From ccmacdon@rogers.com Sat Feb 11 13:36:35 2012
Subject:Re: Vent stereo effect

Barry/Dennis,
 
One of the things I always found disturbing about typical leslie sims was what appears to me to be an exaggerated stereo effect, and I think that is what Barry is eluding to in his comments. Prior to the Ventilator, most leslie sims gave me the sense that the leslie tremelo effect was simply panning back and forth (right/left) with a bit of pitch variation to simulate the doppler effect (with bass rotor and treble horn doing so a different speeds obviously) and that's a major over-simplification of what a leslie really does..   To my ears leslie sims often broke down when I listened through headphones or through a mixer in my studio with the sim panned hard left and hard right. What you end up hearing is an exaggerated right/left panning that makes me feel as if my head was in the middle of the leslie rather than the leslie being somewhere "over there", ie a few feet away from me. (this is the best way I can think of to describe this
exaggerated stereo effect). 
 
The Ventilator was one of the first sims that I listened to that I could really hear circular animation.. meaning that I had a sense that the sound was spinning in a circular manner rather than back and forth left/right, just like it would be in from a real leslie.. (and I bought my Ventilator based on hearing this animation in the original demos)...  Real leslies don't go back and forth, they spin and move sound around in a circle, and from this motion, you get all these complex reflections.. taking a leslie sim and panning it hard left and right doesn't sound realistic (IMHO) especially when listening through headphones or in near field studio monitors.. that's not the way you hear a leslie.. a leslie is always over there (somewhere), and your head is NEVER in the middle of the leslie (this is obviously an exaggeration... I don't actually get a sense that my head is in the middle of the leslie speaker but it's the best way I can think of to
describe this exaggerated stereo effect).
 
The Ventilator's stereo "animation" is by far the best out there.  However, I have two different ways of panning it... For live performances with my QSC K10's I do pan it hard right and hard left, because I generally have my two K10's sitting together on my side of the stage.  In a live situation, having the Ventilator panned hard right/left works well because an audience member will still hear my "leslie" coming from one side of the stage (which is where the K10's are sitting), and the hard left/right panning simply helps to make the leslie effect more pronounced.. However, I would NOT do this if I was to place one of my K10's on either side of the stage.. because I wouldn't want that exaggerated right/left stereo effect... that's not what a real leslie on stage would sound like.. a real leslie on stage would not move from one side of the stage to another. I would not do this if my keyboards were going through the PA either (in a stereo mix).
If they did I would treat the panning as if I was in the studio.
 
In the studio, when I record my leslie sim (or a real leslie for that matter), I don't pan hard left/right because that would result in the exaggerated stereo leslie effect when played back on my near field monitors or in my headphones.  When I record, whether it's a real leslie or a sim, my organ is going to be placed, to some degree, on one side or the other (typically), so I might pan the left channel to the centre, and the right channel hard right.  Even if I was recording a solo organ I wouldn't pan hard left/right because the stereo effect would be too exaggerated. I would probably pan in such a way as to have the leslie sim was taking only 90 to 120 degrees of the stereo field. To me this provides a sense that the leslie is "over there" somewhere.
 
I don't pretend to understand the science of all this, but this is what my ears tell me is the most realistic way to pan a leslie or a sim.  I'm not sure how everyone else handles this issue..  but I would be interested in other thoughts or opinions.

Regards,
Craig MacDonald

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Re: Vent stereo effect
Posted by: "Dennis" den121961@yahoo.com den121961
Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:03 pm (PST)

Barry, I usually hard pan the real leslie because the room it's recorded in is pretty live, you don't get that stereo effect, but the vent is a different story. I'll have to try your method, although I like that fill the soundstage effect also, just not the wobbling back and forth

--- In CloneWheel@yahoogro ups.com, Barry wrote:
>
> When I record with the vent, I don't pan it hard right and left - I'll find
> a place in the mix for it and pan it a bit to get some stereo effect, but I
> don't want the organ sound to float
(or fly) back and forth across the
> speakers.
>
> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Dennis wrote: