Widen Elements in a mix?

Was wondering if anyone had any tips on widening elements in a mix? For example... how would you widen vocals? Looking to gain more knowledge on the mixing side of things and I have been hearing the term 'widen' been thrown around a lot lately.

Ill check out channel tools, thank you!

Chuckebaby has a good point with the delay.  Besides channel tools try cakewalk's delay. There are presets for widening that sound great.

To get a fatter sounding vocal you can make a copy of the mono track and turn it into stereo and play both tracks.  I think you will be amazed how much fatter it sounds.  If you need more you can delay one track 1-3 ms.
hope this helps.

"Pensado's Place" had a youtube 4 part session on doing exactly this.  It's in a segment called "Into the Lair".  Great training sessions.

dlesaux


I often use an instance of Izotope Ozone and use the Stereo Enhancer module..

This is a tip I found last night doing some research as well... I have to plugin so I will check it out as well as apply the tips that everyone else has shared here. I have experimented a lot with double taking and sometimes triple taking vocals and panning or adding delay. I was just looking for other tips and techniques to achieve the same or similar results.

When I triple take vocals, usually rap vocals, I will focus on getting on good solid track for the main vocal, then I will have them double it again, and then a third time. After that I apply some EQ to tracks 2 & 3 and roll off at about 250 kHZ and to a little cut at 7500 k. I then apply a very mild delay to channel 3. Those tracks are then routed to a stereo aux bus called vocals and I apply additional EQ and compression there.

I have the vocalist triple take because I feel that copying and pasting is a cheap way out... and on top of that I really won't need to shift any tracks because all 3 performances are physically different from each other.

My Goal

I guess my goal at this point is to step up the mixing side of things and learn how to better my mixes by clearing some space in the center of the mix for the vocal, kick, snare and bass lines, etc... I would just like to better understand the tools for helping to clear the center of a mix and so far to me it sounds like widening is a way to do this?

I have been learning a lot of cool techniques lately and I basically just want to load up an arsenal and be ready for any situation or as close to ready as possible :)

I have been watching Dave Pensados' video which have the inspiration for me digging deep along with a close producer / engineer buddy of mine.

Opportunity!

I run my own website (http://www.djdarkside.com) and I would love to create a section for Music Production and focus primarily on Sonar X1 tips, tricks, etc... I am extending an offer to anyone here on the forums that would like to partner up with me and write tutorials, post, blogs, videos, information, etc....? If anyone would liek to get involved with this and be apart of what I am doing and give back to the community, I would love to have you on board. Let me know, ok? And thanks for all the responses guys!

Thanks Jim!

Another thing I like to use for widening stuff is the Sonitus Phase plugin with the "Stereo Widener" preset. Works nicely on a stereo bus.

Q.

Thanks again guys!

LJB, Thanks for the advice on SHEEPPi I like it!!!

The double-tracking trick also works wonders for that "wall-of-sound" rhythm guitar.
You achieve a large/full/animated sound... while leaving the center open for Kick, Bass, and the lead vocal.
 
Simulating a double can work...
But (IMO) there's nothing better than a tighly performed (real) double.
The slight differences in each performance creates a really cool animated stereo image.
This is particulary hard to simulate as it's not static... it's always changing (ever so slightly different).
Random delay and pitch EFX will get you closer with a simulated double... but a real double isn't exactly "random"