Where to Place Different Instruments

In general, binaural processing allows you to easily distinguish sounds based on their direction of arrival rather than exhausting determination based on known sound signatures of groups of instruments in a stereo mix. The further you place (uncorrelated) instruments apart from each other, the better and easier our ears can distinguish them. This is called binaural speech intelligibility when the surrounding sound sources are speakers. The same holds for musical instruments as sound sources.

How Humans Perceive Directional Sound

Human beings are trained to distinguish sound sources due to their direction of arrival. So, we use inter-aural time delay and inter-aural level differences for basic left-right evaluation. In addition and most importantly, our brain detects complex frequency dependent relationships between the signals our two ear drums receive, as well as specific absolute frequency coloration. This allows us to distinguish sounds in front of us, in the back, above or below us.

The Advantages of KLANG 3D Mixing

KLANG’s 3D mixing algorithm includes all these tiny details. It is therefore the most powerful tool when it comes to transparent in-ear mixes that sound fat and rich at the same time. You can place all sound sources available in the 3D panorama and still achieve a transparent mix, as opposed to conventional stereo mixing, where you need to select the most important instruments and keep the others low in level.

Beyond Stage Placement: Using Attention Zones to Enhance Your Mix

At first, it may seem obvious at first to place instruments on the orbit where you actually see them on stage. But this is only one possible placement method. We would like to show you more options. There are different zones of attention that can be used to mix. In general, two zones are of interest to move quality of your mix to the next level:

Main focus zone

First, there is a region right in front of you shifted a little bit in height. In many cases, it makes sense to place important instruments here, e.g. to place a kick drum and snare drum in a bass player’s mix.

Support focus zone

The second, opposite zone is behind you with a wide range to your left and right side. Instruments in this area are not in the main focus of attention but still well perceived. Try to place instruments here that would usually require much lower volumes so they wouldn’t clutter your mix in. A vocalist for example can place dense keys or synths in this area to create an immersive experience and a rich fat mix. But at the same time, they can maintain their focus on the important instruments required for timing, intonation etc.