A neat little stereo widening trick

Here’s a little secret about how I do what I do: I love using stereo widening tools. They can make a mix sound expansive and immersive! I particularly like using them on pads and reverbs.

(Here's a good free basic stereo widener plugin.)

But stereo wideners can also cause unintended problems.

They can mess with mono compatibility — think bluetooth speakers.

And they can push sounds so far out to the side that they sound disproportionately loud on systems that have artificial stereo enhancement — think Macbook speakers and modern TVs.

A trick I've learned to help stereo widening tools avoid these problems is to do this nifty one-two combo move: 

1) Put a stereo widener on a channel, and set it extremely wide ...
2) … but then narrow the overall width of the channel! 

So for example, I might do a stereo width of 180%, but then I might set the channel pans at <50 50> (that's in Pro Tools, where <100 100> is fully wide). 

Now, you might think, "Wait. He's doing 180% stereo widening, but then making the overall width 50% ... so isn't that actually less wide? Like, 90%?" 

But no — the effect of extra width is still totally palpable when you do it this way. And it's also way more mono-compatible, and also largely outside the reach of the artificial stereo enhancers. A huge win/win/win!

Widely — jamie