Making sound more spacious...

[niewysoki]

Hello! I've searched through the forum but I didn't find any solution to my problem. And my problem is: all my synths lack in that space which you can find in any well mixed ambient music (eg. sigur ros, helios etc.). My pads always sound as if they were trapped right in the middle meanwhile those in well mixed music seem to be scattered all around your head when you listen to them with your headphones on. My question is: what techniques/plugins to use to make it more spacial?

[metamorphosis]

Panning?
Lol.

[niewysoki]

Of course I tried panning but that's not what I mean. I can use panning for guitar but not for ambient synth and effect I want to achieve. That's what I'm talking about: I want it to be scattered all around, not only left or center.

[yellowfever]

Try the Sanford phaser. There's a preset called, I think, good for pads!!

[eduardo_b]

Panning combined with reverb/delay, echo will create a sense of space and pseudo-surround.

[niewysoki]

Panning combined with reverb/delay, echo will create a sense of space and pseudo-surround.

Would do you propose? Doubling the track and apply different reverb settings on it, or what?

[Kim Lajoie]

Sounds like you might need to pay more thought to depth and ambience. I've written about them here:

http://kimlajoie.wordpress.com/tag/depth/

http://kimlajoie.wordpress.com/tag/reverb/

-Kim.

[BehindEnemyDeadlines]

I'm not really sure exactly what you're looking for but if you want pads that literally go all around your head, as in move through the stereo field, you could try applying a phaser or some other fairly subtle effect to just one channel or one channel more than the other. That produces some interesting results in my experience. Or you could apply phasers with different parameter configurations to each channel.

Otherwise you could simply use a multi-tap or even a simple delay and just decide where to place the delays in your stereo field. Fiddling with the timing, placement and amplitude of your delays should give you the result you want.

Some subtle stereo reverb might do the trick. I've heard that going too crazy on reverb is a bad idea though, everything gets drowned in it and you lose clarity.

Doubling could work, especially if you subtly alter some characteristic of each of your doubles as you place them, perhaps pitch or phase or spectral content. you could get a spreader plugin to do this for you. Just watch out for phase issues and a cluttered mix.

Hope this helped.

[Aloysius]

Stereo Audio Production Techniques

[Aloysius]

Logically, you could look up some mid/side techniques. If everything is sounding too mono, then you may want to reduce the mono component.

[Aloysius]

http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Pr ... gTripleEQ/

Blue Cat's Widening Triple EQ is the "Widening" (Mid/Side) version of the Triple EQ shapeable filter / equalizer: it is a three bands real time semi-parametric mid/side equalizer. It lets you control the low, medium and high gains of the mid (mono) and side (stereo) components of your audio signal independently, with a custom filter shape. It enables you to manage the wideness of a stereo signal for any frequency. With the ability to control the center of the M-S matrix, it is possible to adjust the spectrum of a sound anywhere in the stereo field.

The plugin provides instant visual feedback of your settings thanks to the included graph. The overlayed controls lets you shape the filter easily. The mid and side channels responses can be linked together in multiple ways (with a mirroring capability) for easier balance of frequencies.

[Igro]

So what is wrong with Unison Spread? + Reverb and you done.

[tehlord]

Or double up, pan hard left and right and then use the channel delay to +/- each channel by a few milliseconds.

[Gridlocked]

Too many people judge reverb to be a bad thing...Without trying to plug myself here I like to think I get some good space on tracks with pads and personally I use a lot of reverb!

A lot of it comes down to how you use the reverb, to me it is an instrument in itself and can be treated as such if you wish to, as opposed to an after effect. It also means that if in the same song you want something upfront, the effect of having no reverb on that sound is magnified!

I often find myself thinking of music as a 3d space, so the height is the range of bass to treble, the width is your stereo field and your distance is (usually) controlled by your reverb...

Hope that makes some sense!

[BehindEnemyDeadlines]

Too many people judge reverb to be a bad thing...Without trying to plug myself here I like to think I get some good space on tracks with pads and personally I use a lot of reverb!

A lot of it comes down to how you use the reverb, to me it is an instrument in itself and can be treated as such if you wish to, as opposed to an after effect. It also means that if in the same song you want something upfront, the effect of having no reverb on that sound is magnified!

I often find myself thinking of music as a 3d space, so the height is the range of bass to treble, the width is your stereo field and your distance is (usually) controlled by your reverb...

Hope that makes some sense!

I've never heard that people judge it to be a bad thing, just something that's used indiscriminately and to excess.