How do you narrow/un-widen your sounds?

[Caine123]

hi all, I'm undecided atm with some mix/masters from me and i let Ozone 12 run to do an analysis and I gotta say I quite like it as a 2nd opinion, so it narrowed down also with the imager the mid frequencies and some higher ones which i find strange, i dont use Imager etc. in masters but I like that some space sounds not as wide when A/Bing, but now im thinking how to make some soounds a bit narrower in the mix, they are already wide in the panorama, only 20% reverb and thats it, but the reverb doesnt give that much wideness.

which plugins/techniques do you use?

[legendCNCD]

One can just drop S channel in M/S mode in gain eg. making them more mono - caveat this may not work for all sounds, they might lose their tone or quality. It depends.

[foosnark]

Bitwig's "Tool" device has a width knob.

RJ Studios Sideminder series lets you both increase and decrease width in low/mid/high bands, automatically reducing it when necessary to maintain phase coherence.

Waves Curve Equator (along the lines of Soothe/Gullfoss/etc.) has a mid/side knob which can do nice things for stereo imaging, enhancing it or reining it in a bit.

Noise Engineering Librae has separate mid and side compression (plus pre and post stages) as well as a width control.

[jamcat]

Just switch your DAW channel’s panner to binaural or dual-mono and narrow the stereo spread to your liking.

[Caine123]

Just switch your DAW channel’s panner to binaural or dual-mono and narrow the stereo spread to your liking.

you mean this thing? i dunno if FL Studio has it on the mixer

stereo.jpg

[whassup]

Mostly Reapers mixer width knob for that.
If I wanna be more specific then I do it with M/S EQ.

[Zeisner]

With pure ILD it's easy, just basic M/S volume adjustment. For (simulated) equivalence stereophony I link all pan controllers to a master width controller to keep the desired ILD:ITD ratio intact.

[Benedict]

Don't make (or let) your sounds be so wide from the start. While every sound seems nicer with 789 voices Unisoned out to 456% wide, this is soup once you have a few things all doing that. Everything in mixing is creating an illusion. You create the sense of something happening by contrast. Therefore, if everything is spread out over the mountains and the sea, nothing is anything ie soup, seeing there is no contrast.

If you want one pad to seem like outer space, you need that to be noticeably wider than everything else. If your bass is very loud, very thumpy, and very wide, that pad will never deliver that feel of expansiveness you want. The bass is dominant. If you reduce all three of the things that the bass is telling the listener, there is a point at which the pad suddenly swells from small or lost to expansive.

Don't make for how you feel now, e.g., so you can chair-dance, but how you want the listener to feel then. Assuming these are the same is flawed when the mindset is 'now + head-on' rather than 'then and sideways'.

Yes, it is a Yoda thing.
No, there is no knob for that.

[kernaudioio]

in FL Studio the simplest route is the stereo separation knob on the mixer channel (the one in your screenshot): center it toward 0 to bring the sides in. that narrows without any extra plugin.

if you want to target specific frequency ranges: a multiband M/S setup works well. insert a parametric EQ in M/S mode, switch to the Side channel, and cut the mid frequencies Ozone flagged. this way your lows stay appropriately mono, and you're only narrowing the mid-high range where Ozone's analysis pointed.

Benedict's point about why things are wide in the first place is worth reading a few times. if everything is running wide from decorrelation processing or heavy unison, pulling it back at the master is treating the symptom not the cause.

[Junkyard Sam]

Getting too wide too quickly is a fast path to an out of control mix.

Synth presets and reverb presets are often the culprit. They tend to be GIANT to impress someone during a demo... But in an actual mix they leave no room for anything else.

Wherever possible, use mono instruments. Either collapsed or just one channel from the output. Easier and cleaner to mix.

You can allow width on something that's an absolute star of the show, something that needs to stand out.

Have a panning strategy. Gregory Scott/UBK/Kush Audio has a great vid on YouTube: "Protip: Wider Mixes Need LESS Width" - look it up!

LCR panning is powerful. Build up a strong center and all you need is a couple elements panned wide and your mix will sound huge, but still hitting hard thanks to the strong center.

Add 50% left and 50% right and that gives you 5 clear panning positions that translate well... Plus you can make decisions quickly.

Panning like this means you don't need stereoizer plugins. Get your width from good panning decisions.

Back to narrowing - narrow those reverbs! And filter them as well. In fact, sometimes a mono reverb or mono delay works well in a mix.

Waves S1 is a classic narrowing tool. Most DAWs have some kind of stock tool for this.

Ozone Imager let's you do this on a band specific basis, and even recover the lost side information back to the center. This is powerful, the best tool IMO for this.

Don't forget to try M/S in your EQ. Try using low pass (high cut) filter on the S highs, to narrow the top end. Or a high pass (low cut) on the S to narrow the low end.

Really, if you use the old mono trick of working in mono for as long as you possibly can before panning - it's a shortcut to a stronger mix.

It's not about mono compatibility, it's about forcing problems to the forefront so you solve them before panning.

Mono practically forces you into making a stronger arrangement. If you have too many overlapping parts it becomes immediately obvious.

And in mono, you have to make your songs work well together on top of each other with EQ/filter. This means better translation because your parts still fit together when the frequencies are commingled in a reverberant room.

Also, the further you get from two speakers the more collapsed the image becomes... So mono is still relevant even in a stereo mix, such as when listening from across the room on a small boom box, TV, or computer speakers, etc.

Getting things sorted in mono to begin with will prevent the state where the mix is overly wide and out of control. It solves the problem before it happens.

Check the stereo linking on your compressors and limiters. Linked, unlinked, or somewhere in between can make a big difference. You generally want them fully linked to prevent excess width, and unlinked for a wider sound with more movement in the image.

Lastly, everyone knows you have to be careful with sub frequencies. It's why people center kick and bass, usually. But high frequency transients are just as distracting.

If you ever have a mix that has issues in the high end, try a gentle -6dB slope LP filter in M/S on the S channel. Sometimes those high frequency transients are the problem, and you'll also get better MP3 encoding since low bitrates like Soundcloud don't handle high frequency transients well.

[Zeisner]

Synth presets and reverb presets are often the culprit. They tend to be GIANT to impress someone during a demo... But in an actual mix they leave no room for anything else.

...which is one of the reasons why I don't use presets. I don't think I've ever heard a single synth or effect that had toned-down presets ready for mixing. It's all way too loud, way too wide and with reverb/delay times way too long.

[Hipster Bales]

Synth presets and reverb presets are often the culprit. They tend to be GIANT to impress someone during a demo... But in an actual mix they leave no room for anything else.

...which is one of the reasons why I don't use presets. I don't think I've ever heard a single synth or effect that had toned-down presets ready for mixing. It's all way too loud, way too wide and with reverb/delay times way too long.

Yea, me neither. I don't get the joy of presets (especially in trap music or EDM), If people care more about what preset sounds better or what speakers they have rather than finishing tracks then that's a hint that they're not very good at producing. I think Madeon has stressed this on Twitter in 2010, here's the tweet: https://x.com/madeon/status/26794748824

[Zeisner]

Such people don't have a creative vision. That's why they get easily impressed by presets. If a preset only has to compete with the emptiness in their heads it's very likely to win. I always knew exactly what I wanted and no preset can sound like that.

I also think many people have too much money to spend on gear. They're never forced to learn to find workarounds and get creative.

[Benedict]

Synth presets and reverb presets are often the culprit. They tend to be GIANT to impress someone during a demo... But in an actual mix they leave no room for anything else.

...which is one of the reasons why I don't use presets. I don't think I've ever heard a single synth or effect that had toned-down presets ready for mixing. It's all way too loud, way too wide and with reverb/delay times way too long.

Yea, me neither. I don't get the joy of presets (especially in trap music or EDM), If people care more about what preset sounds better or what speakers they have rather than finishing tracks then that's a hint that they're not very good at producing. I think Madeon has stressed this on Twitter in 2010, here's the tweet: https://x.com/madeon/status/26794748824

Agreed-agreed.

As a VST & Preset maker (with some things still in the market and selling - just), the issue is that if you make the device and sounds the way they would most likely be useful in a mix, people will assume your sounds are boring, too quiet... Lack Blammyness!

QED patch makers make sounds that people will buy over sounds that people can and should use.

The more lazy/clueless the general market becomes, the worse this is. And why many of the old-guard devs no longer exist, as only scammy/spammy sells as a general rule. People will waste plenty on Unison MIDI Pack etc over a set of really solid bread & butter sounds that they can use anywhere with a bit of effort. That latter being exatly what is noted above.

[Hipster Bales]

Yea, exactly. There are people twice my age who are relying on presets while there's me creating pad sounds from scratch in Image-Line stock plugins. Here's an example of 2 tracks that use my custom sounds
https://soundcloud.com/hipster-bales/hemsworth
https://soundcloud.com/hipster-bales/amethyst