How to wide a stereo image

[Riccardo Corbari]

simple question...: how to wide a stereo image? in particular on acoustic piano recorded in stereo, or whole mix.

Thank you.

[spigots]

Not simple at all.

A Hass delay (9-18ms) will do it but has drastic effects on the image when listened to in mono (massive comb filtering).

There are plenty of plug-ins and hardware boxes out there.
I use the Waves Shuffler Plugin all the time. Used carefully there are no comb filtering side effects.

In my experience any extreme spreading will always cause problems in mono.

Frank

[sean shannon]

T-RackS has a stereo widening tool, and it is very effective.

[Riccardo Corbari]

It's better to apply to a few instruments or to whole mix in per-mastering?

[Joz]

definately on a couple key instruments. It's all perception.

Joz

[kcupper]

Riccardo,

A couple of things:

1. As someone mentioned, Waves' S1 Imager works well for stuff already in stereo. It also allows you to "rotate" a stereo image side-to-side and front-to-back without collapsing the image with panning.

2. I've been using Eventide's Instant Flanger pretty much for everything except flanging....it does some very cool spatial things to mono signals. Follow it with the S1 and play around with rotation and you have nice ways to add different dimensions to that (often) very crowded space between the speakers. Of course, you have to check things in mono to make sure things don't disappear too much (more important with the lead vocal or gtr solo--- if it's just ear candy, then who cares about mono anyway?).

3. Maybe it's only me, but if you start spreading everything, mixes become just one big lifeless mono.

KU

[georgia]

if you use S1 and other stereo widening tools... be careful to check your mix in mono and to make sure it plays on all systems correctly... Don't go overboard with this stuff..

cheers
georgia

[Riccardo Corbari]

Thank you all.

Anything else?
for stereo, I sometimes split in mono and slide the right track of a 64th triplet forward. It's wide a lot.
for mono, I duplicate the track and do the same.

what do you think about it?

I've also noticed that if I insert a couple of API 550s on the Master, it goes a lot wider... analog stuff...

[songman]

How about using DUY Wide on the mix bus? Would that be OK?

Bob.

[Riccardo Corbari]

never tried. I go now looking for a demo...