Workaround to preserve the phantom centre: A Single Curve

Listening to mixes while using SoundID I have become unsatisfied with the way the small differences between left and right speaker curves is confusing the stereo image. I'm finding elements in the mix that are meant to sound strongly mono no longer do.  A layer of subtle vagueness is being introduced.  If the software was really making both speakers act more precisely together this wouldn't occur.  

Here is a workaround to create a curve that is an average of both speaker's output.  I've attached a screenshot of the output graph from three curves I made in SoundID Reference Measure (In two measurement sessions - I have superimposed them graphically).  I have changed the colour of two of the lines so GREEN is L Red is R and the BLUE one is the average of both speakers.  In fact I have a sub speaker in the system also which explains why the level of the average is higher on the stereo average (it perfectly sums). Hopefully it will display correctly when I hit Submit !

[img]https://i.imgur.com/FKkn1nr.png[/img]

As you can see the general path of the blue curve matches the trend of the other two apart from the bottom end which is louder because my sub is receiving left and right signals which sum - like they would in real life mono-bass-world.

The method for the workaround is to capture a mono-summed signal in Reference Measure while the sweep tone for both left and right is played during the measurement process.  This means pressing the mono button on your desk/interface just when the tone is playing and then reverting to stereo when the software is directing the positioning of the mic (which is placed on a stand). This is a bit of a fiddle to do because the software reverts to playing the staccato positioning sounds if you switch to mono too early - you have to anticipate  the end of a possible “triplet”  and only press the mono button on your desk when the sweep kicks in. Probably easier if you are using a sub in your system.  If you have an interface that doesn't have a mono button you'll need to rig a software solution to switch to mono using Audio Hijack or something similar. 

Listening to mixes with all frequencies of the vocal bang in the centre of the mix with this curve is great: It stays in the middle rather than having a clouded vagueness to the image.  And the imperfections introduced by your room are still minimised. To my mind this is the sweet spot.

IMHO SoundID would greatly benefit from allowing us to choose a mono-capture without this all this fiddling while hiding under the mixing desk!  The current implementation of being forced to create stereo differences looks good on paper and in marketing but not in practice.