Stereo Widening (Producers Please)

My take on "wideners" is DON'T.

I have never heard one that doesn't sound phasey to me.

Manipulating things with chorus, delay, panning is another thing altogether...and can be applied on a case-by-case basis.  But these so called "stereo widener" plugins used as anything other than brief special effect just gives me vertigo.  Makes me feel like something's wrong with my speakers...like someone kicked on that cheap "3D" or "Surround" function on a cheap jambox.

I widen individual tracks, or a select buss, but not the mix hardly at all. I find if you use more than a smidge on a mastering plug liken Ozone you get bad side effects: off-centered kick and snare, and a fair sized hole in the middle.

Channel Tools works fine for most.

Hi Philip,

I'll give you my take for what it's worth. I personally feel you have to be VERY careful when doing this wideness thing. There is nothing worse than a mix that is too separated. It literally can lose punch and pick up artifacts. The thing to keep in mind with wideners/imagers is, they work off of whatever stereo effects you have going on in your mix...or instruments that maybe me double tracked. What happens if you're not careful is, the instruments appear to start to go mono or phased if you go too much with this. Only select instruments should be widened in my opinion and the stereo effects used on them, as well as how the instruments are panned, will dictate whether it was a good choice or a bad one.

For example, this trick to me is great to use on solo instruments. Lead vocals, lead guitar and anything that takes the solo spot that would be down the middle in the pan field. The diagram seen here, was my explanation to a student of mine when I did a recording lesson for him using his song to explain how and why these pans were selected for these instruments. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/Stage%20Plot.pdf

You'll notice the word "imager" appears in this diagram with arrows. This is what the imager simulated in wideness when used on the lead vocals and back up vocals. There were 2 different imagers used on this project. A waves S-1 and a PSP Stereo Enhancer. The Waves S-1 went on the back up vocals which were panned at 40L/R and we spread them out just so they were in between the drum kit and the rhythm guitars. The voices themselves hit at 40%, but with the imager on them due to the reverb and very slight chorus and clone ensemble plug I put on them in a bus, makde them appear wider than they were and made for an incredible vocal choir.

The lead vocal was of course down the middle in the pan field, but due to the stereo effects I put on it, the PSP was able to stretch it out to where it seemed to fall in between the hats and the ride cymbal on the drum kit...which was a perfect spread for this song. The same principal was applied to the lead guitar when it showed up in the mix and again, it was down the center and stretched out so it was in between the hats and the ride. It had a ping pong delay on it which I made go out a bit wider because it sounded cool to hear the tails go a bit beyond where the guitar sound was. There is an entirely different diagram for the guitar effects and stuff that I used for this project, so I'll spare you there...but basically the room mics on the guitars were what I worked on to handle a bit of spread definition. Not much, but enough to where they sounded like they were everywhere.

Another thing to keep in mind if you can. Try to stay away from hard left/right pans. The reason being, that is what I like to call "the special effect zone". If you over-use hard L/R pans, it gives what I call "listener fatigue" because there is no where else for the sounds to go. Besides, the wider you spread a pan, the smaller the sound gets and at the edges, no matter how big that sound is that you recorded, it can be reduced to what appears to be a small insect flying around. There is no reason to go wide on several instruments. It just separates a mix way too much to where it just sounds horrible and will only sound decent in headphones. I'm totally against hard L/R pans...especially on layered guitars and I'm a sonic guitar junkie as you know. See man, people make the mistake all too often of substituting "big" with "wide".

A spread out sound is not bigger, it's wider. If you want "big" you have to record "big". To do that, you need the right mic techniques as well as the right number of mics to accomplish this. So try to be careful when using these spreader things and wide pans. Think of your mix as a sound stage and leave those wide pans for something you want to jump out at the listener if need be to where they say "whoa...what the heck was that?!" Those wide pans will really give you impact when you don't use them all the time...and your mixes will sound tighter without them...trust me when I tell you.

Another thing to watch for, which I believe I told you about in an old post...and that is stereo effects. Each stereo effect that you bring in, is by default, hard L/R. We need to treat them just like instruments. You don't want every stereo effect you use to be hard L/R. You need to control how wide the effects spread when used. I use a stereo imager on all my effects busses so I can control exactly where I want them to be as well as what frequencies I want accentuated within the spread. This can be done with an EQ (yes, I also eq all my effects) or if you have a plug like the PSP or the Waves Matrix which allows for frequency control of the imager. Stuff like this makes an incredible difference.

For example, a lot of guys like to put a verb on a snare drum. All well and good. However, when that snare cracks, the verb should not fly all across the stereo field. It needs to be contained. I like my snare drum verb to reach out no further than my hats and ride...and then I tighten it up a bit so it sounds like the verb sits with the snare. So keep some of this stuff in mind as it is super important in my opinion. Don't substitute wide for big...there's a difference. Wide will destroy you if you're not careful...big will make the mix huge, but sometimes "big" can be difficult to sit in a mix.

One small example of that real quick. A lot of these new samplers we use...like the East/West stuff etc...sport huge sounding samples. They are so huge, if you don't scale them back a bit, they literally suck up the entire stereo field and can engulf your mix with too much of that instrument. Quite a few guys that have over-driven guitars can't even use synths like that because the synth is bigger than the guitar sound. Sometimes the synth is supposed to just fill up the space...but the sound is so huge, the guy mixing wonders why he has lost the punch of his distorted guitars. The reason for this is these sounds occupy similar frequencies. The synth needs the low end removed and some of the mids so it can punch through and be a backing instrument. If the synth was to be at the forefront, then the guitars would need to be scaled back so they don't walk on each other while fighting for the throne. So even when something is big, we have to work it to make it sit well with other instruments. But you're better off with "big" then you are trying to simulate big with "wide". Hope this helps...best of luck. :)

Wideners that use phase or chorus or some little trick to get width - NO GO.

Channel tools - can be great.

Don't forget mid/side techniques - recording AND mixing techniques.

Here's one I came up with for guitar. When micing your amp, try using two mics. That bit isn't original. Lets say we use a dynamic and a condenser. Both sound dramatically different. Record your guitar twice - double track. Now, pan that the two condenser takes hard left and hard right. Pan the two dynamic takes 50% L and 50% R. EQ your dynamic tracks so as to give PLENTY of room for the vox. Now you have (provided you have recorded in phase or shifted it to in phase) a really wide sounding guitar, which doesn't feel empty in the middle (often a big issue with hard panned L and R double tracked guitars - in my experience) and doesn't eat up the vox. Further more, there shouldn't be any issues with phase - or minimal if you have recorded it properly. Mix and match all the above settings to taste. Sprinkle with a light garnish of reverb and serve loud.

I guess the result is kinda a bit like what you get with mid/side, but it fills in the empty 50/50 spots I tend to notice with mid/side (unless you don't make the sides hard L and R - but then you don't get the width), similar flexibility, but still a different type of sound - as it's double tracked.

Hi, Philip,

Thanks for checking out "Hearts on Fire", and and also for your kind words in the songs forum thread!

Actually there's no widening on the main mix bus or on any individual tracks, strictly just the rhythm guitar bus.  Because I use a lot of drop tunings and like thick low end gain in my rhythm guitars, I try spreading them out a little bit to make more room for the vocals, drums and bass.  So it's 2 mono rhythm guitar tracks panned hard left/right sent to a stereo rhythm guitar bus, and the whole mix is panned L-C-R.  I've been trying L-C-R panning recently and it seems to be working out better for me than just dropping parts all over the panorama.  Although sometimes I move a vocal harmony or a keyboard part off center if it's competing with the main vox.

Anyway, have a great night, buddy!
Bob