As I’ve mentioned in prior tips, the Utility device can be used to remove all of the mono information from a signal so you can hear the purely stereo information. Just set Width to 200%:
Something I like to do is listen to my reference tracks at 200% just to get a sense of how “wide” they are, or more specifically how much panning and stereo effects are in the mix for a particular track.
Just like it’s important to contrast sounds that are bright and dark, etc. it’s also important to know how to contrast pure mono sounds with panned sounds and sounds that use stereo effects to create width. However, it’s also instructive to notice that some great sounding tracks are almost completely mono! All you hear at 200% is a little bit of reverb…
Pay close attention to what you hear. Hihats? Snare? Sound FX? Reverb? Bet you don’t hear any kick or serious low frequencies of any sort. (let’s keep those mono, people!)
If you need to get a little more stereo width into your life, make sure to explore Simple Delay, Grain Delay, reverb, chorus, auto filter (with the LFO), flanger, phaser, etc…
