The Super Separator Trick

In which I use comb filtering tricks to create better separation between two parts that are occupying similar frequency ranges.

And here's the follow-up video:

I mentioned a video that covers Haas delay: its part 2 in this playlist:

And the Roll Your Own Crossover video:

Affiliate links:

FabFilter Pro-Q3 (Gear4music)

FabFilter Volcano3 (Gear4music)

Video edited with VEGAS Pro 17:

[macboogieland]

i guess we can all agree that dan is a damn near infinite source of engineering knowledge, but why tf is the music in all videos this annoyingly bad?

[Daniel-D-Teach]

As an educator, I adore how pedagogy-oriented your videos are. You have a supreme talent of deploying humor without ever contaminating the message, and every video of yours is an absolute joy to watch (usually more than once, to grasp more and more of the concepts). Thank you for everything you do!

[TheRXStudios]

I used this on some double tracked heavy metal guitars panned hard left and right. It made the guitars sound much wider due to more difference information, but unlike using a side high shelf or using a spreader plugin, when combined in mono, it sums into the flat frequency response again!

[Noammats]

I used to use Cubase and accepted the fact that quite a few plugins won't load up properly, crash, or stop working at some point. Moving to Ableton only worsens the situation, as only a few actually loaded up. The first time I started Reaper I saw ALL the plugins I ever installed loaded perfectly waiting for me to use them. It was like seeing all my lost friends, I was almost in tears.

[ChristopherMeadors]

A similar trick that achieves something different, which I don't believe you mentioned in the mixing in stereo series. If you have a mono signal that you want to add some width to. Use a M/S decoder. Send the original mono to the M and then a high-passed, few ms delayed copy of that to the S, and let them be reintegrated. This creates a comb filter effect too, but with the inverse of the combs on the left and right. If the width of this new signal is decreased to nothing it becomes the original mono again. Less than a full collapse makes the combs less deep.

[aryabanerjee]

We are so blessed to have someone like you, please never stop making videos, your honesty and humbleness is applauded

[mcadder]

The nr 1 reason for me is that when I want to start Reaper it's up and running in 1 sec - it boosts creativity. Cubase, for example, takes 30 secs... and when I use, say, 10 instances of TH-U (a guitar amp emulator) it uses 3% CPU in reaper, in Cubase it is already creating pops and clicks... Reaper is a very well programmed music software.

[Googahgee]

Can’t believe you drop a video addressing an issue I’ve been having in a mix the day after I run into it. Cheers!

[Bthelick]

Dan, I think you might be one of the only people to help decipher audio engineering's greatest mystery. it has eluded many since the 90s and the original engineer Alan Moulder is a hermit that doesn't give interviews.
On Nine Inch Nails's 2nd Album the Downward Spiral, the track "Ruiner" contains a truly outside the speakers 3d (non-binaural) vocal at 1:08 ish that I have not witnessed in any other recording before or since and no-one seems to know how it was done. especially in '94. I would love to open a discussion with you. Or maybe it might encourage a video.

[plactoriox]

I have been using Ableton for four years now and it suits my electronic music production needs perfectly. However, I have become more and more interested in Multitrack Mixing and there seems to be a huge obstacle in my way to get to a comfortable and quick workflow that makes sense. Started to use Reaper for all my mixing purposes and I am very happy. Cannot recommend it enough.

[JFrameMan]

what makes reaper special for me are scripts, themes, and actions. There is so much untapped potential that even if the developers stopped updating the program, we could create features for decades. I've pretty much automated all articulations, track icons/colors by name, and modded a theme to show only the buttons I use and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. Well worth the money.

[MichaelDowComposer]

It's actually a little difficult to hear what effect is happening here due to the synth sounds, and of course talking over the top. The lesson is as always a great one, explained in the best possible way, but i think the source sounds, and some clearer A/Bing to help everyone hear. As the synths are ducking in and out all the time from your voice, and they're already dancing around beautifully, it's hard to really know what's happened. Maybe using two guitars would have worked better, or a big static synth pad with a guitar, or something not already moving and changing every split second. :) You didn't ask me, but just thought i'd leave some feedback, it's the only time i feel i've wanted to with your videos that's for sure.

[ertugrullgul]

In my opinion the two biggest deficiencies of Reaper are pre-fx volume knob per channel and post fader fx inserts. These are very useful features and could be implemented easily. Dan, I know that the developers are consider your requests. Can you please help us to make them see these requests?

[michaelsnell]

For anyone wanting a logic x work around. For the channel of which you want to polarity flip the send, send it to aux. Then set the output of this aux to no output, and plug in the logic stock “gain” plugin. Flip the polarity in the gain plug-in then send this channel to the comb filtering aux

[eyeball]

I'd never thought of doing it, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew what the trick would be. I've been a Reaper user for about 10 years now so I'm blissfully unaware of the limitations the users of other DAWs have to live with.

[TylersTrying]

Amazing trick. Very exciting to hear that when the COMB bus is muted the whole mix sounds similar to some of the stuff I'm making now. Apparently I have a masking problem. I'm excited to try this out!

[dannyjesse]

My favorite feature of reaper is the flexibility of the routing. I tend to have sends running all over the mix and its caused me to create new and interesting sounds that would be almost impossible to do organically in pro-tools.

[stayover]

You could replicate this in Ableton by creating an audio track, grouping stock Compressors into parallel chains, setting the sidechain sources to be the tracks you want to hear, and auditioning all of them to effectively disable the compressors and just hear the sidechain signal. Add your delay after this group, then you can invert signals as you please. Send the track to whatever reverb return you have.

[Mansardian]

Even the built-in plugin parameter-link with manual offset sets Reaper apart. Control the threshold of three serial compressors (FET, opto, limiter, for instance) simultaneously, with their own offsets, by tweaking ONE mixer knob? Reaper can do it. Save the chain and load that configuration whereever you need it, all set up with that one fx parameter knob in your mixer. It's like building your own unique one-knob compressor.

[rollingrock]

As a mix engineer for music and film, your videos make my brain melt. Love your stuff so much Dan.