Ok, long post, only stay if you are an obsessive oddball. If you have a "life" or a grip on reality, then tune out, wrong thread :)
Then again, if you are an obsessive oddball, this may be terribly old, tired, talked out or obvious. I dunno, I'll give it a shot. I need a break from all the new album conspiracy theories. I brought this up in another thread, and was going to expand on it there when someone asked, but it’s just too broad a topic.
Background! I was on the train, many years ago, and my headphone socket came loose while listening to Aenima. I mash it back in, have a quick nut-scratch, but quickly realise this isn’t the Aenima I was listening to before. It was Pushit, but it wasn’t Pushit, it was like a whole different mix, and it sounded pretty damn bizarre! It was so different I thought I was mildly hallucinating, but after a while I realised that whatever lazy way I had plugged my headphones back in had shorted out part of the music, but it sounded like it had shorted out specific instruments entirely and left other ones to “breathe.” It was quite a revelation for me.
So, I research this at some point later when I remembered. I ask some people about stereo sound, do a spot of googling (or was it altavista’ing in those days?)
I always figured stereo was 2 channels, and the best you could do was listen to one ear at a time if you wanted to try pathetically to hear anything in more detail.
Turns out, I was wrong, it’s effectively 3 channels. Centre, Left and Right. The Centre is what is the same on each of the two channels. The Left and Right are what are individual on each channel. So I listen to a few other bit and pieces of albums with my headphone-hack, I get some interesting results, and some pathetic results. I guess it depends on how well the album is mastered, and if it’s mastered at all with this in mind. I actually sit down and listen to Aenima the whole way through using this method since it is what sparked this inquiry. It definitely and coincidently gives the best results to my ears.
Years later (recently) I remember about this whole thing, and go in search of a plug-in that will do the same job as my headphone-hack. I fire on a few mp3’s with this enabled, some results are interesting, it amused me for a while.
If you get lucky you can isolate that guitar or drum riff you’ve been trying to learn. If you were creating a remix of a song you liked, you could also extract some nice individual instrument sections. I imagine this is one of the techniques remixing artists use. But on the most basic level, you can listen to an album and have all of the details hidden in the mix much more forward on your speakers.
Sure, if you have a super expensive hi-fi that brings out every detail you are probably scoffing at my rambling. Maybe you’re right, but it’s certainly interesting to hear an album you love in a whole new context. And this makes any old crappy speakers capable of bringing out just about any hidden detail on an album loud and clear.
So If you wanna go ahead and try this use one of these plugins….
Foobar -
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=17661
Winamp -
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=17450
I’ve only used the foobar one, but you get 2 options. Centre (mono), or Centre cut (sides/stereo). For me, the centre (mono) option is pretty worthless, maybe not entirely, but I haven’t played with it too much. But on the whole, it will sound like a flat boring version of whatever you play. It’s the guts of the song, without the stereo extremes.
Centre-Cut is what it’s all about. It cuts whatever is on both channels in the mix (whatever is the main beef of the song) and leaves the surrounding broken pieces, the extremes of the stereo sound.
It’s hit and miss, and it doesn’t work 100%, but it does give you some really interesting listens, especially if you an Aenima-nut like I am. Some of the time you get an individual instrument on each speaker, sometimes you just get a much more basic raw “studio” sound which is interesting. It just depends.
But be warned, some low quality MP3’s just don’t contain the detail to bother with this. If you think the mp3 sounds bad normally, wait until you hear the instruments in isolation. Also the whole joint-stereo thing….I just don’t trust mp3s on this 100%, there’s too many dodgy encoders out there. Either use the CD or some nice high quality rips and you should be fine.
So from here on I’m not discussing the effect in general, only in regarding Aenima.
On Aenima, if you cut the centre channel, you’re generally left with….
- drums, not all the drums (I think) but a decent isolation, and it makes them sound very different at points
- background vocals/harmonies isolated
- guitar overlays
- general atmospherics and additions to the songs
It generally cuts….
- the main vocals
- the bass
- the lead guitar.
It gives a whole different atmosphere to some of the songs, and when you go back to listening to them normally, they will sound fresh, and you will notice the new things you discovered in your alternate listening mode more readily.
So install the plug-in, turn it on. You'll have to pump your volume a bit to hear what remains, since the central body of the song is gone. But not too loud, sometimes those big loud guitar crunches bounce out to the L&R extremes very suddenly for short passages.
So anyway, I recommend Aenima, but you can try this with any album. I noticed someone else mention Lateralus in the thread I brought this up in. Doesn’t work quite as well for me on Lateralus, but you might find me to be wrong Below is a few notable bits of Aenima that just sound very *different.* to the normal mix for me.
stinkfist
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- isolation of the drums in general on this track
- 0.32 - the way the vocals come into the mix, happens at the start of every verse
- 2.33 - middle-8 creepy vocals, drumming just sounds so different from normal listen
eulogy
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- 1.56 - every drum beat a different note, followed by an isolation of the backing vocal
- 2.47 - vocal harmonies come in here that are not obvious at all on normal mix (2.52 - Very obvious here)
- 5.15 - middle 8, lots of maynard whispering, flowing into pretty much straight vocals with some snare/cymbal backup, nice.
H
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- 3.04 - the drums!! Isolated are so different than normal....
- 5.25 - holy sweet guitar tone batman!
46&2
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- 1.30 - drums again, just different than normal listen
- 3.30 - maynard speaking, right channel
- 5.05 - strange screeching noise (circling vultures :)
- 5.39 - very isolated guitar tone again.
hooker
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- 1.40 - "consume, be fruitful and mulitply" (left channel) followed by strange sounding drums
- 2.50 - nice guitar tone here that just wails off into the distance in a way i never noticed before
jimmy (f00king love the guitar tone on this song)
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- 0.40 - short wailing guitar overlay, heard that before?
- 1.00 - "waiting for me" (left channel) followed by some really nice isolated guitar tone.
- 1.30 - "showing me where it all began" ..."eleven" very isolated
- 2.25 - guitar again!
- 2.40 - funky bass thump is isolated! *grin*
pushit (THIS is probably the most different sounding song in this listening mode)
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- the *entire* drum track on this song, it's just so different with the centre cut, the drums sound backwards, they snake in on every hit. Great effect/technique
- 0.49 - piano bong hits! (right channel - they were new to me)
- 3.05 - .....WOW, this is the one it was worth doing all this for, multi-layered maynard vocals here sound fantastic when isolated Matched with the eerie drums *chills*
third eye (what a song)
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- 10.20 - (onwards) ....all that subtle angelic whispering in the background is suddenly right in your face. It's like the Nazi's opening the ark in raiders!
- 10.38 - ....hello
- 11.33 - crumbs!
G’Night! Yes, this post was TOOOO long, I know :-/