Hibr
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I want my mixes to sound wider. I would like to know what elements would benefit from being made wider and what techniques you use to do this. I would also like to know what people have as the widest elements of the mix all the way to the narrowest.br
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Hope you can help.
I’m wondering the exact same thing too. I checked out the mixing tutorial but still can’t seem to get my stuff to sound wide. br
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Specifically, I’m struggling with trying to get my main synth to sound wide and "wall of sound"ish while still keeping the sound focused.
It all depends, but dead center I have the kick and bassline. Especially the bottom end of the bass. br
If the bassline is the hook of the track, you can have the higher frequencies of the bassline wider. Easily done by pingpong delay for instance. Send it over to a return that picks up frequencies above 500Hz.br
Snares and claps are often a tiny bit off center. Especially the claps are in my case.br
I play around with hats and sort and create room with them. Closed ones to the right and open ones to the left. br
Synths and pads are often dialed away from the center. Sometimes by duplicating the tracks and panning one left and the other right. This helps with vocals as well.br
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But there are no strict rules to the game. Apart from the low end of course 
Ping ponging a return track is something completely new. I’ll play around with it now :Dbr
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Thanks dude!
Anything bellow 100hz should be mono, people can’t judge stereo information that low. Then as you go higher in frequencies peoples stereo awareness increases up until ~10Khz where it drops quite sharply. br
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Try to follow that trend. So subs/kicks mono, mid basses can be slightly wider if you like, pads/leads can be completely spread around everywhere (especially towards the 3Khz region) and some high percussion, like claps (altho snares are usually mono), can be spread out more. You can spread the cymbals, because the lower freq people can sense, but don’t count on these freq to make your mix sound wide.br
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In terms of making things sound wide, with synths you can obviously detune/unison the oscillators, but I would recommend layering it with a mono synth so if the mix is collapsed to mono there is still a lead element present. You can use delay tricks - like a simple delay with delaying one side by a few milliseconds, altho this can lead to problems again if the track is collapsed to mono. There are a few clever plugs from Waves (S1), PSP (Pseudo Stereo), and other companies which create fake stereo effects by panning different freq’s left and right - this creates a stereo image that is quite stable when it’s collapsed to mono.br
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But to make something sound wide focus on making the 1-8Khz region wide, that’s where people’s ears are most sensitive, and will best perceive stereo effects.