereo file, choose Split to Mono and import the new tracks.
Here is the stereo file:
Browser-Files.png

Here is the Right-click menu:
Browser-Files-Split to Mono.png

And here are the two mono files:
Browser-Files-Split to Mono-Result.png

You can drag them from here to new tracks.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
The split tool isn't a separate plug-in, but lives inside the Inserts window. You can't activate a splitter until you have at least one plug-in inserted in the channel strip.View attachment 13801
Click the routing symbol which shows the routing within a channel strip. It is normally a straight line with whatever plug-ins you choose in the order they appear for processing. Grabbing the Splitter (the little hand) and drag it into the signal chain.
I did a video on using the splitter to biamp a guitar solo. While it isn't exactly on point for what you're doing, it explains how it works well enough that you can figure how it applies here.
https://youtu.be/JMMFC8H_Q00


Well, I must be doing some3thing wrong because I don't see the routing tab...
S1 Routing Tab.png
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
There's a pretty easy way to split a stereo track to two mono tracks. Go to Files in the Browse pane, navigate to the Media folder for the song you're working on. Right click on the stereo file, choose Split to Mono and import the new tracks.
Here is the stereo file:
View attachment 13802

Here is the Right-click menu:
View attachment 13803

And here are the two mono files:
View attachment 13804

You can drag them from here to new tracks.

Thanks! That's pretty cool once I figured out how to navigate to different folders.
 

CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
Hey Mike,
Try this:
-Duplicate the track.
-Put the Binaural Pan on both
-Pan one left, the other right.

If Binaural Pan doesn't produce good results, try the same with Dual Pan

I haven't tried it.........might work.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Hey Mike,
Try this:
-Duplicate the track.
-Put the Binaural Pan on both
-Pan one left, the other right.

If Binaural Pan doesn't produce good results, try the same with Dual Pan

I haven't tried it.........might work.
I tried both and they definitely let me control them separately. Cool!
 
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CaptainMoto

Blues Voyager
One other thought:
if you have Audacity, looks like it's easy to do there:
watch
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
I tried both and they definitely let me control them separately. Cool!
The clip isn't really the fault of the imbalance. The clipping is because there is way too much sonic energy below 50Hz. (Low E on a bass is around 40Hz). You aren't hearing that and it really adds nothing at those levels and it is eating all your headroom.
Take any copy of the tune, even the original and add the ProEQ plug-in to the Inserts and click the LC setting. Set your LC Frequency between 75 and 100Hz.
If you duplicate channels and use @CaptainMoto's suggestion for Binaural Pan, you need to take both the original and the duplicated channels down by around 10db to have any headroom for your own guitar/vocals.

I had good luck using the 12db/octave slope in the Pro EQ, but you can try the 24db and see how much low end you notice missing.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
The clip isn't really the fault of the imbalance. The clipping is because there is way too much sonic energy below 50Hz. (Low E on a bass is around 40Hz). You aren't hearing that and it really adds nothing at those levels and it is eating all your headroom.
Take any copy of the tune, even the original and add the ProEQ plug-in to the Inserts and click the LC setting. Set your LC Frequency between 75 and 100Hz.
If you duplicate channels and use @CaptainMoto's suggestion for Binaural Pan, you need to take both the original and the duplicated channels down by around 10db to have any headroom for your own guitar/vocals.

I had good luck using the 12db/octave slope in the Pro EQ, but you can try the 24db and see how much low end you notice missing.


That's odd because when I split the stereo track it really seemed like the clipping occurred on the snare hit.

This recording crap is gonna be the death of me.
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
That's odd because when I split the stereo track it really seemed like the clipping occurred on the snare hit.
This recording crap is gonna be the death of me.

Probably so (the snare, not the death of you). You have so much headroom being eaten up by the high level of the very low frequencies, it doesn't take much to push it over the top. Most everything below around 100Hz is, as Mick Jagger put it "useless information, supposed to fire my imagination."
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Hire Papa as your mixer......... Done!
I'm just following gain staging advice I've seen online.
My general rule is to make sure each individual channel peaks at no higher than -12db. With 5 or less channels to mix, that should give you a safe margin out of clipping.
I just did a little test, where I generated 5 sine wave test tones, all at -6db. Each tone was an octave above the previous one, with the lowest one at 41Hz (low E on a bass guitar). When mixed together, they clip all the way down until the individual channel strip shows -12db output, which is actually the -6db original signal dropped by 3db below 0 (unity) on the faders... Don't ask me to explain it, it's common core math.
It isn't rocket science (or even music theory). You don't have much of a noise issue with most digital gear, so don't be afraid to keep the levels lower. They don't have to peg the meter on the output. If it's too low when you get done, you can normalize the finished product.

You can try this yourself. Here is a zip file with the 5 octaves of E, each in a separate mono WAV file. Open them each into their own individual channel and you can see what happens.

https://paparaptor.com/Audio/5OctaveE.zip

Most notable to me was that if I muted the low E (41Hz) with all faders at 0 (unity), the clipping stopped. If I left the low E active, I could remove any other single octave and the clipping continued. You might also be surprised at what a pure 41Hz low E sounds like.
 
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MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
I'm just following gain staging advice I've seen online.
My general rule is to make sure each individual channel peaks at no higher than -12db. With 5 or less channels to mix, that should give you a safe margin out of clipping.
I just did a little test, where I generated 5 sine wave test tones, all at -6db. Each tone was an octave above the previous one, with the lowest one at 41Hz (low E on a bass guitar). When mixed together, they clip all the way down until the individual channel strip shows -12db output, which is actually the -6db original signal dropped by 3db below 0 (unity) on the faders... Don't ask me to explain it, it's common core math.
It isn't rocket science (or even music theory). You don't have much of a noise issue with most digital gear, so don't be afraid to keep the levels lower. They don't have to peg the meter on the output. If it's too low when you get done, you can normalize the finished product.

You can try this yourself. Here is a zip file with the 5 octaves of E, each in a separate mono WAV file. Open them each into their own individual channel and you can see what happens.

https://paparaptor.com/Audio/5OctaveE.zip

Most notable to me was that if I muted the low E (41Hz) with all faders at 0 (unity), the clipping stopped. If I left the low E active, I could remove any other single octave and the clipping continued. You might also be surprised at what a pure 41Hz low E sounds like.


I'm not even sure I'd say I can her that low E. It's like I more feel it.SO would you just lower that track or EQ out the offending freq?
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
I'm not even sure I'd say I can her that low E. It's like I more feel it.SO would you just lower that track or EQ out the offending freq?
it's not a real world situation. The tone is a pure sine wave and you are unlikely to ever see a signal that pure at such a low frequency. It would have overtones.
Having said that, I would EQ it down as far as I can without losing it completely. What will happen in a real world situation is the overtones will give it the character you want to hear. The overtones will be audible with less sonic energy, so not as likely to use all the headroom.
 

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
One of the guys who frequents the same Presonus Livestreams that I do put out a series of demos and tutorials on creating techno, ambient and trance music quite a few years ago. I found one of his audio tracks on Youtube that goes through a series of bass tones, starting at 10Hz. I'm not sure what Youtube uses for audio shaping, so I'm not sure how faithfully the really low stuff is, but on my system, the first identified tone I can hear/feel is 30Hz. You might give this a listen and see what your system will reproduce. I suggest that anyone who listens to it does so without any loudness compensation enabled, which boosts the low end. The link should start at about 1:09 into the video, which is where the identified tones begin.
https://youtu.be/IyVloheaSTI?t=109
 
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