Re: [LAU] How is the bass mixed? Per-channel frequency analysis? Histogram?

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Matt Garman <matthew.garman@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>
> I have a collection of FLAC files, all ripped from my CD collection
> What I would like to do is run an analysis across all the music to
> determine how the bass/lower frequencies are generally mixed. For
> example, how much content below (for example) 150 Hz is on the left
> channel versus the right channel?
>
> I'm not sure if "histogram" is the right word, but in my mind what
> I'd like to see, per-channel, is something like this:
>
> 150--125 Hz: x samples
> 125--100 Hz: y samples
> 100--80 Hz: z samples
> ...
>
> Then I can look at the two channels of a song, and if the histograms
> are approximately the same, I can assume the bass was mixed equally
> to both channels.
>
> I am a programmer, and thought it would be easy to quickly hack
> something up that would do this, but I have no experience with
> signal processing, and as I started reading about this, I quickly
> got in over my head! So I was hoping there might already exist a
> tool that has this functionality.
>
> Note that I don't need any kind of graphical output, as this needs
> to be wrapped up in some kind of batch processing script---I have
> about 11,000 files to analyze!
>
> The motivation for this is: I have a hardware DAC (digital audio
> converter) in one part of my house, and a subwoofer in another.
> There is a single coax run between the DAC and subwoofer, so I can
> only send one channel. If the overwhelming majority of my music has
> the bass mixed equally, sending only one channel isn't a problem.
> But if I choose the "L" channel to send to the sub, and much music
> has the bass mixed only to the "R" channel, then I won't be able to
> hear the low frequencies. I want to find out how often this might
> happen.
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
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One of the first rules of mixing you learn is to mix bass to the
center. It has to do with the fact that bass carries the most energy
and it makes sense to have both speakers share that load or some other
crap like that. I don't think such an analysis is needed - an
overwhelming amount of records will have bass at the center. Also when
mixing for vinyl if bass is not centered it will make the needle jump
out of the groove.
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Received on Thu Feb 6 12:15:02 2014