In 20 years of getting mastering figured out to some degree, I'd never thought to do this.
And I'm betting lots of you haven't either, as the proof is in the listening to your tracks and it's definitely a thing.

SWAP CHANNELS - L for R ... why?

Unless you're an easily offended southpaw (a left-hander who feels the world has done them great injustices) you're probably are going to be fine with setting the listening stage before your hearers the way it's traditionally laid out.

A drum set on a live stage usually spreads out the toms - hi-tuned to lo-tuned - from right to left (as you are looking at it from the audience's perspective). The hi-hat is positioned slightly right while the ride is usually slightly left. But when we go to use our sample libraries, we hear and work the drums from the player's perspective. Is THAT what you want your listeners to hear? Wouldn't you rather let them hear the kit from the audience's perspective? SWAP your mastered track L for R then.

A piano, sitting pretty on the stage (a real one) would have your ears note - again from the audience member's perspective - that the higher keys/notes are to the left of your sound field and the lower ones to the right. When you play a sample library piano, you're hearing the opposite: high keys/notes to the right, lower ones to the left. SWAP CHANNELS - L for R for a more audience relatable performance/listening experience.

Everything else, for the most part, can be wherever you want it in the stereo field (save for centred kick, bass, snare). But I strongly suggest if you want to give your listeners the real-word or live-feel for your mastered/mixed track, that you SWAP CHANNELS.

I use Sound Forge for the Channel Swap ... I'm sure many of the DAWS out there you utilize have that ability, but you can confirm or deny this.

You're welcome | emoclew er'uoY

 

Hearing a hi-hat from the right just feels wrong. No thanks. I'll just assume my audience are all drummers.

 

Yeah, I know it sounds weird! I've been so used to it for years that it DOES feel wrong ... but only to us mixing engineers. The average consumer of music wouldn't feel that way - play to your audience, not your self. They're the end market. Will it result in more song-sales? Probably not. That's not the point. Play to your listeners conceptualizations and familiarity in case it does matter to any degree is all I'm thinking.

 

Daring thesis. Since my very first usage of a drum VSTi I'm playing in drummer perspective and mixing in audience perspective by swapping L/R (for the drums only - I see no reason to swap the whole song).

 

Ian Paice disagrees with you

 

Swapping channels has no place in mastering. That belongs in the production stage. In exceptional cases in the mixing process.

 

That's why I also included pre-mastering in my title. I hear what you're saying, but I think it is up to the mastering technician to make the recommendation to the song's producer(s) to have the file channel-swapped by themselves or him/her self on their behalf if they desire it, based on the reasons already cited.

 

It also doesn't belong to pre-mastering. There may be very rare cases where it might actually be a good decision. But if I'm not 250% convinced, I would hold back on such suggestions to the client. This might be the last time this client books you.

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2023

do you refer to the ears that are tuned differently? mine are, in the car if I tap one, then switch right away with the other one, the pitch of the track I am listening is different, on one is higher than the other ...that makes you hear things or perceive differently in a mix? then could be more cerume on one more than other, there are alot of things that influences the mix, even your ears geometry, position, hearing canal ecc...

 

This is stuff what I try to do when mixing, you know basic stuff like check mono compatibility, esp. if there are some wide stereo FX in play.

I'm normally pretty happy by not adding really wide FX or wideners, and just mono the bass freqs.

 

Drummer's/player's perspective. Always.

This is recording- and mixing issue. Not mastering. I do professional mastering and sometimes engineers get it "wrong". But who am I to tell them about such hair-splitting issues?

 

If I were doing mastering professionally/full-time, then yes, I wouldn't complicate the already picky process of mastering by offering to channel swap everything for the client. That WOULD be an issue for sure.

I was strictly talking about mastering one's own projects.

The reason it's difficult in the mixing stage is because most of the kits in the sample libraries are laid out in/from the drummer's perspective and it kind of doesn't sound right when, say an EZdrummer, you pan everything in the kit to the opposite side. (Something about the ambient or room mic'd parts/channels not matching up in my head!) Plus I multi-out everything to individual tracks as I'm sure most of you do even from sample kits. In my daw, there is no easy way to channel swap without freezing and exporting to another editor. That's why I suggested the pre-mastering or mastering stage for channel swapping one's own songs.