Mix | Sound Design | Mastering Bringing definition to 'weak', 'hollow' or 'flat bass'. The modern recording process, with multiple mic. recording and sophisticated synth sound generation techniques can often interfere with the phase alignment, focus and 'punch' of the low frequencies, resulting in a feeling of diffused power and weak transients. Monofilter fixes this simply. Add to the track, group, master bus or FX return as appropriate and choose a suitable preset. It's as simple as that. If tweaking is not your thing, hit the 'auto' buttons and sit back, otherwise, in-depth analysis and gentle honing of the parameters are all available via the advanced intuitive user interface. Centering the bass where stereo FX are used. Applying stereo effects to liven or enrich a sound can work wonders in the mid and high frequencies, but often muddies up the bottom end. Using Monofilter you can add stereo effects and still retain a solid centre in the bass frequencies, by reducing the width below the point at which stereo nature of the effect has ceased to make significant impact. Correcting phase issues. Some stereo effects use phase shifting to create the desired sound. This can cause cancellations and superpositions of certain frequencies when the channels are forced back to mono. Similar problems can be encountered with live recordings where different microphone placements have introduced phase artifacts. Using the Phase control you can adjust the phase of the L and R components being summed below the threshold frequency to correct any phase imbalance. If the input signal has a dynamic phase shift, the auto button can be engaged to automatically analyse and track the shift, adjusting for maximum phase alignment. Sampling from vinyl / Restoring old masters. Sound sampled from vinyl, a staple of modern music production, can also bring with it problems. Over time, vinyl deteriorates. Old recordings can also suffer from rather eccentric mixing techniques. Using a stereo analyser on an old vinyl recording will often show very high levels of stereo drift right across the frequency range. Monofilter can be used to smooth out stereo image irregularities in vintage vinyl and re-centre wandering bass/sub bass sounds without affecting the rest of the mix. Taking care for vinyl. Vinyl has difficulty reproducing stereo information in the low frequencies. Wide stereo frequencies in the bass can cause the needle to jump upon playback, so the track has to be cut at a lower level to compensate. It also difficult for the lathe to cut this information accurately. To quote a vinyl mastering specialist: ‘The moral for engineers is: If you are looking for hot levels or long sides, don't pan instruments like drums and percussion hard left and right. Keep the bass and bass drum in the center, and keep everything in phase. An out of phase snare or bass drum can wreak havoc. Use an oscilloscope if possible!’ Using Monofilter you can centre the bass and adjust the phase ensuring that your recordings are properly prepared for vinyl pressing. During Live Recording and Performance. When working with live material, giving attention to taming the unpredictable and treating the PA with respect can bring real benefits. Using Monofilter to ensure that the subs (and even the bass frequencies in general) are centred in the mix can help share the load between over worked amplifiers and speakers as well as providing a sharper level of clarity in the bottom end. Where a more subtle approach would be of benefit, Monofilter can be used with individual problem instruments and groups (toms/laptop performers/DJ’s/keyboard players using global delay etc.) ‘Panning’ Bass. Panning bass sounds is usually something best avoided as off-centre high energy in the low frequencies can present more problems than it resolves. However, using Monofilter a sound may be panned and the low frequencies present in say a bass guitar track, can be centred using the Monofilter process, the higher frequencies (ie. much of the attack component) can be moved in the stereo field without the usual problems of the attending lows, giving the impression that the bass part has been panned, when really it is only the high, directional information carrying frequencies that have been moved. Making a frequency split. Monofilter has a very transparent, high performance crossover filter which can be used to split an audio signal into two frequency bands for individual processing. This can be achieved using two instances as follows: Split the audio into two streams (using groups/duplicate audio tracks etc.) and use two identical instances of Monofilter, one on each signal. Select the ‘Mono’ output button on one instance for the low frequency mono information and the ‘Stereo’ output button on the other for the stereo information above the threshold frequency. Stereo Spectrum Analysis. The graphical display in Monofilter can be used as a Stereo differential spectrum analyser. Setting the Width Controls to maximum width, the HPF to off, and leaving the other controls in their default positions (you can achieve this quickly and simply by selecting the preset ‘Analyser’) will set up the plug-in in analysis mode. The incoming sound is not affected, but is analysed for stereo content, which is then displayed visually. The display shows frequency (20Hz – 20Khz) horizontally against stereo spread (dB) vertically. Left displacement at any given frequency is represented above the 0dB line and Right displacement below. The lower analysis window shows correlation against frequency. A correlation in the positive region toward +1 will result in ‘solid’ sounding audio. 0 is uncorrelated material and values from 0 to –1 (anti-correlation) can result in phasing and phase cancellation where certain frequencies are reduced or cancel out entirely. If you are unfamiliar with the incoming audio material, or wish to visually check frequencies that are difficult to determine, this mode is a good place to begin. Before you start making any adjustments to the sound, visual analysis can quickly highlight areas of concern, or conversely, give you a good indication that little treatment is needed.

 

Key Features

Mastering Quality Processing Linear phase Monofiltering Precise low end phase alignment 'Auto' level trim and phase control Linear phase High Pass filter Multiple output modes Clear band limited operation   Advanced intuitive GUI Stereo real-time audio analysis Real-time correlation by frequency analysis Click-and-drag stereo width envelope   Workflow enhancements In-place bypass pre/post metering quick-start presets unlimited session undo/redo A|B comparison memories