How much image-widening goes into your mixes?

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 ?

Man, I literally posted about on this very page.
 
Don't use stereo widening plugins! But sometimes a tiny bit can be cool... Try it on synth. From time to time i use a stereo processor in mastering - but only about 5% or something around that.

The key of a stereo-sounding mix etc (as described above) is NOT to hardpan everything in the first place. It is done by a proper recording first. I don't know why, but most home-studio guys are recording everything in mono! Try to record more true-stereo stuff. If there are some acousic instruments: Record them in stereo! Be carefull to record a decent stereo image of the drums - using the overheads and the room mics.

In the mixing stage the key is proper use of early reflections and modulation stuff... Well balanced instruments/frequencys. Not clipping everything with gclip and stuff.

I noticed that the main difference you can hear between cheap recording equipment and quality gear (mic pres, converters...) is in the stereo image.

As i swaped my old and trusty Motu 24i to the Lynx Aurora 16 i didn't realized a huge difference frequency wise (a mono-snaretrack just sounded like bevore) - but the 3dimensionality of a stereo track (full mix, classic recording etc) increased A LOT!! As well as it seems that the decent recorded tracks will stay "3dimensional" even with a lot of processing, the cheap recorded tracks will imediatelly soundn flat and lifeless after processing a lot.

brandy