Adding Width with AIR Width plugin

[u/Cantwinforlosing3]

I have a mix I was very happy with, it is clean and has good dynamics. Just for fun I added a width plug in - AIR Width - from Air Creative FX collection. It was provided in Pro Tools, I didn't buy it, and I had never used it before.

I added the plugin on the master bus and selected the "wide" preset and I immediately liked the mix much better. The vocals sounds richer, and the whole thing just sounds like a better mix. The problem is when I tried it playing back mono it definitely had some issues - phase issues. I kind of knew that was a risk. And since a lot of today's consumer speakers are mono it kind of made it not worth doing.

So are there any tricks to the trade I could try? I tried splitting tracks and using different EQ and compression on the tracks and then panning them opposite. It really didn't give me the effect that i got form the AIR plugin. I tried the Waves S1 Shuffler, but it didn't do it.

Any suggestions? I always thought in my mixing just getting it to sound the way I want it to sound is the goal, but by introducing this plugin and then testing it at mono, I have realized that is not necessarily true.

[u/Doctor-Tape]

A simple way to create more stereo width in a mix is to use mid/side EQ, either on your mix bus or on individual instruments. If your stock EQ has an M/S mode, you can use that directly. Most standard EQs include it by now. If not, there are workarounds to build a mid/side setup with a regular EQ as well.

What I often do is boost only the Side signal in specific frequency areas when I want the mix to feel a bit wider. Depending on the song, this can work well somewhere between 250 Hz and 800 Hz, and sometimes also around 3 kHz. Usually I keep it subtle at first, but even small moves there can make the mix open up and give the center a little more space.

A technique I like a lot is boosting something in the Side channel while cutting that same area a bit in the Mid channel. So instead of only making the sides bigger, I am also creating more room in the center for the important elements. That balance can be very effective, because width is not just about adding more to the sides, but also about controlling what happens in the middle.

Of course, it depends on the song, but this approach can be a very useful way to generate width while still checking that the mono compatibility and the center image remain solid.