Looking for stereo widening tricks in the Mpc

Yo yo, so I’ve got the mpc one but this question can span the X, Live, and One. What are some tricks you use to create stereo widening for different sounds?

Was watching a video on mixing and saw someone use a trick in Avid. They delayed the sound on one side by 40 ms and added a low pass filter. Did quite a bit to spread it out. So I’m collecting ideas on how to spread sounds out like that on the mpc.

Use the AIR STEREO Width effect. Go to effects and look under Modulation.

The lower end the content is, traditionally the more centered (left and right equal) output you want it to be. There are a few reasons for this...
* Clubs frequently only have a mono channel... and depending on how they route L/R content it can lead to unwanted phase and noise cancelation
* The more low end, the less you hear the noise and the more you feel it
* This is how most sound engineers mix as well... so will sound more 'authentic' usually
* plus a ton of other stuff... and I'm sure plenty of counter points exist as well.

Depending on how much you are into recreation of a sound... think about how you see acoustic setups on stage and how that impacts/imparts stereo space. Think about how a mic tech will consider placing mics for a drum kit for instance, and then panning the field a bit. There's a ton of interesting info on mic placement, sound bleeding, eq'ing and all that fun stuff.

The delay trick can work well... but think about delay, filter gates, phase modulation... whatever effects you've got in your tool belt, and break away from them being stuck to the grid. Sometimes using your ear and letting the LFO/gates be sloppy can lead to some really dope sounds you just wouldn't have come up with otherwise.

I'd just say... play around a lot with wet/dry, different signal paths on left vs right... hard panning things and see how it changes how you think about your mix. Also... and I know this can be a pain to maintain later... but my motto is always record... you can throw away garbage later... but if you happen to get 4 seconds of something truly brilliant out of a 2 hour session... you'll know it when you hear it... just write down a time marker and go digging for it later. Seriously... digging for great samples isn't just for crate digging, and can absolutely be applied to your own material.

This is all golden! Thanks for the insight and suggestions. Gonna spend some hours playing in the sandbox sound

Subtle chorus effect and flanger on the very high frequencies (tempo synced) always help .But it depends on the material and I’d avoid them on the master channel . On master I’d add a reverb among others .
But whatever you do ,fall back to mono and check if any cancellation occur

SakisX wrote:On master I’d add a reverb among others .

No!

Definitely would not add reverb to the Master Channel, that's not a good place to put reverb. That would add an overall reverb to everything, that's not really a lot of control of sound/color. I mean, if anything I'd put a slight reverb on the main bus of a drum program, but even then I usually do it per pad.

As mentioned above the stereo width effect works really well for what I was curious about, that and a little panning here and there, some high or low pass filtering depending on what sound.

QuentinB wrote:Definitely would not add reverb to the Master Channel, that's not a good place to put reverb. That would add an overall reverb to everything, that's not really a lot of control of sound/color. I mean, if anything I'd put a slight reverb on the main bus of a drum program, but even then I usually do it per pad.

As mentioned above the stereo width effect works really well for what I was curious about, that and a little panning here and there, some high or low pass filtering depending on what sound.

Reverb works on the master bus, it helps put the entire song in the same room. The key is to EQ the lows out of the reverb, unless you want more mud.

Yeah that's partly what I'm thinking would be the issue there, so many frequencies could get mushed together. Which reverb plugin are you guys grabbing for when you apply reverb in general? There are quite a few. Sometimes I go for the Air reverb, sometimes I use the Small room reverb and just adjust accordingly.

My mastering template comes with the Air Stereo Width on Multi-band’s compressor mids & highs..Gives that controlled extra wideness nice & smoothly!Also i concur for the reverb on the master but it has to be very subtle by cutting unwanted frequencies as CharlesRandolph pointed correctly..It’s a trick for da playaz
For ultimate control just use the AIR Stereo Width on every sound if you’re after that precise placement..Simply place it at the end of your inserts FX..