Stereo Widening/Enhancement (Mastering) - help!

[miszt]

Been playing around with Stereo analyzers, and realized that my tracks are very central, most of the time i get a fairly thin line straight down Centre. This suprised me, because I can feel the stereo field bouncing around and I'm quite careful about stereo placement and FX to try and give a nice stereo field, so anyway, when i use Stereo enhancements of various kinds, the stereo field opens up massivly, the diffrence is quite spectacular really, obviously i need to work on this! but I'm getting allot of strange phasing going on when i apply any kind of enhancement, right thru the spectrum, espcially noticible in the mid-range, any suggestions on how i can improve the stereo field without screwing up the phasing? (I'm currently using the PSP stereo pack, happy to change to something else tho)

thanks!

 

[logikz]

i hear brainworx is the ultimate in stereo plugs right now, but i seem to recall you having different hihat kits on left and right and stuff like that on your tracks, thats pretty clever use of panning

 

[miszt]

i hear brainworx is the ultimate in stereo plugs right now, but i seem to recall you having different hihat kits on left and right and stuff like that on your tracks, thats pretty clever use of panning

this is why i'm confused tbh, I do pay allot of attention to the stereo field, but since playing with these things, I realize just how central things actually are

for eg...listen how much this opens up...and its still pretty central

http://soundcloud.com/5meo/quickstereoenhancementtest/s-rL8Pu (private track)

the first 12 seconds are just my normal mixdown, with a little bit of compression/color/limiting

the 2nd 12 seconds is using a combination of parallel Side-Mid EQ's and a tiny bit of Stereo Enhancment....boom! but still not giving me a nice round stereo field in the analyzer, now i know I shouldnt use graphics as a refrence, but when I run my favorite tracks thru the analyzer, they give a nice round image, so somethings not right, although i can hear that sumthings not right anyway lol

heres my tracks stereo analysis...

and Noisia & Phace....

obviously very diffrent styles, but most of my favorite tracks give this kind of analysis (except Break, strangly, straight down the middle, less stereo than mine)

i'll check out brainworx!

 

[Riisu]

Just a point which I'm sure you've considered but worth mentioning anyway - are you comparing them at relative volume? Your tracks and the commerical tunes? When I've used logics multimeter to analyse stuff in the past, the more you push stuff into the bigger the 'picture' becomes. Which sorta goes without saying, but it can fool you into think your tracks aren't as big as some stuff that's been released.

Widening by (definition, almost - to me anyway) is pushing things slightly out of phase. It's how you achieve that width, pushing something a few samples behind will give the impression of bigger sound. This is what most stereo enchancment and doubling tools do really. So you'd come to expect it.

I think generally, as long as yoru mono elements (sub, kick, snare) are not being pushed out then you shouldn't worry about anything that drasticly. Even some phasing on the snare can be nice if it's intentional and doesn't detract from the power, if that's what you want.

Just check the mono compatability after you've widened to make sure you're not loosing too much from the track and you should be cool.

And yeah, Breaks tunes are pretty much down the line. Hence why they're so much more powerful than a lot of stuff out there (for me). Check out the tune he did with spectrasoul - martyr.
It's basically all mono apart from a little verb/spread on the hats at some points, that twisted synth that opens up + the vocal sample. Learnt a lot from analysing that tune.

+ brainworz is the shizzle. Mind bending at first but a powerful tool.
Matthew lane drMS is good too for certain elements.
And Waves Center.
the last 2 maybe not on a whole mix but defo good for some things.

 

[miszt]

thanks for the suggestions Riisu! yeah i had taken into account the diffrences, and tried quite a few diffrent tracks and levels, i think i'm expecting to much from myself considering i've only been playing with mastering concepts for a little while lol more practise needed!

 

[logikz]

the new mini mix kills the last one, you really come a long way since the last one. rocking tunes but could it be, and this is just a suggestion im pulling out my arse here, that you should try and do something with the sound that makes it truly distinctive, like glitch up a hammond or whatever