if the phase is shifted 0 degrees (mono) you should see the vertical line (in mono/stereo coordinates), if the phase is shifted 90 degrees, you should see the circle… if the phase is shifted 180 degrees (inverted) then you should see horizontal line…
so if you take pure mono signal and widen the stereo image to 50% (shift phase by 90 degrees) you will see a circle like image on phasescope, turn it to the 100% and the phasescope shows horizontal line…
what whas the question? i dont get it…
although i think that you shouldnt widen your tracks by 70 or more %… you will get issues with mono compatibility…
thats what you need to monitor/check over on phasescope to begin with
No, I do not widen my master track. This is all just about some tests.
And you can easily hear if you would have any compatibility issues with mono sound, if you simply put a stereo expander on the master track and turn it to zero. Understand: I don’t like submarine!
No, not a mono-output, that’s cheating!
It’s a stereo-output that shows up a round image at 70-80%.
And the question is: why do so many (not all, but many) songs show up a round image at 70-80%?
nope… renoise stereo expander dont work that way… you wount discover mono compatibility issues that way…
EDIT: most phasescopes have a “mono” switch though… and if you turn that on it adds the left and right channel… so you can easily hear what will happen with your sound on mono system…
renoise strereo expander dont add left and right if you turn it down to zero…
with mono signal its not cheating… its pure results… if your signal is already stereo then everything depends on that stereo signal…
and the second part of the question… because most songs are made with the optimal stereo image and mono compatibility… that is elliptical circle squashed in vertical axis…
i dont know… it dont surprise me that if you expand it you will see what you see…
YEAH!
I’m so glad to hear that
At least I know I’m not hallucinating…
That’s it… what I’m saying is that 50% is not the most common WIDTH value to obtain that “Perfectly Round” phase-image… I know that by logic it should really be around 50%… but it happens, instead, that the width value where they look in that “perfect round” way is very often placed “beyond” the 50% and around 60-80%
And when I say “perfectly round image” I do mean “round” like a circle but not only… I have saw spirals, square-like shapes, random shapes… but this is not about the “shape” they have ( Round-or-square ) but rather about “How wide” is the phase-image… how “extended”… in a visual way.
Instead of the expected 50%, if you go look setting width to a large number of samples, you turn out to have a lot of samples with a stereo-image that looks “round” and “extended” only when the slider is around 60-80%…
I’m not surprised about seeing what I see.
What I’m surprised about is that most of my samples are showing me what I see… when the WIDTH slider goes up around 75%
and of course, Gilli, get a phase-scope somewhere, at this point you have to
Hmmm… I see the thread died here
The thread about “What does exactly sound width does?” had much more succes…
I guess I have (and Gilli too now) to just take it as it comes…
But ONE DAY… pointing to horizon while the wind rises…
yeah, i checked again some samples and i as i see know it depends on sample (i used mono samples only) With some samples i get circles at 50% width, with some at 75% and some even around 40%
Ohh… I’m SO glad that this is being noticed by someone else
Yes, as I mentioned, it’s not like the “round point” is always at that %… but I have found that (statistically) the slider have to go past the 50% a significant number of times…
Both is the same mono sample. Once directly and once through the filter, so it becomes a sine. I took care about the volume, so both cases wouldn’t differ too much before they get into the scope.
A completely different question: why is the left channel louder once I expand the sound?
This is something I have noticed aswell… sometimes panning just combines with width… I even found sounds going totally wild on panning just placing width at 0.1 ( just activating it )…
Herm… gilli I’m not sure what you intended to show with the captures…
The captures shall show that there is probably a difference in the expanded width, if your source sound has many or few harmonics.
Because it’s been mentioned that different mono samples show up different results in the scope.
So I thought it might depend on the samples’ EQ. In this case, I simply reduced the harmonics of a saw to see, how the scope would react.
It’s logical though. More harmonics mean more sound which can be inverted.
At the end, it’s not the answer to the yet unsolved question. It’s rather just an unspectacular fact that should be mentioned…or not?
Stereo widening is something I’ve also been really intrigued by lately, though I’m working with multiband stereo widening in a mastering situation. Am reading through the entire topic now, but at this stage, remember that the height (i.e. the y-axis) of the phase scope represents volume, does it not? So if you have a really loud sound then you’re obviously going to need more widening in order to make the scope image round. Or am I wrong?
From what I understand, though, you want the image to be taller than it is wide, or else you run into mono compatibility problems. I’ve actually had cases where the stereo image was so wide that instruments disappeared from the mix entirely when I played it back in mono.
Also, note that too much widening of bass frequencies can make the bass appear less loud, since bass is mostly centred, and, given the algorithm of stereo widening where the sample values in the left and right channels are subtracted from one another, sounds equally present in both channels (i.e. mono) tend to disappear.
That’s why multiband stereo widening is really useful, as mid frequencies also tend to sound more hollow with too much widening, with a lack of presence at the centre of the mix. Generally, though, higher frequencies can do with more widening.
All this stuff is about as confusing to me now as compressors were several years ago, and I’ve been spending countless hours listening for the effects of widening already and trying to figure out how to make the tracks I’m mastering sound good.
The Waves analyser doesn’t really show the stereo width of a sound though, but rather if any part of the sound is out of phase or not. What you really want is a vector scope, since that will actually give you the previously mentioned ‘round’ image. There’s a stereo widening module in iZotope Ozone with one.
At this stage, I’m still not quite certain yet whether you should attempt to widen every instrument track so that the width is as wide as possible without causing mono compatibility problems (using a phase correlation meter), since that would result in every sound having an equal width. As with everything, I think contrast is a really important element in creating a good stereo image across your mix.
Anyhow, I’m going to search for some tutorials on the subject in case I can learn something more.
Hmm… I’m not sure at all… on my side I noticed that different EQ gives different behaviour exactly as Gilli just pointed out.
To be precise: a hi-hat… or a snare… they most probably have a good hi-freqz amount. Well they look like they need very little width to give back a “Fat” image… as soon as you open the slider the phasescope show
A bass or a bdrum… they most probably need more width because they lack strong harmonics… when I move the slider I obtain a little variation
GOSH I see true… true…
Now it makes sense to see the MONO button on a good phasescope, that’s what it was there for!
Anyway, I thought I wanted the image (not EVERY track) to be as “round” as possible… meaning I want to have the sound as spread as possible to sound somehow “in the middle” of the stereo-image (not in the center like in Left - Center - Right… but in the middle like Front - Middle - Rear)…
Exactly. Since I started tweaking with it I have found that I’m using width pretty much like I use panning to create a stereo-image, to position every instrument in a way that does not overlap others etc etc… Some bright instruments are placed in a “front-mid” position… most low freqz are placed “middle-behind” or “behind”… I even used stereo-mono combos…
maybe i’m just unsophisticated, but i have always felt like stereo is just a gimmick. when i’m listening to music, i don’t really care about stereo imaging at all. it doesn’t impress me. all my songs i’ve ever written, which is now growing to about 40 songs, have never employed any type of panning or any stereo gimmicks.
what am i missing out on here? i don’t think my ears are broken, i have sennheiser hd-590 headphones as my main set of cans and i can definitely tell the difference between them and my “cheap” phones like my sony mdr-v600’s and several pairs of other phones i have. i can also tell the difference between 160k bitrate mp3s and 192k , even though 192k don’t sound as good as cd or vinyl, they are still very listenable whereas on 160 and lower the hihats and stuff are very muffled
the only reason for the above paragraph is to say that i sorta consider myself an audiophile but i still don’t understand the purpose of stereo. anybody 'splain it to me?
a well used stereo image will give you a much better impression of the song’s depth. it’s also useful to stress certain instruments or effects. it helps to simulate certain environments which will therefore sound more authentic and less artificial than they do in mono.
if you consider yourself as an audiophile listener, then you should be able to understand its advantages due to your personal listening experiences.
i have a mono/stereo switch at one of my two headphones (pioneer hdj-1000), which will narrow the stereo image down to mono on demand. whenever i use that switch whilst listening to a professionally recorded song (not talking about the average techno/electronic music song) it immediately takes away the charme, charisma and ambience of the tune. it’s just doesn’t sound as satisfactory and pleasant anymore than it does when in stereo… it’s just plain flat in mono.
stereo just “tastes” better, when used professionally (means i’m not talking about the kind of stereo which for example the amiga500 produced with protracker - 2 channels left, 2 channels right ).
(at least if you widen the mono signal…)
YEAH! 
true… true…
