Ableton Forum

I am currently working on a track at the moment and have been uploading the different versions to soundcloud as I have been reworking it to get feedback on it and then improve it, rework etc...

Some recommended I try and get a bit more stereo separation because it sounds a bit too mono.
Mainly being a cowbell and the vocals, I have duplicated both these tracks then panned them hard left and hard right then delayed one of the tracks by a few milliseconds. Also have a bit of reverb on them.
Am I going about this the right way? Or should I be using some of the delay effects, auto pan etc..?

Any suggestions would be great thanks

utility > width. auto pan is good too. there is no right or wrong, but just make it flow

Using the utilityplug doesn't actually make the stereo wider, it just removes whatever mono material there is and plays what is in the pans. Thus, a 200% wide setting on a mono source would give you nothing sent to the master.

Perhaps a combination of side EQ, different reverbs on the different sides and delaying them? You know, using all the stereo widening tricks but subtle.

The Phantom Image
This is a long article, but very interesting: stick with it.
http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/princip ... tom_image/

Sometimes I use PSP StereoEnhancer or PseudoStereo, but I think the quick easy technique is to use Live's Simple Delay effect.
Switch the time to ms and make the left and right delays different but very short (like say...5ms on the left and 21ms on the right)

i would be wary of slapping a simple delay on with those timings. Your 'stereo' track would be slightly behind the beat.

I have a number of tricks to get enhanced stereo out of a very mono track. At the very simplest I would 'extract' the top end via a very shallow slope. IE - all frequencies above 12k, and run those through a delay effect. But I would use a rack to deliver a straight left, and a delayed right. so one chain is panned hard right , and the other chain uses a delay, and a utility plugin to select just the left channel (and pan it left in the chain control). This way - the right is 'on time' and the right is 'wet', IE : delayed by 5ms or so.

this is a very rough basis. you can tweak from there.

the benefit of only affecting the top end is - usually effect you are aiming for a sense of air and space if you are reaching for 'stereo widen' type effects. If you try and stereo widen / enhance something in the mid, like a snare, it's usually going to leap out of the mix quite weirdly. I tend to only widen the top.

I also quite often use a variant of this top-end-widening, which makes use of an early reflection (from a reverb), rather than just using a simple 5 ms delay. This ER, hard panned, can give better a more convincing sense of width on some instruments. Also it tends to have slightly better mono compatibility.
If you want to enhance mono compatibility even more - you can feed 50% of this ER effect into the opposing speaker, but phase inverted. That way - if the track is ever summed to mono the ERs will partially cancel. Meaning the mono version will have slightly less reverb.

The reason for doing this is : nightclubs which still sum tracks to mono also tend to have terrible acoustics, in these circumstances less reverb & more clarity is a very good thing.
So, using my automatic stereo width phase inverting top end, you track will automatically fix itself if played on a terrible rig in a bad club

I realise that the last part is not exactly beginner-friendly, but hell - it probably made sense to someone.

Awesome post, and very important! I made a rack a couple of months ago that splits the audio through 3 auto filters (lo, mid, hi)with macros for width, phases and filter settings for each one but I realized after using it on more tracks that I was over doing it. I think it'd be better with just 2 filters. I do like switching the phase for mixing, though; utility is so simple yet so handy, but it's easy to overdo things.

Angstrom wrote:i would be wary of slapping a simple delay on with those timings. Your 'stereo' track would be slightly behind the beat.

nah, this is pretty common practice and only screws up the rhythm at higher settings. I actually do the split at 1 and 12ms between the two delays, it works great. Never had an issue with "behind the beat" timing or anything. Definitely my favorite way for a quick+cheap stereo-widening effect.


-M

mholloway wrote:

Angstrom wrote:i would be wary of slapping a simple delay on with those timings. Your 'stereo' track would be slightly behind the beat.

nah, this is pretty common practice and only screws up the rhythm at higher settings. I actually do the split at 1 and 12ms between the two delays, it works great. Never had an issue with "behind the beat" timing or anything. Definitely my favorite way for a quick+cheap stereo-widening effect.


-M

Yeah, but if you could exchange that 1ms side for 0ms would you do it?
I choose yes to that, so I make a rack that discards the 1ms delayed left in favour of the straight left. Why?
"It's one better!"