Sound Advice: Stereo Mix-O-Phonic Sound

Remember records? Maybe I'm giving away my age, but I spent countless hours as a teenager dropping a tiny diamond stylus into those marvelous vinyl grooves to hear my favorite artists and songs again and again. As much as I enjoyed the sound, half of the fun was reading the backs of the album jackets. Words like Stere-O-Rama and Multi-Phonic sounded mysterious, like some kind of secret language shared with the public, but understood by only the privileged few in the recording industry. Of course, as an adult, I realize that those enigmatic words were just marketing jargon for a process we call stereo today. While the mystery of the words is gone, stereo remains a mystery for many video producers. Why even bother with stereo? Won't most people just listen to your finished video on a tiny TV speaker? Why go to the trouble? Learning to create an interesting stereo soundtrack is time well spent on the quality of your video. A stereo mix puts your video in a completely different category.

During The Shoot
While most of your stereo creativity will come in the post-production process, there are several things you can do during the shoot to help create the stereo sound. The first thing is to record in stereo. No, this doesn't mean using your camcorder's built-in stereo microphone. To get a good stereo recording, you need external microphones, a mixer and all the associated cables, stands and adapters. This is quite a lot of extra trouble and equipment, but your listeners will notice the difference. A Spring band or choir concert is an excellent opportunity to capture stereo sound. You'll need a tall microphone stand to place above and just behind the conductor. On top of the microphone stand, you'll mount two matched directional microphones. Using a microphone technique called XY Stereo, install the mikes with their capsules overlapping and exactly 90-degrees opposite each other. This stereo technique ensures a nice stereo sound image and reliable mono compatibility for those listening on single TV speakers. Alternatively, you could choose a stereo microphone. Several are available and most use the XY Stereo technique inside a single mike body. This simplifies installation and minimizes the visual impact of the microphone.

Another way to use stereo during the shoot is to capture ambient sound beds to incorporate in your finished video. Let's say you're shooting an interview and there is a unique sound signature at the location. Maybe it's birds in the trees, the clinking of utensils in a restaurant or the roar of traffic in the background. After the interview, set up your stereo microphone and record a few minutes of the sound. Later, during post-production, you can use that ambient sound bed to create atmosphere or to help seam together two different-sounding takes in the interview. Vocals, even in music but especially for narration or interviews, is often monophonic anyhow, so the ambient stereo atmosphere is all you'll need to provide depth in your production.

Post Tricks
Virtually every movie and television show enhances their stereo sound in post-production. Most of them simply create the whole sound track from scratch in post. The punches, footsteps, gunshots, rustles of clothing and cell phone rings you hear are often recorded in a studio and placed in the stereo mix after the fact. You can leverage the audio capabilities of your video editing application to create many of these same stereo effects. All the major editing programs have mixing facilities for arranging various sounds in the stereo sou…