Stereo Widener Plugins

[noahrbc]

Gooey's Visage is pretty sweet

[legendCNCD]

Hm gotta try Polyverse Wider -> Ancora in M/S mode and rephase

[simon.a.billington]

I opt for good panning strategies so when it comes to using a widener I only need to touch it up a bit.

That's actually good thing in my opinion as I really don't like pushing them much past 115%. Everything tends to get a bit thin and washy, even with wideners that preserve the phase.

[ampetrosillo]

I use WideFire or Polyverse Wider to make something sound, well, wider while maintaining mono compatibility. (In really minimal amounts, that phasey/behind your head feeling is often jarring). I might use this on vocal doubles (which will be like, -6dB down anyway), or keyboards. (Vocal doubles might also see some pitch shifting on the sides, or modulation). Sometimes I might EQ left and right slightly differently (usually one the opposite of the other). This can help with guitars panned L/R, by the way. You emphasize what you need to emphasize (not all of the emphasis, just a bit) on the side you plan to place that guitar on, and de-emphasize on the opposite end, so that you carve a bit more space for the other guitar. I do it rarely, but it does work. It allows you to pan less than you would otherwise. The drawback is that when collapsed to mono, the emphasis will somewhat cancel out, so you need to be subtle with it or risk having congested mono mixes. On guitar buses, I also like, sometimes, to compress the sides and bring them up in volume a bit. On drums, I usually find myself making them narrower (my preference is for drums that sound somewhat centered; the idea that a drum set is as wide as the listening field is somewhat laughable).

At the end of the day, it's not really necessary. It gives a bit more air and space, but it's not going to make your mix much better. Tons of records have been made with just panning (or all mono).

[kernaudioio]

mono compatibility is the part most wideners skip over. traditional haas/phase approaches work fine until they don't, and by then you're already committed in the mix.

been building WIDE (our stereo plugin) with a spectral M/S approach specifically because of this. process the sides in frequency bands so you can keep the low end tight and still open up the high mids without the whole thing falling apart in mono. the phasey behind-the-head thing ampetrosillo mentioned is almost always the widener working against you below 200hz.

[vitocorleone123]

crave recently released a new version of theirs

[noahrbc]

crave recently released a new version of theirs

Just demoed it, pretty sweet so far!

[Joshemve]

low key some secret sauce is to use 4trk which has a secret slider on the bottom right for width that is SO nice