Stereo Widener Plugins

[vitocorleone123]

The new OD Ancora seems interesting. OD make high quality tools.

[El°HYM]

The new OD Ancora seems interesting. OD make high quality tools.

That one indeed looks very promising!

[thievedletter]

I've been using Softube's Widener for the last little while.
One thing to consider, is that the name "widener," while somewhat accurate, is not the full story.

As was already mentioned, most modern wideners will have different width adjustments at different frequencies. Keeping the low frequencies mono is the most obvious use for that.

Lately, with my own stuff, I've been staying away from full 100% L and R, until I use those locations for a specific moment in the song. I think, in general, if you're just widening everything, you lose excitement in the mix. So, even with my widener plugin, I'm often widening to a max of 90%. Leaving a little "headroom" in the panning, if you will. Also, using it in conjunction with phase monitoring is very helpful for determining how wide you can go before you get phase issues weakening the sound.

[bmanic]

Indeed.. width will always be relative to the core. If everything is super wide, then nothing is. Extra width using widener plugins or various techniques, is in my opinion best used when it happens moment to moment.. in places where it makes sense and creates excitement or enhances the emotion of whatever is trying to be portrayed.

For the past few years I've received quite a lot of mixes for mastering that have this hollow "everything is super wide" except the bass which is mono from 100Hz down which sounds incredibly unnatural and quite frankly, bad. It's one of those modern tell tale signs of a person at the helm that doesn't know what they are doing.. or is completely focused on making everything BIG and forgetting about the actual music.

I'm a huge fan of a strong center and strong mono elements that are boldly panned to one side, strengthened by additional mono effects behind it (so that the effects are also mono and panned right behind the source sound). This creates a much more natural and overall more enticing mix and helps the truly "big" sounds to finally have their moment when it's their time to shine.

[swilow11]

I quite like the Bitwig harmonic split spectral device. Pan odd and even harmonics in opposite direction for theoretically phase neutral widening.

But generally I go for subtle mid side stuff and just add some difference.

[Ploki]

I quite like the Bitwig harmonic split spectral device. Pan odd and even harmonics in opposite direction for theoretically phase neutral widening.

But generally I go for subtle mid side stuff and just add some difference.

For anyone that doesn’t use bitwig, tone projects kelvin does a similar thing when using “wide” parameter

[Ploki]

Indeed.. width will always be relative to the core. If everything is super wide, then nothing is. Extra width using widener plugins or various techniques, is in my opinion best used when it happens moment to moment.. in places where it makes sense and creates excitement or enhances the emotion of whatever is trying to be portrayed.

For the past few years I've received quite a lot of mixes for mastering that have this hollow "everything is super wide" except the bass which is mono from 100Hz down which sounds incredibly unnatural and quite frankly, bad. It's one of those modern tell tale signs of a person at the helm that doesn't know what they are doing.. or is completely focused on making everything BIG and forgetting about the actual music.

I'm a huge fan of a strong center and strong mono elements that are boldly panned to one side, strengthened by additional mono effects behind it (so that the effects are also mono and panned right behind the source sound). This creates a much more natural and overall more enticing mix and helps the truly "big" sounds to finally have their moment when it's their time to shine.

Agree with everything.

Producer i work with calls that kind of mixes “fat mono”

[DCrown]

Indeed.. width will always be relative to the core. If everything is super wide, then nothing is. Extra width using widener plugins or various techniques, is in my opinion best used when it happens moment to moment.. in places where it makes sense and creates excitement or enhances the emotion of whatever is trying to be portrayed.

For the past few years I've received quite a lot of mixes for mastering that have this hollow "everything is super wide" except the bass which is mono from 100Hz down which sounds incredibly unnatural and quite frankly, bad. It's one of those modern tell tale signs of a person at the helm that doesn't know what they are doing.. or is completely focused on making everything BIG and forgetting about the actual music.

I'm a huge fan of a strong center and strong mono elements that are boldly panned to one side, strengthened by additional mono effects behind it (so that the effects are also mono and panned right behind the source sound). This creates a much more natural and overall more enticing mix and helps the truly "big" sounds to finally have their moment when it's their time to shine.

Could you please explain more detailed what you mean by mono effects panned behind.
Do you mean a mono rhythm guitar panned to L45% and reverb for guitar panned mono to L 50% as an example? Or would reverb panned mono to L40% or same panning like guitar source L45% be behind? I don't understand "behind".
I saw a video where someone would pan mono guitar to L75 and mono reverb of guitar to R75.
I sometimes pan reverb mono to somewhere L or R where no other instrument is.
Imo if most instruments or fx are panned to stereo LR 100%, then there is too much.

[swilow11]

I quite like the Bitwig harmonic split spectral device. Pan odd and even harmonics in opposite direction for theoretically phase neutral widening.

But generally I go for subtle mid side stuff and just add some difference.

For anyone that doesn’t use bitwig, tone projects kelvin does a similar thing when using “wide” parameter

Didn't know about this, very nice.

Can also do the same thing in Serum 2 with the odds/evens warp mode and panned in opposing directions but be aware that the even option removes the fundamental so can sound strange unless you remove the fundamental on the odd mode too.

[bmanic]

Could you please explain more detailed what you mean by mono effects panned behind.
Do you mean a mono rhythm guitar panned to L45% and reverb for guitar panned mono to L 50% as an example? Or would reverb panned mono to L40% or same panning like guitar source L45% be behind? I don't understand "behind".
I saw a video where someone would pan mono guitar to L75 and mono reverb of guitar to R75.
I sometimes pan reverb mono to somewhere L or R where no other instrument is.
Imo if most instruments or fx are panned to stereo LR 100%, then there is too much.

I simply mean that when you use a reverb for an instrument source, try making it also mono.. then simply pan it to the exact same location as the source (if it's a send). If it's an insert then of course it pans together with your instrument by default.. just keep it mono or very narrow.

For slightly more advanced mixes you can try to slightly offset the panning of the reverb.. so lets say you panned the instrument source 50% Left, now try panning the reverb (which should still be mono or at least very very narrow) to 60% Left.. or 40% Left if you want the source to feel slightly more tilted towards center.

Oh and if anybody wants to go crazy with super wide stuff for a source (or FX send), try inserting an allpass filter on just the side channel in a mid/side EQ. That can instantly pop-out the stereo field of a stereo signal or fx and can sometimes sound awesome.. but often very unnatural, so be careful. If you set that allpass to be 12 or 24dB/octave, and make it quite narrow, then you can even control what exact frequency range "pops out".

[bmanic]

I quite like the Bitwig harmonic split spectral device. Pan odd and even harmonics in opposite direction for theoretically phase neutral widening.

But generally I go for subtle mid side stuff and just add some difference.

For anyone that doesn’t use bitwig, tone projects kelvin does a similar thing when using “wide” parameter

Didn't know about this, very nice.

Can also do the same thing in Serum 2 with the odds/evens warp mode and panned in opposing directions but be aware that the even option removes the fundamental so can sound strange unless you remove the fundamental on the odd mode too.

You can do this with absolutely any plugin in Reaper, any pluygin that creates harmonic distortion. Simply run dual mono instances of the plugin with slightly different settings.

Or use something like FabFilter Volcano where you can have separate L/R paths for the filters.. for instance a simple bell or shelf filter that doesn't do anything but has the drive enabled. Now set these to different drive types or simply adjust their frequency placement and you get very quick and easy differentiation of harmonic series per channel.

Again, these tricks are fully mono compatible but can sound quite unnatural when listening to it on a stereo system or on headphones unless carefully tuned and balanced.

[jens]

KVR could stop existing in future, if everyone just asked AI:

No, because the typical level of competence here by far exceeds AI, while yours obviously is significantly below it, which is why Dave suggested you (as opposed to everyone else in this thread) ought consult AI in order to at the very least reach a basic level of knowledge before continuing the conversation here.

[jens]

As far as widers go:

my tool of choice is Nugen's Stereoizer.

[jtsterays]

It depends on the type of wideners which most people seems to group both into 1 term, there's the ones that make mono sound stereo using various methods: haas, chorus, early reflections, EQ panner (PS22), etc... And there's the side channel balancers that are for already stereo sound (S1, MSED, plugin alliance stereo width knob, etc..).

Most people are afraid to use these plugins because they cant differentiate which group the plugins belong to, so they apply the wrong plugin to the wrong sound. (e.g if you have a mono vocal + reverb, turning on the PA stereo width knob would just widen the reverb, vocal is still the same)

It's not ideal to apply the former group plugin into an already stereo sound most of the time, definitely not on the master, it would just be a phasy mess.

[jens]

The Nugen one I mentioned works both on mono- and stereo-material though.