Stereo widening

[jefferson]

After just listening to a Madonna album which makes extensive use of massive stereo width (miles outside the physical location of the monitors) I am wondering the general thoughts of the forum? Is this really only appropriate for 'programmed' material versus live instrument?
Secondly, the best process to achieve extensive width?

Regards

Jefferson

[jkhuri44]

yo..

there's heaps of ways to do it..

some, if not most include phasing tricks....which could sound crappy depending on whether ur on headphones or speakers..

i think it works best if you have a good mix, and add a few of those phased elements in the mix, so at least some if not most is landing in ur regular stereo field..

no idea whether its good on live instruments or programmed material...i just dont think its a good idea to do it to a whole mix..only elements of the mix...like a synth pad...or an intermittent noise..etc...

here's an article from SOS...that talks about it..
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct00/a ... reomix.htm

i didnt bother to check the SOS article if it mentions it, but there is a program on the market called Qsound...which was originally first a hardware solution, now comes in a shitty plugin.. and it can be used to place sounds supposedly anywhere in a 360 degree space...the hardware version was first used on Sting's Soul Cages..check that out if you can..

happy reading...

[rick]

i have played with lots of these
boxes and we have two systems that get used here a lot
a parkside sound matrix unit and a bendini unit
the parkside thing is a specifically a precision mastering tool and the bendini was a very expensive outboard unit
and by far the best thing for getting width that works everywhere
i see them on ebay from time to time for a tenth of what i paid for ours in the early 1990s

i used to have a qsound box ( $30 k ) for a while but i did not work very well on the radio
i am sure you will find the madonna album is q sound and all the radio mixes were recalled and done without q sound after the vocal "dissapeared " on the radio
check out last months issue of AT there is a review of the dangerous music m/s widener its actually fairly cheap compared to the boxes we have but too exspensive for just mucking around
and of course beringer make or once made something called an "edison" which was an attempt ( unsucessful) to knock off the bendini

widening stuff is usually the last thing a mix really needs , i use it to match mixes to each other not so much to help a mix get wider if you know what i mean

[jefferson]

Thanks for the information JK and Rick.

A friend of mine has a Bedini as well but no manual and his use of the machine seemed to place things everywhere at random which seems useless to me. However Rick, given your high praise of the machine, it sounds like this could be a case of user error? I hear waht you are saying with regards to commercial use (radio) which pretty well coincides with the fact that I don't often hear such extreme use. On saying that, when I came across the Madonna album through some A/B activities, it certainly stood out and made us sit up and listen. Do you think I should borrow the Bedini as it is not being used and lives in a studio 5 minutes away from mine?

Regards

Jefferson

[rick]

the bendini device has some other issues which may be a problem , things i have had redesigned inside and modified so it works better in the pro world ( its a domestic unbalanced boxes dispite how it appears

but if you want to artifically widen your mixes its a great box
and if you want to wreck your mixes its great at that too !

[Peter Knight]

and of course beringer make or once made something called an "edison" which was an attempt ( unsucessful) to knock off the bendini

It was good enough for Dave Pensado though!

Hmmm.... so in your opinion plugins like the Waves ones don't cut it Rick?

[rick]

whats a plug in ?

[jkhuri44]

im not rick...but i've used the wave's stuff and taken it right off...

it sounds cool on some speakers...then really bad on headphones...and really crap in mono...despite what they claim...imo

some of them (Waves) do this thing where they widen or re pan certain frequencies...and it sounds weak as....

[jefferson]

Thanks for the info Rick. I don't think I will spend time at the moment but you know that feeling when you now know there is something that you can't do even if you wanted to?

Cheers

Jefferson

[heathen]

I don't like any of the widening plugins at all, they do usually wreck most things. I've found panning hard with stereo sounds and adding a mild chorus, flange or phaser can give that off the speaker type of effect on certain instruments in a mix. But always check these things in mono.


C'mon Rick you must have some plugins without actual real plugs and sockets.

Heath

[chris p]

Nah, Rick's just bein' modest.

"Plugin" is what you do when you want a store to stock your record or get it played on radio. People who do it are called "pluggers", right Rick?

(heh heh heh)

[rick]

i thought is was when i picked up a patch lead and plugged it into to my patch bay !
or when i strap on my 61 stratocaster and plug the lead in to the 59 bassman..

99.9 % of the time the only plug in we actually use in the mastering suites is the
apogee uv22 dither thing on sadie
the other .1 percent is the waves z noise denoiser on protools ( which is really good btw )

things may change and i certainly give things a try when i get them but what
we do here is " something that cannot be done at home "
so i dont see the point in going out of my way to use and charge for the same things that people
can get at home if you know what i mean
oh yeah i think we may have the only computer in the music industry without cracked plugins on it !

[Chris H]

oh yeah i think we may have the only computer in the music industry without cracked plugins on it !

I decided to leave cracked plugins behind when i went to OSX a few years ago..... so there is two of us Rick.....so do you have an old os9 machine around the shop somwere in a back cubboard with a few cracks still on it?.... You know , the legacy machine?

[Sheer Noise]

um... what's a crack?


:P

D

[rick]

no legacy cracks in our foyer !
well there are actually but it was the dodgy gyprock guys fault

[heathen]

I'm happy to say most of my plugins go through a patchbay too these days, there are a few nice plugin eq's but plugin compression just does not cut it 99% of the time for me.

Cracks? C'mon I'm suuuure no one on this forum uses those.