cross delay, Aux tricks, Phase, Stereo Image Enchancement

[seti808]

I was hoping everyone could share some delay & stereo enchancement tricks.

Does anyone use any phase tricks to make really wide cool sounding delay
or to tweak out the stereo image on a track or the whole mix for a effect here and there?

What hardware or plugin delays are really good?

I watched a video at http://www.sawstudio.com/LiveVideoPromo.htm

BAND SESSION PART II - CREATING THE BASIC MIX (right around after 6 mins)
shows a basic cross delay

What other tricks are there?

 

[Will Lamb]

Stereo widening

I don't usually use plug-ins per se to achieve this. The problem with using phase in particular is that you usually lose mono compatibility. What works with the acoustic stuff music I usually do is to double track a guitar part, say, and pan them moderately hard left and right. Occasionally, when I've only had one part and wanted to do this sort of thing, I've duplicated a part (again, say, guitar) and then offset it from the original about 3-5 ms. If you think that 1 ms delay = about a foot of distance from a sound source (sound travels at about a foot per ms), then you can move parts closer or further apart from one another keeping in mind spatial relationships.

Two other ways: 1) eq similar parts differently; 2) try compression, which tends to effect stereo image by making things seem 'bigger' and more present.

When you use a stereo widener plug-in, what you're essentially doing is increasing the difference between your right and left channels, but your centre image often suffers as a result. You can try things like Isotope's Ozone mastering plug-in, which comes with some nice toys in this department, but eq, compression and panning often give you better, more transparent results.

Hope some of that is useful--

 

[unconscious sound]

Try loading up the Fairchild with Lat Vert mode enabled. Apply different compression settings to the left and right channel, with the linked modes disabled. You can get some really interesting stereo effects going when you play around with these settings.

Oh, make sure to tweak the DC Bias controls, too. They look small on the screen, but they drastically change the character of the sound!