Wider – Polyverse Music
Wider – Polyverse Music Polyverse is the company that keeps on giving with yet another killer plugin, and this time it’s FREE. Polyverse released “Wider,” a stereo widener plugin that is modeled after the same feature found in their AMAZING Manipulator plugin. Aside from being extremely quick and kind on your CPU, Wider is also entirely mono-capable meaning that it prevents phase-cancellation often found in stereo widener plugins. Here’s what Polyverse said about the new plugin: “Wider takes the massively popular stereo section from its sibling, Manipulator, and gives you the ability to expand the stereo image of any signal to an awe-inspiring amount of width. However, Wider is a unique stereo plugin in the sense that it is completely “mono-compatible”, meaning that any signal that has been extended will always remain in phase with itself, even if summed to mono. Many stereo effects currently in use have the nasty habit of knocking signals out …
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Super Spread Vocals – Sonnox VoxDoubler Toolbox
Super Spread Vocals – Sonnox VoxDoubler Toolbox Vocals are often the foundation of emotion in a song and what better way to enhance that emotion than doubling your vocals? Vocal doubling is beloved by producers and listeners alike as it adds so much depth and weight to an already beautiful sounding vocal take. The process of doubling vocals can easily become a daunting task the more complex your lyrics and vocal melodies are, and adjusting multiple takes comes with its own slew of obstacles. The solution to this time-consuming task was vocal doubler plugins, but vocal doubler plugins have been pretty limited up until now, with exceptions being far and few between (more on that later). Lucky for us Sonnox has finally released their VoxDoubler Toolbox that features 2 plugins called ‘Thicken’ and ‘Widen’. The pair of plugins can be used in isolation or combination to enhance vocals (or other …
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Ozone Image Widener – iZotope Releases Free Stereo Widener Plugin
iZotope released a free plugin this week called 'Ozone Imager' normally only available in its mixing/mastering software Ozone. The plugin functions as a stereo monitoring tool and widener and is a powerful plugin in its own right. We threw it on a track to test it out and tell you a bit about its settings.
The first thing we noticed was the three options for visual feedback: Polar Sample, Polar Level, and Lissajous. Polar sample displays dots to represent each sample being heard, dots that fall outside of the 45-degree lines on either side are out of phase. Polar level displays samples as 'rays' and we think makes it is easier to see where your sounds are sitting in the stereo field. Lissajous switches the display into a diamond, your dots will be narrow if your sound is narrow and will expand the wider you make it; also, the dots will lean to either side of the diamond depending on the panning of your sound. On the far right of the plugin you will see a phase meter which represents the average phase, anything equal to or greater than zero is in phase and anything below zero...
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