Wide guitars, phasing, and m/s

[fracturematt]

Hello folks. My first post here. Sorry if this is a total noob post.

I had some questions on m/s technique. I downloaded a plugin called Shredspread. It's pretty nice, it widens the guitar and makes it fit in a bit more in the mix. But when I put in my Ozone EQ, switch to m/s and just listen to the sides it is EAR PIERCING. Also in my paz imager it shows a lot of phasing issues. I bypassed the Shredspread and it actually still shows phasing. So I got a little confused. When there are 2 guitars panned left and right, is phasing normal? I can't exactly reverse the phase on one guitar since they're different tracks. When the m/s is not soloing the sides it sounds fine... and actually when the Shredspread is bypassed and I solo the sides in Ozone ... again, EAR PIERCING. So maybe m/s when you listen to just the sides it sounds jarring and that's normal. so am I just over analyzing and worrying for no reason?

 

[mva801]

Well tricks with phasing and stuff is how they get the guitars to seem wider. How do you have the shredspread set up? I just popped it on one of my guitar busses and used the brainworks digital V3 to solo M and S separately, and they sounded fine.

 

[fracturematt]

I have both guitars going to a stereo aux and I put the shredspread on there.

 

[mva801]

No I mean what are your settings on the shredspread? If you use extreme settings it will definitely cause some weird phasing issues. Are you using the shred knob?

 

[fracturematt]

I'm using about 20% shred and about 140% spread.

 

[wishtheend]

Too wide on the spread I think. I find anything more than 5-10% pushing it when widening already hard or close to hard panned guitars. You want just a hint of widening, nothing drastic.

 

[nezvers]

But he mentioned that it's sides are piercing even with bypassed shredspread, so that means problem is somewhere else. What else is in your guitar fx chain?

 

[mva801]

Yeah those setting might be a little much for that plugin but don't give me any weirdness. What does it sound like if you completely remove the shredspread from the chain? Are you sure there's not some setting in Ozone that's soloing a certain frequency band? I haven't used ozone in years but maybe you're unwittingly soloing just the high frequencies