Making mono sound like stereo in Pro Tools

[mr_friendly]

I have a mostly guitar and voice (and occasional drum machine) live recording that for reasons beyond my control was recorded to DAT with only one channel. Once I duplicate the tracks in Pro Tools I want to add a little effect to try and approximate a stereo recording, or at least give it more depth. I'm thinking Chorus, but I've never used it before. Any tips? I'm on PT 6.1 LE w/ an Audiomedia III interface.

-Jason

[EletrikGutar182]

Some kind of stereo delay might sound cool...im not a PT user, so if thats not in the box, duplicate the drack, make one L, one R, and move one a MS or 2 foward...some light chorus may help too, i suppose...

Experiment! Play around with some different ideas...you can always undo it..

Alex

[Larsen]

You can also try duplicating the track and just messing around with the EQ on it as well. When you pan them out left and right , it isn't as drastic or "effected" if you want a more natural space...

Good luck

-j

[bentonevolution]

duplicate the audio file on another track. Pan one hard left and the other hard right...flip one out of phase. That's what I do.

[bentonevolution]

oh yeah...maybe tune one of them down 1-2 cents. It will entail even greater seperation.

[LeedyGuy]

i say dup it and eq it differently on each side, nothing drastic, just subtle cuts on one side or something. maybe even compress them differently? each side? again, nothing drastic.

i would say that the rule should be as soon as you hear stereo, STOP AND PRINT

[vvv]

I would dupe the track and on the copy add a lot of stereo medium reverb, shelving off below maybe 90Hz.

Then I would mix that stereo reverb'd track with the mono track.

Watch for phase issues, and maybe try panning the mono track slightly off center.

Or you could use a very short stereo delay on the copy track, and then add the reverb.

You could also play the original mono track thru you monitors and mic. your room; a mono room or stereo room track could be useful.

Depending on how involved you want to get, you can use gates and EQ to isolate an istrument or part of an instrument. For example, create a copy track and use a gate and/or EQ to isolate just the snare, or just the initial percussive hit on an acoustic guitar. Then pan that track, process it as above, etc.

Good luck.

[d franko]

duplicate the audio file on another track. Pan one hard left and the other hard right...flip one out of phase. That's what I do.

That's probably not a good idea. Being that if you were to put it in mono it would virtually dissapear, or even if the listener was in the right place. I suggest a stereo delay with 18ms of delay on one channel and no delay on the other, or maybe a mix of different lengths of delay on each channel.

[logancircle]

This is cool stuff to mess with. The following method can be really fun (and once in a while stupid-sounding). I like to get stoned and mess with this stuff on nice monitors--making 3 seperate reverb tracks (this can sound better than just a stereo reverb). Duplicate the orig track 3 times, do a violent highpass on one, lowpass on the other and bandpass on the other. Then add reverb (75-100% wetness) to each of those 3 seperately, mute the original track so you're just hearing the reverb, eq the 3 reverb tracks so they fit together, make a reverb buss so it's easier to turn up and down. Unmute the main track, turn up the reverb slowly and see if it sounds good.

HINTS: try predelaying the lower verb to control that deeper late reflection sound, don't predelay the higher verb at all. Also try adding a quiet mono slap delay at like 80-120ms to the main track.

Like I said, it doesn't sound great on everything, but it can add a nice fake space.

[logancircle]

Oops, I forgot to say pan the low/high verb L/R, the bandpass one in the middle (or switch it up)

[mr_friendly]

Good ideas all. I've found with the built-in Pro Tools LE effects that you really have to push them before you start to notice the intended effect. Never had much success using their compressor for example. It could just be the source material, or maybe my ears aren't wired for proper monitoring with PT.

-Jason

[Angelo Clematide]

1. Put the single channel centered thru a 1st stereo reverb and make a recording with 100% wet.

2. Make 3 copies of the single channel.

2. Leave one centered. Pan one single channel full left and the other full right.

3. Pitchshift the right single channels 0.1 cent up and the left 0.2 down or vice versa and apply harmonic correction.

4. Now make a 2nd 100% wet stereo reverb of this panned/shifted two channel, may with reflexions. You may not use the same patch as on the 1st stereo reverb.

5.0 Start mixing now !

5.1 Bring up loud the centered single channel and apply what's needed e.g. EQ Compressor etc..

5.2 Bring up very soft the 1st 100% stereo reverb and may use some stereo widening or narrowing on that.

5.3 Bring up very soft the 2nd 100% stereo reverb and may use some stereo widening on that, EQ out the bottom, spectralize the top.

5.4 Don't use the two panned/shifted channel in the mix.

Now you can render a almost stereo file.

[syrupcore]

it might add too much room if the recording is already roomy but reamping it might do the trick. mono out to a stereo or stereo pa and then stereo mic it. if nothing else, it might give you a more natural stereo reverb to mix underneath the original mono track.

the waves eq plugs have a preset called 'psuedo stereo'. it basically does a series of mildly overlapping thin eq cuts to the left and right (at different frequencies). Never really did much to excite me but it might have been the source material.

will

[ThorAndersen]

Check out the demo for <a href="http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/demo.asp" target="_blank">iZotope Ozone</a>.
Though it's just a demo, you can atleast see an interesting way you can spread the stereo image.
Under "Mutli Band Stereo Imaging", set different delay times to the different frequency bands (and disable all the other features). Play with having all bands grouped together or not. It will probably drastically change the way your recording sounds, but it might be interesting.

[Angelo Clematide]

it might add too much room if the recording is already roomy but reamping it might do the trick. mono out to a stereo or stereo pa and then stereo mic it. if nothing else, it might give you a more natural stereo reverb to mix underneath the original mono track.

the waves eq plugs have a preset called 'pseudo stereo'. it basically does a series of mildly overlapping thin eq cuts to the left and right (at different frequencies). Never really did much to excite me but it might have been the source material.

will

hi syrupecore,
what you suggest with the PA/stereo mic is basically the same workflow with a real room as i descibed above doing it with a DAW.

If the decribed technic is to roomy, then do it with very short reverbs and bring them up very low in level: e.g. the recorded room has a peak of -18 dBFS then mix it in with -20 dBFs. The added room information is in any case very, very low in level.

The main thing to make a pseudo-stereo out of a mono is to add room information to the new file. Understanding that the main information in a stereorecording is the roominformation, then it's clear that you have to reconstruct a room when you wanna make out of a single-channel file a stereofile.
However, a mono file will never become a real stereo file. For a real stereorecording one has to use two microphones in the first place.