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Are there any tools in particular that help you guys with stereo imaging or is it all panning/volume to taste? How is stereo seperation achieved?

BONUS, unrelated question: Can I control what application has possession of the sound card manually without said application specifically releasing it? Windows Vista.

Brainworx BX-Solo is a great little tool.

KnobGoblin wrote:Brainworx BX-Solo is a great little tool.

Checking this out.

I have the Waves bundle and I use the S1-Imager to get more stereo width out of a track. I am sure there are free plugins that do the same but i haven't needed one yet so I cant help.

BONUS, unrelated question: Can I control what application has possession of the sound card manually without said application specifically releasing it? Windows Vista.

I think i may be able to help with that but I need some more information (what soundcard, what applications etc.)

there are widthers but thats not really the main thing to solve stereo image. a trick i use is mono reverbs and pan them behind the sound u got that is panned. another trick for me is eqing L & R seperatly. So duplicate ur channel, pan them left and right and give both sides a different eq treathment.

R wrote:there are widthers but thats not really the main thing to solve stereo image. a trick i use is mono reverbs and pan them behind the sound u got that is panned. another trick for me is eqing L & R seperatly. So duplicate ur channel, pan them left and right and give both sides a different eq treathment.

Hell yeah that too. Mono is your friend when it comes to stereo.

creating an extra-wide stereo image can only be accomplished by playing w/ phase. Some do this better than others, but your basic plug-in panner will generally do it by changing the phase relationship between the left and right sides... which works, but if you're in a club that's in mono, your tune will wind up losing everything it seemed to gain in stereo.

to increase the perception of space, really work on isolating your sounds, frequency-wise, and doing some extreme pans in the spectrum. like

hihat over here.....................................................................shaker here

etc, etc.

spending some time selecting reverbs, and playing w/ them-- especially pre-delay-- will help alot.

most DAW's let you set the pan law (0, -3db, -3db compensated). play around with those as well and see what it does to your panning.

if you just want to widen up a SOUND as an effect, try inserting a stereo delay, giving it zero feedback, about a 10ms delay, and making the left side 100% dry and the right side 100% wet. check in mono to see that it doesn't become hollow and 'chirp'y, and go from thurr.

Nifty Friday 'stereo width beyond normal stereo' cheat trick;

- Get mono sound

- Pan left

- Duplicate channel

- Turn down fader

- Pan channel right

- invert phase of right sound (most sequencers have a button for this)

- slowly turn up volume of right one

- left sound appears to move further out than it was, which was hard left

- It will start to come back to centre as you get louder, and start fucking with your brain as the same thing is 180 out of phase (HEADFUCK!!), so subtly does it.



Almost completely mono-friendly too, well, almost. Obviously the more you turn up the duplicate the quieter the original will be in mono. Gently does it. Have a shaker on one side and a complimentary shaker on the other and you have some seriously wide shit.

Good weekend peeps!

I get a stereo delay plugin with the left channel dry and a slight delay (no feedback) on the right channel eg. 19ms. This gives u a very wide sound, works best on mono sounds but it does work on stereo as well - reducing the delay makes the image more narrow increasing it makes it wider.