right, left, right, left

Unsurprisingly, Gabrielle's new single isn't very good, and usually it would pass me by completely undetected, but as the following BBC article shows, it makes an interesting case study.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7004174.stm

It features a 'poduction' mix that is tailored towards MP3 players and headphone listening. The remixers, apparently, listened to the top 50 best songs according to Rolling Stone magazine, and picked up a few tips from them - namely, the use of a very wide stereo mix. They also spoke to da yoof and discovered how they enjoy a good stereo split so you can hear distinctly different things in each headphone.

Listening to the 2 versions of the song, I can indeed hear a clear difference between the album and iPod versions. But rather than finding the iPod version better for headphone listening, the stark panning of the beat and bass to the right makes the song sound severely wonky to me. Something as fundemental to a tune as the rhythm and bass should, in my book, be central in the mix, or neatly spread accross it. To lump it all over to one side unbalances things way too much for me.

Personal opinion aside, it's interesting that the way they went about tailoring the song for headphones was to use such old-school stereo techniques. I think (and I should really research it but hey,) that music produced in the earlier days of stereo was panned with, say, guitars hard left and vocals hard right because it was designed to be listened to on carefully placed home speakers. Therefore when you listened (preferably central to the speakers) your ears 'merged' the two sounds and it appeared fuller and wider. Also, you got reverberations or images from the other speaker bouncing around the room and into the other ear, further fleshing out the overall sound.

So to use such techniques on a mix meant for headphones, where such aural trickery is impossible, seems bizarre and misplaced to me. My MP3 player actually has a 'stereo compensation' feature, which adds a slight reverb of the left channel to the right one, and vice versa, so you're not listening to such split-down-the-middle music through your headphones.

Still if da kids like it, then who am I to argue!