VST help

[loulou]

Is there a VST or technique to make a sample, sound etc. to sound like its comming from above or below?

Sorry for my shitty gramma

thanks

[Atheory]

i'm not sure how you would go about doing it.

if you think of the stereofield or speaker set ups, its generally a left and right speaker.

so making something come from L/R is easy. and then from the front of the field to the back of the field is achievable with reverb. (ie If a sound is very close to you, you hear the high end very clearly. If a sound is far away from you, the middle and bass seem louder, with the highs a little dimished. So to make something seem like its at the back, play around with reverbs and cut the highs)

To make something seem like it was coming from below or above, it think you'd need speakers below or above. I could be totally wrong though. I cant think of ever hearing it done with 2 speakers/headphones.

[oblioblioblio]

I think I read somewhere that shifting the left and right signals out of phase (i.e. a delay on one channel) by between 10 and 16 milliseconds gives the impression of something being higher or lower.

Filtering is worth looking into.

I would say make sure you have left and right speakers set up well. Sit right between the middle of them and play around with a millisecond delay on one channel and also small amounts of reverb /filtering and see if you et something that works.

Up or down is gonna be much harder than left or right but you never know.

[Atheory]

I think I read somewhere that shifting the left and right signals out of phase (i.e. a delay on one channel) by between 10 and 16 milliseconds gives the impression of something being higher or lower.

Filtering is worth looking into.

I would say make sure you have left and right speakers set up well. Sit right between the middle of them and play around with a millisecond delay on one channel and also small amounts of reverb /filtering and see if you et something that works.

Up or down is gonna be much harder than left or right but you never know.

hmm, i thought that would just thicken the sound or provide slight pitch shifting. but its worth experimenting with anyhow.

i wonder if its possible to do with mike placement? the science doesnt necessarily add up but maybe someones knows a way.

[tone-def]

speaker placement is the only way of doing this. the only way you can have stuff coming from the front and behind is by using a surround sound set up. with a 5.1 you have 3 speakers in front of you, 2 behind and a sub. so the same theory will apply to above and below.

unfortunately 5.1 never really took off so the chances of someone making a system with speakers above and below are slim.

i did a 5.1 mix just before christmas so i might share it if anyone is interested.

[Atheory]

yeah, share it, i'm interested.

@op. maybe the place to look is at sound mixing for movies or tv. there must be some acoustic trickery that goes into mixing sound for movies that isn't for cinema or 5.1 home systems.

[Stomper]

EQ/Filter

if you cut the low frequencies it takes the upper space of the mix.
if you cut the high frequencies it takes the lower space.

its the same princible as how sound act in nature.

[damagedgoods]

I think I read somewhere that shifting the left and right signals out of phase (i.e. a delay on one channel) by between 10 and 16 milliseconds gives the impression of something being higher or lower.

Filtering is worth looking into.

I would say make sure you have left and right speakers set up well. Sit right between the middle of them and play around with a millisecond delay on one channel and also small amounts of reverb /filtering and see if you et something that works.

Unfortunately that doesn't work; think of the symmetry. A sound source above or below you will be heard identically by both ears, so if you're trying to reproduce a sound on your central axis using stereo speakers then you may as well be listening in mono.

I once read a useful in a mixing guide (oriented at mixing engineers and recording studios rather than electronic music, but that doesn't matter) that you could place objects in the stereo field as follows, and it's become a pretty handy rule of thumb for me:

- LEFT / RIGHT is achieved by panning
- UP / DOWN is achieved by frequency spectrum (sounds with lots of high frequency content and not a lot of lows - like cymbals etc - will generally sound higher up, and vice versa for bass)
- FORWARD / BACKWARD (DISTANCE) is achieved by the balance between (carefully programmed) reverb and dry signal

It translates well to how people talk about placing things within a mix using EQ and pan. You can simulate a 2D space instead of just left-right by shaping the frequency content, and you can almost fake a 3D space by playing with reverb.

A colleague who studied at IRCAM was talking about research he'd seen where a subject was placed in an anechoic chamber with a tiny microphone in each ear, and (to cut a long story short) the impulse response was measured between several points in the room and the dude's inner ear. Since each impulse response was different - corresponding to the varying transfer function between source and ear depending on source location - it was then possible by in-ear plugs and convolution to process audio in such a way that it would trick his brain into thinking that sounds were coming from all around him. The possibilities for music mixing would be vast, but of course everyone has different physiological impulse responses so to anyone else the recordings would just sound very weird.