mono to stereo

I could go to the Gearslutz with this one but I like this place much better...and it seems like a good subject for this fresh new department…

I’m recently given some recordings to mix where there’s only one overhead. (a Coles ribbon)
I’d really like to spread the drums a bit tough.
So far I found these ways to spread a mono signal:
- Pitching a double of this signal and panning this. This will obviously result in a sort of chorusing sound.
- delay a double of this signal and panning this. The signal seems to come more from the non-delayed channel tough, and not very mono-compatible .
- put a double of the signal out of phase and pan. This often sound very cool on things like synths but is obviously very non-mono-compatible.
- some sort of stereospreader where different frequencies are boosted left or right). I use this one the most for drums.

Anyone has some other tricks?
very short room or ambiance reverbs…
I’m using Logic Pro FWIW.

Pump the signal out through amp & speakers into a real space - record again in stereo, or in mono, twice, moving the mic and fiddling with the amp settings between takes.

  . . . and if you haven't a decent space to do wot zebra50 sed, use a convoluting reverb. Logic's one can be very good. select a studio live room.

 
          . .. or just mix the drums in mono. I often do!

nothing wrong with mono drums... but yeah I suggest re amping the drums into a live space or some mimicked live space like found on a convolution reverb. I would even go as far as to say altiverb either the chello studios or westlake studio D.

I fourth the above suggestions.  Most of the DAW "Stereoizer" plugs are complete horsesh*t".  Take the mono OH and use a real room or reverb plug to give it some space.  Don't worry about making it wider than the grand canyon, focus on the groove, the tone and how it meshes with the rest of the band.

If the material suits consider using some compression to make the sound pop a little and bring out some room tone.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Ruairi

There are two ways commonly used to synthesize stereo from a mono signal.  First one is add a delayed version of the signal back to the dry 1:1, for one side, and subtract the delayed from the dry for the other side. This will create two comb filter responses with the peaks and notches offset in the two sides. When listened to in stereo there is a sense of separation with sounds favoring one side or the other based on their frequency and which side is boosting or cutting that frequency. The amount of delay will define how low the frequency of the first peak/dip is.

A less expensive hardware variant, is to use a phase shift circuit instead of time delay. This will give a similar effect but with only one peak and one notch, for 180' of phase shift.

Both of these effects cancel when summed to mono, so are mono compatible, if that matters.

JR

pucho812 said:

nothing wrong with mono drums... but yeah I suggest re amping the drums into a live space or some mimicked live space like found on a convolution reverb. I would even go as far as to say altiverb either the chello studios or westlake studio D.

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According to my knowledge practically all sources signals are single channel (mono), except for those that come in stereo like a synth e.g.. Overheads are moste of the time recorded through 2 mikes. Creating depth in the stereo field is done by layering sounds, panning, reverb, chorus and delay. Send all the drums through the same FX and keep it simple. Stereo sizing plugins are only usefull at the en on a bus or total mix.

Since the plugin subject was started.... anyone have recommendations for cheap (read freeware if possible), vst plugins for reverb. I have some of the cheaper ones, and i have tried lots of free ones and find that most of them suck.

Mac

mac said:

Since the plugin subject was started.... anyone have recommendations for cheap (read freeware if possible), vst plugins for reverb. I have some of the cheaper ones, and i have tried lots of free ones and find that most of them suck.

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There are a few

• Lexicon Native Bundle
• Wizoo W5
• IK Multimedia CSR
• Sonic Flavours R66
• ArtsAcoustic Reverb

If you own a UAD or Powercore card there are more options. Check the 250 plate emulation for UAD or the VSS verb for powercore. Real mindblowing

Stereo touch by voxengo is pretty useful sometimes...free too

If you are lucky enough to know someone who owns Weiss gear, one of the units has the "K factor thingy" (don't remember which unit or the exact name of the setting) that will do an amazing work at extracting reflections from your mono signal and spreading them in stereo.
It's by far the best thing i've tried to do that.

I can't afford that so I usually use a room simulation reverb, mix it in the overheads and compress both together, it does the trick.

strangeandbouncy said:

  . . . and if you haven't a decent space to do wot zebra50 sed, use a convoluting reverb. Logic's one can be very good. select a studio live room.

 
         . .. or just mix the drums in mono. I often do!

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I was going to suggest something simmilar.
2 copies of the mono signal panned hard left and hard right, 2 "slightly" different reverb settings (on inserts), 1 on each channel.
Perhaps try some other effects or even eq, but again very slight changes is the key here as you dont want the 2 channels to sound too different.
then perhaps send the 2 signals down a stereo geoup with a leslie type effect on a very slight depth setting but a quick speed, this varying panning levels will certainly add to the psuedo stero effect.

EQ can really make a difference to differentiate the copied signal. Changing the gain and different placement in the panorama can also work pretty good. These simple techniques are often better before turning to other plug-ins. Also widening is nice, but too much will thin and kill the mix in mono, which is still a big thing these days believe it or not.

Sorry about dredging up an old topic, but I received these question off list.  I am not a personal answer man, so if a question is worth asking it is worth sharing with the list.

Please elaborate what you mean by "add a delayed version of the signal back to the dry 1:1, for one side, and subtract the delayed from the dry for the other side." This is very hard for me to understand, I hope you can put it in an easy to understand paragraph for me! thank you so much!

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I don't know how to state this much simpler. Add a delayed version of the original to the original to make one stereo side, subtract the delayed version from the original to make the other stereo side.

also, what is a phase shift circuit?

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A circuit that changes the phase relationship from into to output while not changing the amplitude. These are generally called all-pass filters, and there are multiple implementations.

JR

@JohnRoberts

Thanks for the reply John! this is what I tried:
1) Created a send of the original mono sound to another track
2) put mono delay of a few milliseconds (100% wet) to this send track
3) outputted both the original track & the send track, with the delay on it, to another track to group the two together (original + delayed) and panned it hard right
4) created another send of the original mono sound to another track panned hard left
5) created a send of the (delayed) track to another track, inverted the phase, then outputted it to the track that has the original sound that is panned hard left

It didn't seem to destroy the image when played in mono, but the result in stereo sounded awful, did I do something wrong?

mac said:

Since the plugin subject was started.... anyone have recommendations for cheap (read freeware if possible), vst plugins for reverb. I have some of the cheaper ones, and i have tried lots of free ones and find that most of them suck.

Mac

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Used this for awhile before I started using Reverence in Cubase5
http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html

This place has some good sounding stuff for impulses
http://www.samplicity.com/

-Casey

jditmer0 said:

@JohnRoberts

Thanks for the reply John! this is what I tried:
1) Created a send of the original mono sound to another track
2) put mono delay of a few milliseconds (100% wet) to this send track
3) outputted both the original track & the send track, with the delay on it, to another track to group the two together (original + delayed) and panned it hard right
4) created another send of the original mono sound to another track panned hard left
5) created a send of the (delayed) track to another track, inverted the phase, then outputted it to the track that has the original sound that is panned hard left

It didn't seem to destroy the image when played in mono, but the result in stereo sounded awful, did I do something wrong?

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When you recombine to mono, the delayed tracks should be opposite polarity and cancel out, so that much appears right.

What do you mean sounds awful? How many mSec delay? I would start with 1-3 mSec (which are combs spaced from 330Hz to 1kHz apart).  Too long of a delay will smear transient content.

JR

@JohnRoberts

ok well if you doubled a mono track, delayed one of them by 1-3 milliseconds, and kept them both panned in the center, it sounds awful. This is why it is so bad to convert a mono sound into stereo by duplicating, delaying one, and panning hard left and right, because once converted to mono, the tracks will overlap with a bad sound in the center due to the slight delay. What your saying is to duplicate, delay one, and instead of keeping the bad sound in the middle, pan it to the right. Panning to the right will just move this bad sound to the right channel. Do you know what I mean? unless i'm doing something wrong

I'm interested in trying the "phase shift circuit". Is there a plugin that can do this? What would the output/send configuration look like when attempting something like this?

-John

Before you waste any more time, none of these stereo synthesis effects will sound as good as real stereo.

Chorus/ADT routinely use delays even longer than 3 mSec and are musically useful. On the order of one mSec you are not going to hear the delay as a delay, but you will hear the alternate peaks and dips in frequency response from the comb filtering. When both versions with alternating comb filters are listened to, you get the full frequency response once again. 

No, I am not aware of any plug-ins, but why make a phase shift plug-in if you just make a stereo synthesis plug-in?

JR

Why not good old reverb?