The Haas effect is sort of a time-based stereo exaggeration. Where you can take a mono source and make it sound like a stereo source by delaying (and usually messing with spectrally) one side. You can use it on a stereo source (I mentioned earlier delaying one room mic to mimic a much wider room) to exaggerate the apparent width of that source (you will be messing with the phase relationship of course, there's no free lunch with "creating" width unless that width was actually there to begin with).
Those drums are fine. In the mix, it sounds like there's a copy on the left and then a copy on the right, split apart by a few milliseconds. If you're not putting a delay on them, something is. It sounds like it's on nearly everything in the whole mix.
This (drums only) has a nice, centered core and a relatively wide and sparse stereo image. The mix has no core - just a hard left and a hard right.
[A MOMENT PASSES] Loaded it in - There's basically no difference (in the mix) at all between the sum and the difference. I'm not sure I could adjust a delay on one side and completely cancel the other out, but listening to the mid and side info, it sounds like it would be possible.
This drum track though -- Solo the sum and it's all there as you would expect (just with no stereo spread). Solo the difference and there's all the stereo information, but with basically no kick, snare, etc. Again, just what you'd expect.
And (at the risk of sounding like a broken record) is why I was asking about *when* (where) this was happening. The stereo drum track on its own is fine. Something is happening after that. And the reason I asked about Ozone is that it actually has presets that do this sort of (I still call it "damage") on purpose. It sounds like the entire mix is going through a Haas filter turned up to 100% (all delay, no center). If you're using a time-based stereo widener (well, I don't think there's an "if" in there - There *IS* a time-based stereo widener in here somewhere), it's one of those things you can sort of get away with as an auxiliary send feeding a dense reverb, or maybe on certain elements (again, drum overheads or room mics), but this mix sounds like literally everything is in there. Including the bass. The amount of bass in the sum is equal to the amount of bass in the difference. It's 90 degrees out of phase with itself. 99 times out of 100, it should be *0* degrees out (dead center) and if the bass is heard in the difference, it's usually a stereo chorus effect return or something along those lines that's added to the signal path (as opposed to inserted *into* the signal path).
And again -- If this is what you're shooting for, it's your mix and there you go. But for me, it's twisting my ears rather uncomfortably.
Ooh - Looks like I can add images in line - Visually speaking, here's the drums. Nice core, nice width, collapses to mono very well, very natural sounding. If these are MIDI drums, I'm actually impressed with the realism of the stereo image. And this is pretty much representative of a typical mix. Okay, maybe a little more energy off to the sides with a wall of guitars, and certainly more information along the stereo spread, but there you go.
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THIS is the MIX ---
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So that scares me right off the bat. Essentially three nearly equal lobes. And I'd almost bet money that the info in the center is transient (as in, "moving" not transient like the whack of a snare drum) -- The signals colliding with each other from left to right. Print this to vinyl and you may have a stylus literally just bouncing up and down out of the groove.