Pro Audio Press, Sound Advice on Mixing and Sound Advice on Mastering, both by Bill Gibson.
I suppose I could RIP the files and post them, but that’s a lot of work for me. Why not try it out for yourself? I just did and found some interesting results. I varied the delay time by 1ms at a time from 1 to 20 to see what would happen. The results were sometimes subtle, sometimes very dramatic. The vertical position seemed to shift, but not nearly as much as the left-right shift. In some cases the sound got wider, and sometimes narrower. Sometimes it sounded like the guitar changed pickups.
This was panned center, using mono delay.
This was with an electric guitar comping track. I tried it again with a lead vocal, and it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
What results do you get?
Unfortunately, at the moment, I have very limited facilities (my professional experience was years ago and 2400 miles away). So I wouldn’t be able to do a fair test.
I tried to find a cheap copy of one of the books by Bill Gibson to buy, but the only ones I found I don’t want to put out $ for.
I’m not sure how you are controlling your delay. Are the ms values the difference between 2 echoes or the primary sound to the first (only?) echo? Are the delay values between 2 identical sounds, but delayed by channel (L channel, time=00:00, R chan, 3ms later)?
I am unable to comprehend how spatial presence could be done as you describe. In all my years in audio studios and home environments, I can never recall hearing a sound that seemed like it came from “above” or “below” other than ones caused by echoes on hard surfaces.
So all I can say is I think you may be influenced by suggestion. Without a double blind test, this is a likely cause. You have been told to expect something and sure enough, it sounds like that.
Also, if your advice about cables comes from Bill Gibson, I’d say his advice is not worth much. He seems to have written several books, but I know nothing about him otherwise.
The delay is from the original sound to just a single echo. Both are panned center.
I’m not sure what to tell you about sound coming from above or below. If you’ve never heard it then you’ve never heard it. I’ve pretty much always experienced music that way, and it’s really obvious to me.
As far as the Monster Cable thing goes, Gibson has a few audio examples of that as well. With two of them I didn’t hear much difference at all, but I listened to them over cheap computer speakers that I bought back in the 90s. One of the examples, though, was very obvious to me. Like, night and day difference.
Where cables really can and do make a difference is in applications with a high impedance (like a guitar). The cable introduces a capacity into the circuit that can negatively impact treble performance, so they pretty much do shape sound. Other than that you want a good quality cable with a balanced signal and you can pretty much do anything with it.
I just popped into the thread because I too am in desperate need of some audio recording/mixing advice. I was just checking out the books you mentioned on amazon but the reviews are less than stellar. But I did come across Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practices, and Tools and the reviews seem to be so far through the roof I ordered it immediately. (gotta wait like a month though for shipping to Europe but I’m looking forward).