How much image-widening goes into your mixes?

[Ice Man]

I've noticed an increased sense of space when I compare national releases to my own. Mine just seem narrowed and congested in the center range no matter what is hard panned. By no means is it mono-sounding, but it just seems like the center-spectrum is so much roomier in the bigger leagues. Who here adds stereo enhancement to their mixes?

 

[greyskull]

nope.
but pro mastering eng.s often treat the mix in mid side

 

[Downtime]

Since all those stereo-widening plugs out there fuck up the phase to gain their effect I don´t use them.
A friend of mine produced a metalband a few years ago and threw some stereoenhancers on the guitars
and the OHs and as a result both were almost muted when listening to the tracks in mono.

 

[Aaron Smith]

I've used the Waves S-1 imager very sparingly on some of my mastering (about 15%), with likable results.

 

[Daunt]

Try to make your individual mix elements wider with parallel processing (chorus, delay, harmonizer etc.) not your master buss. It will sound much better. Start by searching Steven Slate's tips for bass and guitar from this forum.

 

[Seizure.]

If treating your sides during mastering.. then yes.. i use quit alot of widening!

 

[Benny H]

When talking about treating the master in mid/side.. does that entail literally rendering separate mid and side wavs, doing your thing with each separately, then mixing them back together? And what sort of things might you do or is it limited to? Sounds interesting but I also imagine things could get fucked up pretty quick if you went overboard.

 

[JBroll]

Plugins can take care of that without a problem, but that is basically what happens. One combines the left and right channels out-of-phase with each other, so that the stuff farther to the sides gets louder, then combines the left and right channels in-phase and subtracts the previous 'sides' so that the stuff nearer the middle is louder, and then processes accordingly (to oversimplify somewhat for illustration) - you can then have a louder or quieter center (quieting it may make the mix sound wider, but it needs to be done carefully), a different level of compression for the sides, or whatever you may want in that stuff.

Jeff

 

[Wolfeman]

The widening stuff in Ozone seems to work pretty well if you don't go overboard.

 

[Habsburgs]

I though I was the only one having that problem .. I think thats the main reason why everything I record sounds like shit.. and unreal.

 

[BattleTits]

Ok..im going to throw an idea out there that I use for width. I use stereo Delay on it's own bus. What you do is set the delay to 18ms on each side. Also EQ the delay so that the highs and lows are controlled.

Then what I do, to take it up few notches is put the s1 stereo imager on after the delay. I crank that so it's at max width.

I send my reverbs to this bus also..usually send some guitars, vocals..snaare..ill send anything as long as i like the sound..you have to play around, but it works really well.

 

[Grave Desire]

I've used the DUY Wide plug in before on overheads and maybe a big tom roll for an effect, but I always tend to be careful since it can bring on some phase issues.

 

[JBroll]

Hmm, no mention of the stereo pan law yet...

Jeff

 

[Downtime]

since it can bring on some phase issues.

Since it WORKS with phase issues

 

[Keessi]

I know mika jussila from finnvox studios uses a custom made analog stereo widening tool. it's only 3 buttons or something. a highpass from 80, 160 and an on/off switch and the widening knob . genious.

he said that plug-ins ruin the center of the mix. and that his analog thingie didn't mess up the center of the mix. well it sounds great so why not...

 

[Ice Man]

Thanks for the replies, guys. The stereo delay buss seems like something worth trying for sure. I've heard higher-end converters tend to have wider stereo images. This true?

 

[reneisgod]

Hmm pritty interesting post, I havent tried this atall on any of my tracks.
does this actually add extra life to a track ?

I agree to a certain extent with the whole narrowness when
comparing - commercial tracks, My tracks also suffer from this problem.
No matter how wide things r panned my tracks still have that narrow feel to them.
Its nothing drastic but definetly something id like to improve if anyones got an pro tips for this.

 

[metalkingdom]

If you learn how to mix GOOD, then you won't be using these lame widening things. Pros don't use that shit. You're just f'in with the phase, which is never a good thing. None of the industry stuff that you're A/B'ing to has that garbage on it.

 

[The inquisitor]

*Noob post*

Isnt this something you should do when mastering instead of mixing?

*/Noob post*

 

[jangoux]

One thing that i used once to improve the wideness on the guitars was to use a stereo enhancer plugin to one of the double-tracked guitars. It sounded cool, but after switching to mono, the effect was gone.

I've read a lot of times that 'creative use of delays' may improve the wideness of the tracks. Besides vocals, i can't figure out where to use delays - using delay on distorted guitars seems like an effort to add mud to the sound instead of wideness.

Maybe a little bit of delay on the opposite side of toms may help trick the ear that tom is further to one side or something else...any thoughts ?