Lately I've been experiencing with new mixing techniques. One of them was stereo imaging. At first I didn't think it would make much of a difference but hell I was wrong.

A good stereo imagine sure makes you mix sound bigger, larger, immense. It is the key to make your production sound like a story; to sound like its own universe.

Here are different way to do this:

Make a Haas effect.

This consist of creating a very short delay (5–30ms) between the left channel and the right channel. By doing so you make your brain believe the sound is coming from one direction since one of your ear hears the sound first. I recommend using a good delay plugin such as the Fabfilter Timeless delay plugin. It is an amazing sounding delay and also the most flexible one I've ever seen. Fabfilter is amazing at effect plugins. They all have their own little modular world hidden into them.

Anyway. Yes I’m a Fabfilter fanboy!

I recommend making a Haas effect from the left on one instrument and doing the opposite on another one. This amplify the quality of the result. Also try giving them a different millisecond value.

Use a stereo EQ

Using a stereo EQ such as Pro-Q can be very cool. You can put your EQ in a left/right mode and boost frequencies for the left channel and the right channel independently.

Simply pan

I never put a sound in mono anymore outside of the base of the kick, the bottom of a snare or the low end of the main baseline. Everything else will be panned even if it is only by a value of 1 or -1. At first it seems like nothing but when you will get back to your track a few weeks later (so your brain forget about most of the details) I assure you will hear the difference.

Record twice

Last but not least, record a sound twice. This is mainly use for guitars but you can do it for vocals, synths, everything. When you do it with a synth, try to change parameters differently between the left channel synth and the right channel synth.

Conclusion

Working with your stereo image will make a huge difference. It will also help the listener to put his attention on the right sounds. It will sound less noisy. It gives your mix some space to breath. It is much easier to apply spacey effects such as small reverbs and short delays. You get to be able to have a loud mix that stays crystal clean. You have less EQ job to do and the result will be sounds that are more natural with not much color (if that’s what you want).

I recommend mixing all these techniques altogether as it will amplify the resulting effect. It will also make the mixing easier. In the end there are only advantages! (As long as you don’t do this on lower frequencies! If so, check your phase!!!)

I've been using this a lot in our upcoming EP No Name Yet (April 2015) and will post it with detailed examples not only on the stereo imaging but on various aspects of the mix.

I hope this tip was helpful to you. This is the first of a serie on short and sweet mixing and mastering tips!

Thank you!

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