Now here's a nice little plug. I know many are sceptical of stereo enhancers, and I am too a bit, but this one is just too useful to ignore.

Essentially, Wider Boy simply takes your mix and widens its stereo image. The trick is that it offers some flexible options to make this effect subtle or extreme, and different algorithms for how much it "colours" the sound. It also avoids the "disappearing bass" problem by enabling you to leave the signal mono below a predefined frequency, and lets you boost it if you need to.

I'm not technically adept enough to explain all of its features (sorry). All I can say is that on my current tune, used subtly, it has slightly widened the mix to make room for the bass in the middle. Suddenly it all sounds better with minimal effort. There are some more extreme settings that might be useful in other contexts too.

For the next version, it would be great to see more frequency bands that could be processed independently. But as it stands it's a very useful plug.

Bottom line: it works, the price is excellent, and you may find it really helps breathe life into a mix. For a tenner of yer English money, you can't go wrong.

[EDIT - it has a decent PDF manual. I just haven't read it - haven't needed to so far.]