Question about widening a mix

Hello,

I downloaded Studio Buddy (www.studiobuddy.com) and tried their recipe for widening an instrument so that it actually seems wider than the speaker placement. I think I need a little help.

They say the following:

<< now quoting from Studio Buddy...>>
Tip: In mixing, you might want to have some fun with phase. Say you have a big band playing a dozen instruments, and the musician on B-3 organ is just playing subtle pads and swells. A supplemental role. If you have recorded the signal in stereo, you can put it out of phase and make it sound like the organ is sitting to the left and to the right of your two speakers.

First, "mult" (combine) the two stereo tracks of B-3 with an aux send or buss. Then return that new mono signal to a fader. In simpler terms; Send equal amounts of signal from each of the B-3 tracks to an aux send. That will create a mono "mix" of the stereo B-3 signal. Patch out of that mono "return" to an open fader. Pan the original tracks hard left and right, and pan the new mono signal up the middle, at 12:00. At this point, when you push up the new fader, the organ should just sound louder. But when you pop the phase button on that fader - reversing its phase relationship with the original stereo B-3, you'll hear an odd thing happen. It will sound as though the B-3 was "pushed" to the sides, even wider than the actual speakers. As you play with the fader level of the mult (the mono signal), you can decide how much of that signal sounds good to you, and how wide you want the B-3 to "appear."

<<End quote>>

I couldn't figure out how to switch the polarity on a buss (It doesn't seem Sonar can do that), so I did this instead:
1. Record a Midi organ in stereo (with some leslie)
2. Bounce to 2 mono tracks, one hard panned left, one hard panned right
3. Bounce the original stereo organ tracks to a single mono track panned center.
4. Mute the original midi track
5. Play back the left and right organ tracks. It now sounds like the original Midi sereo track, as expected.
6. Bring up the mono track. As Studio Buddy says, it just sounds louder.
7. Flip the phase on this mono track. According to Studio Buddy, it should now seem wider than the actual speakers, and this widening can be controlled by how much fader is used.

Yes, when flipping the phase, I think I hear more separation. But the problem is that it is not dramatic at all. In fact, depending on where I put the mono fader, I can cancel out certain parts of the original sound. Whether listening to my monitors or listening in headphones, the effect is not big. It really doesn't seem wider than the original track.

I feel that I can get a wider sensation by simply using only the original left and right bounces, and moving one of them a few milliseconds in relation to the other.

Am I doing this right, or am I missing something??

Dave Ewer

This is MS processing, a standard widening trick. Voxengo has a free MS plugin that'll do it with less hassle. If you're running SONAR 8, you also have the Channel Tools plugin. There is also a category of "stereo widener" plugins that do a similar trick.