Good day community,

something that always confuses me is how to mix drums and percussion really wiide without any artifacts, like the percussion/clap in this track:



any tips and techniques? using soundtoys microshift/ multing, hardpanning and pitching both channels in opposite direction gets me far, but often it sounds like chorus/ a small room without being really wide like in the example.
what plugins do you use to stereoize/correct stereo width, if at all?

 

sounds like the stereo is haas'd to me. mono signal then l/r haas with slight pitch difference in l/r.

 

Make the sound denser with a short reverb. Very short, small % insert reverb. Then a compressor just to blend in that reverb with the sound, nothing aggressive.
Then send that sound to a return track, with a MSED on it (with Mid muted) and blend in with the original only the side - probably you'll have to boost +6 dB to get it noticeable.
If you need extra width, send the same original sound to a different return track, use the same MSED and add a stereo spreader after and spread even wider and again blend in.
This technique will ensure that in mono your clap is still present.

 

@jayxflash

About the use of compressor to blend in that reverb with the sound... ratio 2:1 or 1.5:1 (medium attack/release) is good enough?

 

Usually you'll want to bring up the tail just a tiny bit... so that "medium" attack must be tailored exactly according to the initial transient length of your sample. The release will give you the tail, naturally. I find myself often going up to 10:1 ratio, with -1 to -2 dB of GR, or going with higher GR (-4 to -6 dB) and blending in the compressor in parallel mode (using a clean insert compressor with a Dry/Wet mix option).
Also, I am doing dance music, so "gentle" and "medium" and "subtle" have different meanings compared to other genres

 

Some ideas to explore here:

 

You don't need any plugins. Let's say you want to make your snare wider. Duplicate it's track, pan them both in the opposite direction (depending on how wide you want your snare to sound), something like 30L and 30R. Then move the duplicated track 0.20 ms forward, or add the first snare track -0.10 ms and the second track +0.10 ms. It'll widen your track but won't screw up the attack like a reverb would.

 

Reverb can go a long way too. Mid side eq can't hurt either. Ping pong delay set to a couple ms. Similar layers panned opposite.
Just a couple ideas.

 

Ditto with what's been said here. One tidbit to add: keep your haas to a 12ms difference between the channels to retain good mono compatibility. Other than that, good advice here.

 

u can copy the clap track twice and pan the copied tracks left and right with a little bit of delay (very short, for example 5 ms and -5 ms)

there are a bunch of "stereo-maker-tools" out there. NuGen is very good.

 

That is The Haas effect, which "pans" the sound in a HRTF way (one source hits the ear before the other). When summed the sound will have a comb filtering because of the phase offset. Just a heads up.

What you can do is take two similar claps, layer them and counter pan them. Then add/send/aux a short reverb.

You can even add a 3rd clap/claps and send that to a short reverb, all wet and take it back, so that the reverb tail is from a different harmonic/colored/timed clap. This can make the overall/summed "clap sound" seem much more spatial.

You can also just add some stereo chorus if you want width/spatialness.

 

Similar to some suggestions here: use a sample delay with l/r channels, such as the one included in Logic Pro, with maybe short-duration gated reverb added. It makes a snare sound great. I use often the Sample Delay on rhythm guitar. The only drawback to watch for is the left and right channels' being out-of-phase, though sometimes when that occurs, it contributes to the "spatial" effect.

 

Here's my secret, double your high end percussion and pan one far left and the other far right, then off set them in time and it gives you a really good effect! I like it better than using stereo personally. The haas effect..... (oh...it looks like some have already suggested this)

UPDATE: Also, when I have one panned right and the other panned left. I always have on HH down pitched a notch, or up pitched or I use a completely different HH. I also have one volume level higher than the other, that way you have a distinct stereo effect. After that, all you really need is about 3 ms difference and you are gold! Also, you wanna try BX Shed Spread. That thing really kicks butt!

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2016

Eventide H3000 Microshift on a parallel bus... Bring up to taste.

 

• 2 different clap samples
• 2 different start timing (milliseconds)
• left-right panning at taste, preferible over +-40
• slapback delay fast-medium
• spring reverb parallel mixed at taste

 

some very interesting strategies being suggested here. thank you all!

 

careful of going out of phase when doing this

 

It never happened to me, I always use this technique.

There's also a lot of neat tricks to achieve stereo widening using Live's plugins (for anyone using this DAW)

 

Ehm I just realized I was mistaken about the values, it's not 0.10 ms/0.20 ms, it's 10.00 ms and 20.00 ms.

 

Another small trick I'll use with drums (occasionally) to make them stand out is:-

Do the usual, separate to individual tracks and EQ to taste, and group them back together. I'll then add a saturator with a +5db and adjust wet dry to taste