Reply To: Widener

[Magnus JohanssonParticipant]

I´m no masterer, I´m just a dedicated hobbyist mixer throwing in my thoughts.

1: Don´t know but if a mix needs widening or narrowing and the ME has a tool to adress it, I´m pretty sure he will do it. He corrects eq and dynamics so why not wideness. I do think he is more limited to what to achieve/correct and if mix has a real wide problem it´s better adressed earlier in the chain. But so is final eq and dynamics.

2: I´m all for it. Do whatever you want on your mixbus. Seems like a popular mix workflow that after setting initial levels to start with the mixbus and work your way up. In that workflow, at what point does the 2bus processing intrude masterland? My mixbus pretty much is my "mastering" chain (minus the last limiter). Sure I get it that it can be great to have a second pair of ears as a final quality assurance, but that´s probably not going to happen with my cheap projects. I don´t mind tweaking wideness during final referencing as a quick fix. Sometimes it´s enough and it doesn´t destroy anything. Sometimes I rather go back and fix it in the mix. For stereobus widening I only use mid/side as it´s a natural part of the stereo source.

Some additional blabbering: mid/side alone wont get you very far in widening a mono source. It wont get you anywhere 🙂 So to widening mono sources I recently has turned into the bx_stereomaker wich I think works over expectations every time. I don´t think it´s any magic to it. You can probably achieve the same results with a mid/side matrix, a short delay and some filters. I don´t think it will do well on the masterbus. Mainly because the first thing it does is monoing the source, then it adds it´s widening trick. So any panning you have made is out the window.

3: For the stereobus, FabFilter ProQ2 in mid/side mode. Monosources, bx_stereomaker, MicroShift, ReelADT

I think this vid is pretty good... and short. https://youtu.be/ESVRCT28d5o

Lastly, I´m no pro and I´m happy to be corrected/educated.