Stereo enhancers on guitars?

[Exiterrr]

Could someone point me in a good direction for a guide or rough idea on widening guitars? Or using wideners in general?

edit: Also do i really need to go wider when panned 100% left and right?

 

[atoragon]

no. the farther the guitars, the more the probability to lose them in some device. for example ryan bruce suggested to pan them 95% left and 95% right maximum, because if you pan them 100% sometimes the car stereo will reproduce them too far and you won't hear them perfectly. Many metal bands pan them 80% left and 80% right.

 

[Quitty]

As with most everything in audio, it's a matter of taste.

Exivious' 'Liminal' is very wide. The guitars start losing a bit of body, which isn't too bad because they are fairly mid-rangey and don't have to dig into the lower mids too much. It is, however, a huge-sounding production.

Dillinger Escape Plan's 'Ire Works' and 'Option Paralysis' are fairly narrow - i'd guess 70% or so, but it's hard to tell. Not as huge-sounding, but more punch and a great wall of sound.

It all depends on what you want your production to sound like. Your drums, vocals and bass will have to be adjusted accordingly. How Dillinger got the vocals to sound as clear on this album, i'll probably never know but i'm guessing it wasn't easy.
Proper mastering is required for anything above 100% to make it compatible with less than optimal playback devices, as atoragon said. If you don't know what you're doing, i wouldn't do it.

Bear in mind drums play a big role in how big your guitars sound.
Try limiting your drums to 80% pan while your guitars are at 100%, for example.

 

[NickLAudio]

Well you can't really go wider than 100% L or R. You can however create a frequency effect that fools your brain into thinking it's wider than 100% which is exactly what stereo wideners do.



In this video, he takes a unique approach where he widens only the "meat" frequencies of the guitar.

He uses 1 plugin to do this, but if you created a bus, sent your guitar tracks to it with a narrow band pass filter and a stereo widener at the end, you'll get the same effect mixing it in subtly.

 

[CircuitalPlacidity]

Nick, would you mind posting me the link to that video cause I can't see it on my phone. Thanks in advance, much appreciated.

 

[NickLAudio]

Here you go... How To Widen Guitars - Into The Lair #99 - YouTube

 

[noUser01]

My advice would be not to bother widening them using "widening tools". They just mess up your mix and can sometimes have an undesirable impact on your guitar tone. Here's what I would recommend:

High end in your guitar tone helps create an impression of width. Don't overdo it but it does help to have a bit of presence in there. Also, pan your guitars 95%, not 100% left and right. It sounds weird, but if you've got your cymbals or toms panned hard L/R (which most people do) then you'll really let your cymbals and reverbs take up that hard L/R space and help create a sense of depth and width in the ENTIRE mix. If you want to get your guitars out of the middle still, try some mid/side processing to clear some room up the middle of the mix. This also has the effect of making guitars seem wider.

But really, I've never had a problem with my guitars sounding wide (though I have MANY other production problems ) and it's because you just need to dial your tones in right and make sure the mix itself is wide, not just the guitars. Compare your mixes to other mixes and you'll see what I mean. Some records it's clear there has been some mid/side processing, others you can tell it's just the tone itself.

I dunno, just experiment man. But trust me when I say you're better off not using any stereo widening tools, instead focus on finding out why guitars SEEM so much wider on professional albums.

 

[NickLAudio]

^+1

If you're double tracking and panning, there should be no problem getting huge wide guitars with a little mixing and EQ. Only thing i've ever used widening tools on are backup vocals and that occasional single mono guitar track that needs a little extra something.

 

[123321123]

I often use stereo wideners on my guitarbus. Mono only matters for clubs etc and can be mitigated with a center guitar track.

 

[Drew]

I often use stereo wideners on my guitarbus. Mono only matters for clubs etc and can be mitigated with a center guitar track.

I never use stereo wideners on my guitar bus. They shouldn't be necessary, and while I don't mix to have mixes collapsed to mono, phase issues can manifest themselves even on stereo playback.

If you have double-tracked (or otherwise multi-tracked, if you want more than two) guitars where each side is a unique, well-performed take, and you have slightly different tones on either side, then a 100% L-R mix ought to sound plenty wide on its own.

 

[shnizzle]

the problem with panning 100% and not using a widener is, when you only have the right or left guitar doing something in some section (be it an intro or interlude), it can sound really weird when there´s no guitar at all going on on the other side.
i usually use a very subtle widener in the mastering stage to give the whole mix and therefor the guitars a touch more balls.
but if you overdo it, it will sound weird. you really have to be subtle with those things.
on top of that i use a very subtle and short reverb in the master to give it that bit more space.

 

[WhiteWalls]

the problem with panning 100% and not using a widener is, when you only have the right or left guitar doing something in some section (be it an intro or interlude), it can sound really weird when there´s no guitar at all going on on the other side.
i usually use a very subtle widener in the mastering stage to give the whole mix and therefor the guitars a touch more balls.
but if you overdo it, it will sound weird. you really have to be subtle with those things.
on top of that i use a very subtle and short reverb in the master to give it that bit more space.

Luckily we have automation
In my opinion there's no point "ruining" the normal guitar spectrum just to accomodate very small sections in specific spots, so I like simply using the regular 100/100 and making it something like 70 when there's only one guitar playing, or using some slight stereo reverb.

 

[123321123]

I never use stereo wideners on my guitar bus. They shouldn't be necessary, and while I don't mix to have mixes collapsed to mono, phase issues can manifest themselves even on stereo playback.

If you have double-tracked (or otherwise multi-tracked, if you want more than two) guitars where each side is a unique, well-performed take, and you have slightly different tones on either side, then a 100% L-R mix ought to sound plenty wide on its own.

Well that's entirely subjective but a ton of quality engineers use widening. Whether on the guitarbus or the masterbus it doesn't really matter, the only difference is the level of control, and you bet mastering engineers use it.

 

[d00by]

Ive found what works best for me is dual tracking, panning 100 percent left and right (make sure your performance is spot on) and using a stereo width enhance on the main mix. But everyone has a specific taste, and depending on a lot of factors its going to be different for everyone.

 

[Jax_X]

I used stereo imagers on guitars in the past, because I wanted to make them kind of mega ultra wide. Only thing is, while it sounded great on my speakers in my setup, the guitars were completely gone in a mono listening situation. That's why I intend to not use stereo imagers on guitars anymore.

Below you can listen to a version with imaging (the second link), and without (first link). In terms of mono compatibility even in the first version it's still not where I ideally like it to be, but much better definitely.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9222hvs25sdrw80/Storms of Aeolus - Energy.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k2h98tp8fwmqv8n/Storms of Aeolus - Energy_old.wav?dl=0

 

[Drew]

Well that's entirely subjective but a ton of quality engineers use widening. Whether on the guitarbus or the masterbus it doesn't really matter, the only difference is the level of control, and you bet mastering engineers use it.

...so leave it to the mastering engineers. If your guitars don't sound "wide" when panned L/R 100%, then there's probably something else wrong with your mix, and using a stereo widener rather than fixing that is both missing the underlying problem (most likely inarticulate, oversaturated guitars or guitars that sound too similar on either channel), and since stereo expanders do some weird shit with phase to get their effect, will likely create some REALLY funky problems when your ME then goes and applies one to the finished mix.

It's a shortcut to make your guitars wider, rather than an actual fix, and shortcuts are considered "shortcuts" for a reason - because they're a band-aid, a quick patch rather than taking the time to do it right.

 

[JohnIce]

As Drew touches on in his posts, recording left and right guitars with separate sounds is a really good thing if you're going for width. Having spent 3 months dialing in "your sound" might make you feel like that's what you want to use for everything, but having variations of it in the left vs. right makes a bigger difference than any stereo imager probably would.

That said, stereo imaging exists for a reason. If you can get it to work, use it. I was pretty floored when I heard the extreme stereo width of Nicki Minaj's "Superbass" and what do you know, the synths were stereo widened to all hell This was described in an episode of Pensado's Place, by the mixer himself. So by all means, don't be afraid to use the tools you have.

 

[Drew]

As Drew touches on in his posts, recording left and right guitars with separate sounds is a really good thing if you're going for width. Having spent 3 months dialing in "your sound" might make you feel like that's what you want to use for everything, but having variations of it in the left vs. right makes a bigger difference than any stereo imager probably would.

That said, stereo imaging exists for a reason. If you can get it to work, use it. I was pretty floored when I heard the extreme stereo width of Nicki Minaj's "Superbass" and what do you know, the synths were stereo widened to all hell This was described in an episode of Pensado's Place, by the mixer himself. So by all means, don't be afraid to use the tools you have.

Though, for further clarification...

• If you're going to use a stereo widener on a project you plan on releasing, first talk with your mastering engineer and potentially send him a test file to make sure that nothing you're doing is going to cause problems with the master. Alternately, consider preparing two mixes, with and without widening, and send both so the ME has some flexibility.
• Do everything you can conventionally to get the width your after before reaching for the widener. It will give you a better mix, and you may find you don't need it.
• If everything is artificially wide... nothing is artificially wide. Remember that this is an effect first and foremost, and like most effects loses its impact when used constantly.

I still wouldn't do it except as a last resort.