‘Stereoising’ synths
Many synthesisers have dedicated widening features, oscillator ‘width’, unison spread and other onboard stereo effects. It’s clear these effects are designed to sound impressive when cranked, but this often comes at the expense of mono compatibility, making these exaggerated sounds difficult to slot in a mix effectively. When summed to mono, they’ll often exhibit excessive phase cancellation, meaning the entire sound can drop in level (or disappear completely) when your track is played back through a mono playback system such as those clubs, mono radios, phones and other important devices. So at the very least, you’ll want your core synth elements such as leads and bass to have a strong central presence in the mix.
One way to avoid your key synth sounds disappearing in mono is to begin with a synth sound that’s already placed firmly in the centre of your mix before adding additional width using considered plugin processing – either delicately over the original signal with insert effects, or in parallel on a separate channel.
This way, you can dial in the exact amount of width required, safe in the knowledge that your fundamental sound will remain solid and sturdy within the mono part of your track.
Throughout the following tutorial, we’re going to explore a handful of ways you can widen narrow synth sounds using the plugins provided with this magazine. One thing to note: there’s nothing more disheartening than getting three quarters of the way through a track, only to find your mix balance sounds completely off when summed to mono, so be sure to use a mono-summing plugin on your master channel at all stages of the production process, to check the relative levels of your parts when the mix is collapsed like this. While our Plugins collection doesn’t feature such a plugin (yet!), Alex Hilton’s A1 StereoControl is a great free option for both PC and Mac users – get it from alexhilton.net.