Solved Stereo widener

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danny.guitar

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What's a good effect to use for a stereo widener? I don't want to use delay, or reverb, I've already tried that.

Say you have a single rhythm acoustic guitar track recorded in mono. And you want to give it a nice stereo image. Besides doubling the part, or re-recording it in stereo (which isn't an option right now) what kind of effect would you use?

I've already tried reverb, and delay...duplicating the track and putting delay on it, etc. It doesn't sound right for this song.

I guess what I want is a pseudo-stereo image for the one guitar so it sounds more wide and 'spread out' and different in each channel.

I've also tried duplicating the track, panning them L/R and EQing one of the tracks differently. I had to make some drastic EQ changes for it to have any sort of effect and it just made it sound bad.

Sorry if this is a stupid question.
 
Well, there's only one way to widen a mono track and that's with some kind of time delay effect (delay). Pan the dry trackto one side (by whatever amount), send to a reverb, or delay or chorus/flanger or whatever and bring that back panned the other way. When using delay, the shorter the delay, the more the image is to the center, the longer the delay, the more the image migrates towards the dry (or dryer) signal. The danger of short delays is the possibility of comb filtering. There are other tricks too.
 
Track Rat said:
There are other tricks too.
Click to expand...

What are they?

I've tried the delay/reverb and it did give it a wider sound but didn't fit the song. Too long of a delay made it sound like delay, and too short gave comb filtering like you said. I want a natural sound, is this possible?

I downloaded a free VST plugin (MultiBand Stereo Faker) and it seems to work ok for some things but for acoustic guitar it just sounds bad.

Maybe there are other plugins like that but better?
 
Are there parts that repeat? For example if this is a song, if the parts from the verses (for example) are identical, you could copy the material from the second verse and combine it with the first as a second track... then pan them left and right. Might work.
 
Try splitting the track into a stereo track and run a very slight duo chorus on it. Run the chorus effect at only 12-15% at the most.
 
danny.guitar said:
What are they?

I've tried the delay/reverb and it did give it a wider sound but didn't fit the song. Too long of a delay made it sound like delay, and too short gave comb filtering like you said. I want a natural sound, is this possible?

I downloaded a free VST plugin (MultiBand Stereo Faker) and it seems to work ok for some things but for acoustic guitar it just sounds bad.

Maybe there are other plugins like that but better?
Click to expand...

You might try the WideBug plugin from BetaBugs. It works on the same principle as the others - by tweaking the phase/timing of the image, but it will add a little more "stereo-ness."

http://www.betabugsaudio.com/plugs.php
 
noisewreck said:
Are there parts that repeat? For example if this is a song, if the parts from the verses (for example) are identical, you could copy the material from the second verse and combine it with the first as a second track... then pan them left and right. Might work.
Click to expand...

That's pretty clever. :D Never thought of doing that before. The song does repeat, so I may give that a try.

sloop said:
Try splitting the track into a stereo track and run a very slight duo chorus on it. Run the chorus effect at only 12-15% at the most.
Click to expand...

Yea I've tried chorus. As soon as I put enough on there to get a "wider" sound it sounds like chorus. I don't want it to sound like I have any effects on there. Just a wider sound.

It's an acoustic guitar track so any kind of effects will sound extremely obvious.
 
It's a mono track, Danny. There's nothing to make "stereo". Widener plugs that use phase delay tracks are about the best you can do on an effects level, but even they will be limited in the quality of stereo image they can produce from a mono signal.

You've already tried EQ without much success, which isn't suprising as EQ on an acoustic guitar can be very finicky.

However you might want to try this recipe:

1.) Use narrow-Q parametric sweeping to ID as many honking resonant frequencies you can find in the guitar track, especially in the mids between about 250Hz and 4kHz. Note those frequencise but don't do anything with them yet.

2.) Throw a low-pass filter on one copy of the track, with a soft knee around 2.5kHz (+/- .5kHz or so). Pan that track to one side (to taste; you can hard pan or just partial pan.)

3.) Throw a high-pass on a second copy of the track, with a soft knee around 550Hz (+/- 50Hz or so.) Pan that to the other side to taste.

NOTE: select which side which track goes to based upon the spectral balance of the rest of the mix. Put the low pass onthe side where the bass balance will be the weakest, and vice versa for the other track.

4.) Take your list of resonant frequencies from step 1 and split it in half. Take half of those frequencies and notch them down with very narrow-Q parametric cuts to one track, and then do the same with the other half of those frequencies to the other track. Which half you use on which track you have to try to taste. Sometimes it sounds better one way, sometimes another. Sometimes, if it's a very midrange-sounding guitar, you have to cut all frequencies on both tracks - in which case it's actually faster to make the cuts before you duplicate the track.

G.
 
there's a plugin i use for that called "mda stereo", it works OK. give it a try, seach for it on KVR.
 
buy a neve portico 5014 :eek: and put in on your mix buss

I had the oppurtunity to play around with one a friends studio and the thing

also works really well on the drum buss
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
It's a mono track, Danny. There's nothing to make "stereo". Widener plugs that use phase delay tracks are about the best you can do on an effects level, but even they will be limited in the quality of stereo image they can produce from a mono signal.

You've already tried EQ without much success, which isn't suprising as EQ on an acoustic guitar can be very finicky.

However you might want to try this recipe:

1.) Use narrow-Q parametric sweeping to ID as many honking resonant frequencies you can find in the guitar track, especially in the mids between about 250Hz and 4kHz. Note those frequencise but don't do anything with them yet.

2.) Throw a low-pass filter on one copy of the track, with a soft knee around 2.5kHz (+/- .5kHz or so). Pan that track to one side (to taste; you can hard pan or just partial pan.)

3.) Throw a high-pass on a second copy of the track, with a soft knee around 550Hz (+/- 50Hz or so.) Pan that to the other side to taste.

NOTE: select which side which track goes to based upon the spectral balance of the rest of the mix. Put the low pass onthe side where the bass balance will be the weakest, and vice versa for the other track.

4.) Take your list of resonant frequencies from step 1 and split it in half. Take half of those frequencies and notch them down with very narrow-Q parametric cuts to one track, and then do the same with the other half of those frequencies to the other track. Which half you use on which track you have to try to taste. Sometimes it sounds better one way, sometimes another. Sometimes, if it's a very midrange-sounding guitar, you have to cut all frequencies on both tracks - in which case it's actually faster to make the cuts before you duplicate the track.

G.
Click to expand...


BINGO!

It's like audio alchemy.

:D


​
 
Thanks for all the suggestions.

Scrubs - I remember trying that and not liking it unless I'm thinking of a different plugin. I don't really care for any of the plugins I've tried by them.

Glen - I tried EQ but didn't do it like that so I'm gonna give that a shot and see what I can do. :cool:

Zed - I've used a few of the mdaPlugins and they seemed pretty decent so I'll download that and see how it works.

dzara 4 - I wish I could afford some outboard gear. :(

Flatfinger - Thanks I'm downloading that now. Gonna give all this stuff a try later on when I have time.

Thanks again.
 
danny.guitar said:
I tried EQ but didn't do it like that so I'm gonna give that a shot and see what I can do.
Click to expand...
Yeah, EQ on acoustic string instruments is tough; it's real easy to lose that natural acoustic sound. This is one of those instances where the old general rule of "use EQ boost to make things sound different/Use EQ cut to make things sound better" can really come into play.

Note that the "recipe" (which I have used in the past to at least some degree of success, but is not guaranteed to always work) uses only cuts in the EQ and no boosts; the bandpass filters to shape the overall envelopes of the two tracks differently, and the narrow Q cuts to selectively de-emphasize some of the more "objectionable" resonances differently between the two tracks.

Any way you (intentional bad pun alert!) cut it, I hope you find something that works out for you :).

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Yeah, EQ on acoustic string instruments is tough; it's real easy to lose that natural acoustic sound. This is one of those instances where the old general rule of "use EQ boost to make things sound different/Use EQ cut to make things sound better" can really come into play.

Note that the "recipe" (which I have used in the past to at least some degree of success, but is not guaranteed to always work) uses only cuts in the EQ and no boosts; the bandpass filters to shape the overall envelopes of the two tracks differently, and the narrow Q cuts to selectively de-emphasize some of the more "objectionable" resonances differently between the two tracks.

Any way you (intentional bad pun alert!) cut it, I hope you find something that works out for you :).

G.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Glen. I'd love to hear some of your work. :) Once this song is finished I'd like your opinion, you always have an answer to everything. :p

I'm a little too drunk to try this right now, but when I'm not I'll give it a shot. I've never EQ'd an acoustic guitar before to where it actually made it sound better. I've removed some 'boomyness' or 'mud' but it never sounds as good as the original. Maybe I'm just not good with EQ. :confused:

But I'll give it a shot, thanks.
 
danny.guitar said:
Yea I've tried chorus. As soon as I put enough on there to get a "wider" sound it sounds like chorus. I don't want it to sound like I have any effects on there. Just a wider sound.

It's an acoustic guitar track so any kind of effects will sound extremely obvious.
Click to expand...

I have a UAD-1 plug in called Roland dimension D that's a chorus but very subtle and does a reasonable job of adding width without being too chorusy sounding.Of course that's bit expensive. :rolleyes:
 
seriously, try out the mda Stereo plugin. i use that thing on rhythm acoustic guitars and it works well without giving it a "chorus" sound.
 
zed32 said:
seriously, try out the mda Stereo plugin. i use that thing on rhythm acoustic guitars and it works well without giving it a "chorus" sound.
Click to expand...

Wow you're right. That's just what I was looking for! :cool:

Description says it uses the Haas effect/delay.
 
not to be an ass, but it would be easiest to just record the guitars in stereo
 
Ironklad Audio said:
not to be an ass, but it would be easiest to just record the guitars in stereo
Click to expand...

Would have been a lot easier. Wasn't an option for this particular song though.

Oh well, got a really cool effect to use now that works really well. Sounds great in mono but really wide and full in stereo without any kind of noticeable chorus/delay going on.

Thanks again zed.
 
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