How do you do what the izotope Imager does within reaper without 3rd party

i.e split frequencies that you want to affect

and then make it more stereo or mono for each section of frequencies

i guess thats what imager does right?

 

I think Izotope Imager is free, so why not use it? Just a thought

 

LOSER Stereo Enhancer can do some of what Imager can. There is one control for low-width and one for hi-width as well as crossover frequency.

If you need the multi-band functionality you can always use a JS band splitter and place one instance each of Stereo Enhancer on the separate bands. I would recommend to download Sai'ke BandSplitter since it has a linear-phase mode, the older 3- and 4-band splitters from LOSER that comes bundled with Reaper are not linear-phase.

Edit: Btw, I would recommend to download all of Sai'ke's plug-ins! They are incredible.

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2022

routing a bit complicated in my head. i never understood why 1/2 going to 1/2 is fine!

the others 3/4 to 1/2

and 5/6 to 1/2

i understand it creates a separate channel or something? it differentiates it from all going into same signal or something?


also why master send needs to be off on the folder track?


oh and last question....doesn't the width knob on each track can make everything mono and stereo? so no additional plugin needed? or is it different from stereo widener plugin?

 

It looks complicated, absolutely.

Pic 1, Plug-in pin connector:
1, 2 are the plugin's input left and right. When you only have stereo file, you only have 1 and 2 = left and right.
On its right side are the plugin's outputs. We want left and right (the stereo signal) to go to all six outputs of this plugin, the splitter.

Now the splitter splits this signal into three different stereo bands:

1. below Crossover 1 (output 1/2),
2. between Crossover 1 and 2 (output 3/4),
3. above Crossover 3 (output 5/6)

Pic 3:
At the top, Master send unchecked because we don't want the unsplitted signal to be heard.
Send to track:

1. 1/2->1/2 means the output 1/2 of the plugin, so below Crossover 1, (because we're doing a Post-Fader (Post-Pan) and thus a post-FX send) are routed to the inputs 1/2 of track 2 "Low". Track 2 is just stereo, so it needs only 1/2 for input.
2. 3/4->1/2 means the ouput 3/4 of the plugin, so between Crossover 1 and 2, are routed to the inputs 1/2 of track 3 "Mid"
3. 5/6->1/2 means the output 5/6 of the plugin, so above Crossover 2, are routed to the inputs 1/2 of track 4 "High"

IOW, the stereo source is fed into the splitter. The splitter splits it into three freq limited stereo signals and these stereo signals are send to the three additional tracks to await further treatment.

 

Routing:
You have a source track and audio (and/or midi) channels, and a destination track and audio (and/or midi) channels.

In the routing window, at the top, it will say the source of your routing (ex. "Routing for track 1"). Underneath "add new send" it will list all the routings you've set up. In each of them, it will tell you the track it's going to (ex. "Send to track 2"). Re: the channels below that, the first set is the source's channels (what channels you're outputting from on your source track), the second set is the destination's channels (what channels you're inputting into on your destination track).

Routing can get pretty complicated, but the simplified reason why the second set is just 1/2 in the example @No Avenger gave is because it's just being fed into a brand new track with no special processing happening on that track before your routed signal comes in. So, any plugins dropped on that track will automatically process your routed signal, as long as their input is set to 1/2 (this is default).

 

Mono, yes but you can't widen it this way.

 

widen once again means raising the sides more than the mids? as discussed in another post?

thanks!

 

Somewhat. You can make a stereo track sound wider by increasing the difference between sides and mid, but a mono track only has a mid channel (no sides) so you can't do this to a mono track. You can create a fake stereo sound from a mono track with different methods like using the Haas effect for example.

You can also make a stereo track even wider than it really is by sending phase inverted copies of the two sides to the opposite side and blend them in. This is what most regular widening plug-ins does. It can sound good in stereo, but you have to be careful when using plug-ins like these as they can hurt mono compatibility (making the mix sound awful when played through phone speakers etc).

 

In addition to three-band split.
If you work with stereo material and your only goal is to shape its stereo spread, Mid-Side EQ might be a better solution. You boost the Side channel where you want your track to be wider and attenuate or even outright cut the Side where you want it to be narrower. This makes no difference to a mono sound however, since there's effectively no Side channel there. You would first want to use a separate stereoizer plugin on it. Or pan it and use Mid-Side EQ on its bus.

1) The free version of iZotope Imager doesn't have separate controls for bands.
2) OP wants to understand and getting in a way of this is nothing short of a crime. Just a thought.

 

yes its ok it just helps me understand better the overall things!!! usually 3rd party plugins help me understand how to do things but usually most things are in the daw but it depends on the moment and experience after that i guess