You have two speakers and a flat file. So how do you make a mix sound like a real three-dimensional space?

In Episode 17 of KNOBS, Simon Moro and Terry Hart take on the soundstage: the art of placing sounds in a believable room that lives in front of, between and beyond your speakers. Their tell for an amateur mix is simple, if you can hear the left and right speakers as speakers, the soundstage has failed.

They work through all three dimensions. Front to back, using pre-delay, brightness and reverb so a sound feels close or far, because low frequencies travel further, which is why you only hear the bass from the club down the street. Left to right with pan and a touch of ambience. And top to bottom, where lows ground a mix and highs lift it. Then width, which they argue is really about dimension and relationships: you n ...