Never tried it, but sounds a nice idea. Most distortion is not symmetric so it could work. But still sounds a little "phasy". When I had this problem, I had the luck that all parts in the song are played twice and to a click track and same tempo. So I could use the first verse as the second guitar for second verse and so on.
I've been recording music since the good old tape 4-track days and am constantly astounded at how often people can still tread new ground with the simplest of concepts that no-one had thought of yet. Genius
I've been playing around with similar ideas using plugins and ended up basically using a phaser to comb-filter the left DI with only very narrow cuts and then doing the inverse of that on the right DI. I set the phaser so that the effect is as inaudible as possible while still producing clear comb-filtering. The idea is to basically split the signal into sections of frequency bands spaced across the whole spectrum and then sending one half of that to the left and the other to the right channel. I then threw my Amp sim (STL Amp Hub) onto both comb filtered DIs. The distortion masks the already subtle phasing effect with upper harmonics and it creates an entirely mono-compatible wide-stereo signal that works well even with plugins. Just for good measure, I decided to also flip the polarity of the right DI track. So that's my workaround for getting this to work with plugins. Thanks for the tip, this trick is a game-changer!
I think it could work with plugins, flip the polarity before the amp sim, use slightly different settings and a different IR, then flip the polarity back again... I might not have been paying enough attention but when he was doing it with plugins he showed what it sounds like if you flip before the amp sim, and then what it sounds like if you flip after the amp sim, but I don't think he did an example of flipping both before and after an amp sim I might have to experiment with this because my guitarist is lazy and never sends me double tracks, i always end up having to cannibalize the DI and cut/paste enough pieces to create 2 frankenDIs that are never playing the exact same section at the same time, it's a nightmare tbh If i can do the flip>ampsim>flip trick and then maybe use something like melda auto-align afterwards that could save me an insane amount of time Ok, i need to try this right now, will report back with my findings...
Update: I tried this with Neural Amp Modeller and it worked flawlessly! Ableton's "Utility" insert has an Invert Phase preset so it made this ridiculously easy. Just duplicate the track then put the stock phase inverter at the beginning and at the end of the signal chain! That said, I got even better results by adjusting the OD's tone knob, making a TINY adjustment to the amp sim's EQ and swapping the IR for a near identical one from the same pack, those minor changes to the settings of the duplicated track resulted in a damn near perfect stereo double-track with no phasing issues at all summing to mono, this is honestly some mind-blowing voodoo stuff! Now I just need to try it with the Grindstein vst... 😈
@@particlejim Hmmm very strange, it does not work for me. Well it does sounds wider if I flip the polarity before the amp, but not doing that flip back after. Also, mono compatibility is not good at all. In mono it does not cancel out completely the guitar but the volume drops quite heavily. But I am doing that on clean guitars not distorted, so I wonder if this is where is this trick limitation or if I am doing something wrong.
I record in dual mono. One amp left and one right. One take, two different tones. Plus it sounds amazing in the room when just practicing. I use a digital amp on one side and a tube amp on the other just to have a difference in response on the left and right so it sounds more like 2 guitars. Also no polarity issues.
Haha I have two cheap joyos...the Fender and Marshall knockoffs... my effects a Riverside before for different gains. I put my mono Belle Epoch into a Radial ABY just to practice... they go out through an Oceans 12 in stereo for delay and reverb. Like an effects loop in a goid amp. It's nuts.
Here is the true killer method following, it never failed me. As Kohle highlighted, the method in this video does not work so well with plugins, and indeed it is not very good for mono compatibility, there is quite some volume drop actually (because most simulated amps do not care about polarity change). The presented method also have a side effect of still having mid soundy and not true double track sound. Sorry it is a YT comment section so I try to be short still hopefully understandable and useful. Double tracking fundamentally is: random time and dynamic shifts between the 2 tracks, most of the tone changes being carried by the reaction of the amp to the change of the input level (so the dynamic of the guitarist), though the guitarist play has a small impact on it. So the process should be in this order for one of the dupplicated tracks: random gain automation slight modifications over time -> subtle input dependent saturation stage (optional for distorted guitars but mandatory for clean tones, simulating the guitarist playstyle impact on the tone)-> slight time shift random automation -> amp, DONE. Also this method is far superior in realism to the method proposed here, whatever with real amps or not. For automation, one need to use one LFO random controller applied to the gain and another one for the shift value. This is very easy to do at least in Reaper, because LFO random controller is built in the automation section of the DAW.
The newer Neural DSP plugins have a doubler, and Otto Audio II II II II has a neat way of doing a stereo experience as well. I wouldn't use them for a mix personally I would rather double track, but it's cool to play around with.
The whole point of this video and this trick is to not sound like those doublers because they’re not very great due to the nature of how double tracking works.
The doublers these days are really effective, but they still usually sound bad in mono, in my experience. I use Line 6 Helix and the Double Take effect for my IEMs and it's killer, but I wouldn't use it for a final recording.
Exactly what I was thinking, quick way to quad track for demos and such. I'm also thinking with amp sims and such, thinking out loud maybe record the one DI on two tracks, process one on as normal, flip the phase on the other unprocessed DI and send it to a third track where it gets processed, and flip the phase of that processed track? Will need to do some experiments!
While writing the song I always use main guitar track on the left and copy of track with short delay with floating (randomly oscillated) delay time around 15-30ms on the right. Works well! But when the song is ready, I always re-record double track from scratch.
@@OfFormerFame basically, chorus does same trick, but I guess it has certain LFO shapes that make movements cycling. My idea was to get random delay time at each time point.
Im using this trick in my axefx3 for live use, input split into 2 signals. The second signal runs through a phase reverse filterblock, then amp-cab and then again a phase reverse filter block. Works wonderful!
I tried to do it in the box, as he doesn't explain the way I figured it out. I just duplicated the DI track. In the new track, I used the Gain plugin in Logic just to flip the phase (you can use any plugin that can flip phase, doesn't matter at all). After this, I put an ampsim (BDH 5169) slightly different that the one I have on the other channel (BDH 66o6). And after this one, another Gain plugin to flip the phase again. It works. Not as good as the real amp way in the video, but definetly way better than the classic "20ms delay" trick, specially when you listen in mono. It's an easy way to do it if for some reason you can't make a real reamp
This depends on the asymmetry of the distortion. Really odd that the plugins do not emulate that. It can have quite a big effect how distortion sounds.
I`ve tried this recently, Reamping the Left channel like normal and then Reamping the Right channel with activation of phasing (180* button on the reamp Box). it`s an amazing trick! I used to do this with IRs too. Thank you for sharing.
Also Disruptor's and McRoklin's, but more refined and in the case of Disruptor more stereo options. Check Nugen's Stereoizer and Monofilter, they are The Stereo/Mono Power!
Awesome recording tip!!! I’ll have to try it out for sure!! I must say tho.. I’m surprised no one mentioned Voxengo Stereotouch (ofc I haven’t checked ALL the comments , so maybe someone did) . I got turned on to it by Glenn Fricker. While it may not be the most mono friendly way to fatten up guitars, it certainly sounds good and It’s been a life saver for me when I get DI tracks that haven’t been double tracked! It has sounded very decent every time I did use it and I’ve even used it on lead (which aren’t traditionally double tracked) to give tracks a bit of extra flair. Cheers!!!
Cool trick! It's easy to work out why it does the trick: - Asymmetric clipping from all the preamp components would affect different parts of the DI signal when the phase is flipped. - As mentioned, the speaker would react differently when the phase is flipped. So given these two components we could even find out more permutations, although I guess they could result in a more phase-cancelling output signal in mono.
whoa that's so cool! I wouldn't have thought of this, but it makes sense that the reversed sound of a speaker going backward doesn't quite match up to the sound of it moving forward. And since the signal isn't perfectly symmetrical there's probably a lot going on in the amp electronics too. I definitely want to try it out. I wonder if something similar could be achieved with phase rotation, and I'll have to experiment with that. Super cool stuff!
10:33 This effect (one side flipped) is really nice for delay trails, as in send a copy of your signal with 1 side DC-flipped into a delay. I like also having a second, longer but lower delay with L/R channels swapped, gives this really deep and wiiiide sounding stereo effect on the delay!!
This technique was invented by Ryan. His channel is Creative Sound Lab. The other guy briefly mentioned his name but he really deserves the credit for this.
I think there have been quite a few people using this technique (check the comments) but that’s the reason why Ulf mentions him. It’s where he learned this. But it’s not about who invented this, it’s about spreading the information so more people can use this!
Very interesting, thank you! I'm gonna try this for playing live with my band. I'm the only guitarist on a Neurald QC, playing in stereo with different amp(sim)s and IRs for L/R already. FOH is stereo, but our in ears are not, so mono compatibility is very important.
The thing is with AI, it should be easily possible to create realistic double tracks. It would literally be the same technique as vocal synthesis. I'm surprised no one has done this yet.
Right time, pitch and tone for the real thing (hit the string slightly different it might give you slightly different tone not just the amp). Of course to simulate the time part a second or third voice can only be delayed. You would need a time machine to put it before the original unless you shift the second on a separate track. The other problem is that the differences in those things often happen for human reasons not because a robotic LFO or even a computerized random function decides to change the time, pitch or tone. Like a singer who might be slightly inconsistent on a high note at the top of their range but it might be slightly flat or sharp or right on at any given time but all because it's hard to reach and takes concentration not just randomly. This method is really good to at least get some semblance of stereo. The amp with a mic on it might give a slight delay. Not only because the mic is a few millimeters away from the cone but because it is mechanical in nature. if you went out into an amp and then direct in some way it might not have the same result.
If you could pair this technique with using a TC Electronic MIMIQ Pedal I bet that would enhance the effect. Definitely keeping this trick on hand just in case, so cool 🤯
I find the Mimiq is great, but will occasionally throw in an audible time delay change that causes the spectral balance to shift. It's sort of like the Haas effect flipped to mono. You can hear a phase shift that stays static for a bit until it happens again. Maybe this would help, but I'd still be concerned that when it decides to change the delay it would make an audible shift again.
I've tried it with the Mimiq and well, it's sounds like with the Mimiq. All the things the Mimiq is doing with the phase and the delay and tuning is messing too much with the original signal to make a significant difference. So, re-amping with the Mimiq produce the same result with the inverting phase trick or not.
How would this be done with amp sims and cab IR's? Maybe if you flip the phase of the DI, then flip of the phase of the amp sim signal before it hits the cab IR???
for fat rhythm guitars nothing beats good old double tracking. for sounds rather in the higher frequency range (guitar solos, synth arps) plugins can work quite nice. I frequently use the plugin 'wider'. in its latest version you can set it up such that it keeps lower frequencies in the middle while pushing the higher frequencies to the sides.
I was hopeful that this trick would work with a Kemper, but alas it does not. You definitely need a real amp for this. Digital amps reproduce the phase inversion perfectly, they're just doing math at the sample level after all. You need the "weirdness" of analog electronics to introduce the minute differences in the signal. Thanks for sharing this great tip anyway!
Usually we can cut the track into phrases and somehow rearrange it to get same notes from other places. And get an almost true double. If we have the time and desire to do it
That’s stupid simple and smart. Guess it all depends on how repetitive the riff is. If it’s the same thing over and over, you could just have the 2nd track play a bar behind or ahead. Or if the riff is complicated, layer it when it comes up again later in the song.
Otto Audio‘s amp sim called „I I I I“ or „eleven eleven“ has a mono/stereo mode that somewhat emulates a double tracked sound and it sounds quiet good in my opinion.
@@KohleAudioKult i tried to do this in cubase and must've done something wrong, cause it sounded terrible. so i mean a tutorial, for all of us who don't have real amps might be needed (or it's just me making some mistake, or i'm misunderstanding the process). it would definately be appreciated, that's for sure. this is what i did on my inserts (on the duplicated track): 1 - duplicated the guitar di track. 2 - added pro q3 and clicked on the phase button to change it. 3 - added an amp sim with a good sound. 4 - added pro q3 and clicked on the phase button again to reverse it. 5 - panned both guitar tracks left/ right and played the tracks. 6 - had to stop playback after a few seconds, cause it was too painful to listen to.
@@MrPaperdude1 No mistake on your side. Like Uld said, this works better wth real amps but you might wanna try a few different amp sims. The closer it is to the real thing the better it will work. But why don't you check out my video about the Mimiq pedal? that was the real game-changer!
I was wondering a while ago if it is actually possible to fix the problem of too few guitar tracks, then thinking about how to turn dual tracks into quad guitars. Thanks for the answer, both of you! I definitely have to try this, maybe even just as a lazy solution for demos and sending the tracks through an amp sim.
Here's another dead simple "trick" to use in some cases: Let's say verse 1 and verse 2 have similar guitar parts, ideally identical. Or chorus 1 and chorus 2. And all is played with a click. In that case you can use the guitar part from the 2nd verse to double the 1st verse and vice versa. Boom, the song is double tracked 🤟
I've been doing this for years since daw's came out and made it easy to do: Most times just copying a guitar track, offsetting it to the other guitar track in the grid by nanoseconds to taste and panning it completely opposite of the other, and adjusting tone to taste. Reamping is fine too, especially if you really want to get something really tonally different in the other guitar. Cool stuff!
The stereo effect obtained through delaying one of the tracks sounds completely different - much more artificial. The essence of this trick is to use the physical characteristics of the analog path - mainly the work of the suspension in the speaker, to produce fully random irregularities in the signal. We are re-amplifying the same signal twice, but the speaker works in a different regime each time.
@@KohleAudioKult Absolutely! No hard rules here but one: Whatever sounds good but remember, you're still trying to fatten up ONE guitar player. When it starts sounding like more than one guy is playing, you've kinda lost the plot.
I have this amp sim AHM 5050 v3 by Audio Assault and it has quite good doubler in it. Sometimes I use only the doubler with different ampsims. I think the feature might be present in other plugins from that company as well.
I just tried this last night with a track I'm working on to turn 2 guitars into 4 and the results are phenomenal. I use real amplifiers, but with a load box/attenuator and cab sim IR plugins instead of a real mic and cabinet. I just wanted to reply back here to report that in this scenario it works great. I used a different amplifier for the extra tracks than I did on the originals and it sounds HUGE. Thanks for sharing this cool idea!!!
Have you tried the audio assault double take plug in? I know about it but havnt used it to know if it works well or not. Also can you not just feed your guitar into two Amps with different settings using different cabs to get a pair of mono tracks that are different from the same take? I am justvstarting into the engineering side of making music so maybe I am ignorant of something?
Yes. Reamping the dame DI with two COMPLETELY different rigs can work. It works even better if you have a RAM heavy plugin on one of the reamps to give you that few ms delay.
I think I found a better way how to do it with better results. Playing with phase flipping is quite dangerous because reversed phases of the same waveform only produce silence. So, here is my way: 1. Use a PITCH-SHIFTER on the channel with your DI track and set it to +3 semitones. Export it as a new track (call it "DI right" for example) and remove a PITCH-SHIFTER. 2. Import this new track into a new channel and apply a second PITCH-SHIFTER of a different brand to it and set it to -3 semitones (different brands of pitch-shifters have different algorithms, so you will get a better result than with two pitch-shifters of the same brand). 3. Pan the first channel with your original DI track 100% LEFT and the second channel with the "DI right" track 100% RIGHT. 4. (Optional) For better results, you can now apply an LFO to both channels on a PITCH-SHIFTER ranging from -1 to -10 cents (3% of LFO strength) on the left channel and +1 to +10 cents on the right channel (the difference in ranges must not be more than 20 cents due to audible detuning!!!). And/or use a TIME ADJUSTMENT DELAY ranging from +3 to +7 samples on the right channel (don't shift tracks by milliseconds, just samples!!!) Voila!!! You are done...😀 You can hear how it sounds here: th-cam.com/video/RcXVjxKRzVg/w-d-xo.html
mmm. You can hear shhh in the stereo, but tones are still in mono! so key thing is microtiming differences. But still it's good for solo or complex things. You're right - nothing beats real time double tracking
Good trick Ulf. Subbed. There's a plugin that does the doubling of a single DI pretty fantastically that's been out for a bit. I can't recall the name rn but it isn't that phasey chorusey fake bs that most plugs do (haas) It's a legit and tight double. No phasey, no cheap chorusey artifacts. I'll post it's name when I get home, can;t recall rn.
@@KohleAudioKult Oh shit my bad. audio assault has a doubler that sounds great. it isnt bundled with every product they sell though. I got mine in a 3 amp bundle called The Classic.
Ive been trying for ages to record just one guitar track and make it stereo with a mic on an amp cause I fkn hate double tracking. It always sounds weird and funky with chorus etc. Cant wait to give this a try !!
Through my pro tools ultimate with Lynx Aurora 16 A/D converter It almost sounds more like 3 tracks where the one in the middle is like 5 db louder than the L/R guitars than normal stereo. Reminds me of a m/s stereo setup. I guess some m/s eq like Epure can make it more even if boosting the highs on the sides. I also tried it through my Maor Appelbaum Stereo Mastering unit Pele Box 2 running left as it is but flipped the phase in on the right and back after in the daw. If adding stereo chorus on a mono clean guitar it sounds slightly wider almost like a stereo input.
Something that works pretty well too if the riff is repeating 2 times is cutting it in 2 parts and on the second track you start with part 2 and finish with part 1, this way it's exactly like 2 performances were captured
A few things that can take one performance and make it doubled but sound good: Otto Audio II II II II STL Tones Amphub with its doubler effect TH-U with its Space Machine effect
@@KohleAudioKult It's an amazing amp sim with a lot of options to craft a cool tone. It doesn't model one amp in particular and has a unique mono to stereo mode that i presume a very similar trick to what is shown in this video.
I got a pretty decent result with the Grindstein and an offset of 0.86. What work even beter was bypassed the Grindstein part of the plugin and using an HM-2 pedal plugin in front. With the same cabs and settings you get a good enough result that doesn't f-up your track in mono. So great for quick demos or thickening up.
Years ago i did something like that, a live recording band, amp with mic and DI, but i used amp simulator on direct audio (no reamp). Worked ok. But real amps are another world!!
Hey Kohle, have you messed with the TC Electronic Mimiq? It’s not software but I use this live all the time as a solo guitarist and get a pretty huge sound. I imagine you could use this into two inputs in an interface and it could sound good?
So from what I gather reading about it, the mimiq doesn't only just delay the dubs to seperate them (which would only give you that chorusy wash sound) but also varies the delay time slightly with an envelope or something to give inconsistencies... does that sound correct?
I have used different effect chains and different cabs and mics settings from various plugins and impulse responses to create a stereo sound, but this technique is far better. Still though, either technique or both can be used to thicken each mono track for quad tracking. I never knew that phase shifting the DI track and back again would create such a natural sounding stereo image. I will try this technique on vocal tracks too or any other mono source.
If we listen closely to the stereo image created by this trick though, it actually sounds like a strong mono image reinforced with some extra stereo qualities on the sides, but it doesn't sound like a double tracked guitar. It would be interesting to modify this trick as follows: Send the clean DI hard panned left to a Bus, and send the polarity reversed DI hard panned right to the same Bus, and then use a mid/side processor on that Bus to reduce the centre information. Then send each side of that processed bus to it's own amp and reverse the polarity on the second mic pre as in the video here. I'm guessing the result still wouldn't be quite right.
Any tips/suggestions how to combine two different amps (as two guitar players are in the band)? I read that 80s Metal, Thrash, Death mostly combined two amps like an Marshall and a Peavey two get a more layered sound.
I always did it with the haas effect. Since I´m just a hobbyist, "good is good enough" to get it out the door. My question would be: What happens if you use different amps or same amp but different IRs? Are the tracks still too similar even though the amps/IRs convert it to something different? Cheers!
I use an AB/Y Splitter Box to connect 1 guitar signal to 2 amps, 1 panned Left, the other panned Right, or to record 1 amp & 1 DI simultaneously. I can then easily ReAmp the DI Track whilst also using the Amped Track on the other side. Too easy, mate!! : D
Aaahhhh!! I like the idea of changing the Polarity on the way in to the Amp Sim or Amp on the 2nd Track then changing the Polarity back after the Amp/Amp Sim. I am going to have to try this trick, as THAT is something I never considered. So, That is the main trick to it, then. Hmmmmmm...
Ok so the concept of Stereo is more complex than most would at first assume. So if Im using two mics, an SM57 & Royer R-121, naturally I would record the Dry performance in Mono thru a DI box. Then Reamping I capture each mic on its own MONO Channel, because if I capture both in stereo on one channel/track, panning either way hard right or left would eliminate one mic. So I presume whenever using two mics you would never record them on a stereo track because you would defeat the purpose of panning. If anything it would be more of a blend knob. So upon following this technique of Reversing the polarity of the same Dry Performance going into the amp for Reamping and flipping it back coming back into the DAW through your Preamp this would leave me with 4 Mono tracks. Two mics of the same performance, and two mics of the same performance phase flipped and flipped back. So I would Pan the first two Mics hard left and the next 2 Mics hard right. So I would still be in Stereo despite using 4 Mono tracks. Or would this be considered Quad tracking since after all there are 4 channels? Which brings up another good point. If this is so, it means whenever you have two different guitar parts and are using two different mics for recording a guitar speaker you are technically Quad tracking. Or does this apply only to 4 separate performances? You see where the word Stereo can seam a bit misleading. And lastly one final vital consideration. We were taught that Quad-tracking proper, i.e., recording 4 separate performances, would give us a fuller wider sound because of the slight variances between performances yielding a fatter thicker sound. Now the idea is to create a tighter sound? So I suppose asking which is better depends upon which suits your song better. So Fatter doesn't always necessarily mean better. However, in the end you still recommend slipping the tracks a few milliseconds apart to get that fatter thicker sound anyway. So why not just use separate performances? Whats the point of even using the same performance for a tighter sound in the first place lol The other side of that is that we are human not machines, and it seems we even prefer slight variations vs quantizing everything precisely to a grid, even though modern classical composers do quantize a lot. Id think if you are playing faster more technical music quantizing would still sound better. However my point is, since we are only human and slight imperfections in performance is only expected, mixing it with a different performance would smooth out the imperfections (while creating that richer fatter sound) whereas using the same performance would only accentuate where the imperfections were for that first take. The thing that's a bit frustrating is with every new idea thats another experiment you have to compare to all the prior. Its a lot of work before deciding upon which approach/technique to even use. I suppose to an audio engineer more options mean more tools in your arsenal to mix and match. But when you're also the Musician/Composer things are already too time consuming without making production more laborious and tedious. But Im not saying anything that we aren't all already having to combat every day lol I guess thats why they call it blood sweat and tears and why we are all mostly starving artists lol The best advice is to experiment with all options, and just because one option is better for one song doesn't necessarily mean it will be for the next, but experience may narrow things down a bit. We are recording METAL after all, so there will be some preferences in the tricks of that trade. But right now Im leaning towards (since Im using two mics and composing mostly two guitar parts) Quad tracking, but utilizing the phase flipping technique in one performance, for a smoother fatter effect. Like this I won't have to mess with the timing between tracks. I play really fast shred stuff, so I need things to align as close as possible. Sucks though, I would love to save time and not have to constantly play everything over and over and just use the same performance. But since there are two different guitar parts I'll still have to play two performances anyway. Its only Quad tracking on the technicality of using two mics per performance = 4 Mono tracks. Two panned hard left, and the other two Hard right. Funny how its called Stereo despite using only Mono tracks lol Correct me if Im mistaken anywhere Bud. Love your channel, this new phase shifting procedure is very exciting, thanx for another great revelation Brotha
Cool, i'm gonna try this! I've used ADT from Waves in the past to fake a double guitar track. ADT basically pitches and delays a track at a rate against the original, If you carefully set this up before re-amping you can get believable double tracked guitars that perfectly collapse into mono.
10:46 ehhh I mean yeah it is doing the same thing that Van Halen did in the 90s with an Eventide rack unit by having a mono track in the middle and letting the doubler spread L and R like a delay effect does. You can still hear the mono track in this song. Nothing beats real stereo with 2 panned tracks of different takes.
Besides plugins or pedals or reamping a fi output i remember that a alreaxy amp recorded track could be hard panned left amd right, one side switched in reverse polarity. Done that add one of the tracks in the middle for m9no compatibility
A sound engineer showed me how to do this 15 years ago. He simply hard panned the same recording left and right and have the 2 tracks out of time of a few ms. Not perfect but that did the trick.
An additional effect for the real amps would be that the small piece of atmosphere, which the sound waves travel through on the 2nd reamping, is uncorrelated with the atmosphere on the 1st reamping. And double tracking is, after all, about having similar, but completely uncorrelated takes
This is crazy… what I was asking myself: Would this work in a life setup? Like split the signal in your modeler then reverse the phase on one side before the amp and reverse it back after the amp an IR blocks?
It should work if you reverse the phase after the IR. For example on the FOH console. Assuming you don't have an out of phase cab blasting on stage in a small club. But live it's actually not that important to have a real stereo guitar setup unless you play big stages. And even there it's only important for the folks standing in the center.
Mind blowing! I do follow Ryan but never seen him doing it. What I do sometimes is use baby audio’s plugin that creates random short delays, like an oscilator. It does work with ddoubling a mono track.
So the only stereo component in final sound is even harmonics caused by all nonlinearities. If I understand correctly this means that when you mono-sum results you will have only symmetrical distortion components. It can work good enough, but in certain situations I guess results may vary. For example hard asymmetrical fuzz can be completely ruined. May be good idea will be having a slight time variations at one of the tracks, like some "grid-alignment" stuff. On it's own its not really a good idea, but combining with this phase manipulation technique it should be much better.
What an awesome trick! I'd imagine with software amp plugins you could probably achieve the same result by making slight differences to the 2nd track like maybe using a different boost pedal or slightly different EQ settings, resonance, cab IR, mic placements, etc. Now then, how can we apply similar theory to do this with vocals...
@@KohleAudioKult Oh I meant still using the phase reversal technique here, but generating a bit more entropy in the 2nd track since software plugins are likely to have a more deterministic output than a hardware amp. I gave this a try with vocals using an LA2A plugin with light-touch settings in place of an amp, but I don’t think the results were as dramatic. With a vocal cut you may need to do some other things to the 2nd track to add more entropy, slight micro-pitch modulation, maybe a small sample offset. I still think it’s possible to do, just haven’t quite nailed it yet. Anyway, thanks for this tip it’s a HUGE time saver
Would adding something like a very short reverb, delay, or some other effect alter the harmonics of the DI signal enough? While doing this trick. Also, by short I mean barely perceptible. EVH's guitar for van Halen was full dry one side and full the other side and did little to no double tracking.
There's this guitar VSTI called "Heavier7strings" (virtual instrument, as in it creates a dry guitar signal from MIDI data) that varies the attack times, etc. to get "auto doubling"
@@KohleAudioKult I doubt. It runs in Linux only :) But Two Notes Captor X has such feature as well ("twin tracker" or something like that). There are some videos presenting this feature comparing it to real two tracks and the difference in almost none.
Who's gonna try this? 🤯
me!
Incredibly simple but awesome trick 🤘🏻 really cool for certain bands/projects.
Never tried it, but sounds a nice idea. Most distortion is not symmetric so it could work. But still sounds a little "phasy".
When I had this problem, I had the luck that all parts in the song are played twice and to a click track and same tempo.
So I could use the first verse as the second guitar for second verse and so on.
Now I want buy real amp
I want to try this on those fast and intricate guitar solos that are very hard to double track.
I've been recording music since the good old tape 4-track days and am constantly astounded at how often people can still tread new ground with the simplest of concepts that no-one had thought of yet. Genius
It's crazy how many options and tricks there are now days but i still use my daw like a glorified 4 or 8 track machine 😂
I've been playing around with similar ideas using plugins and ended up basically using a phaser to comb-filter the left DI with only very narrow cuts and then doing the inverse of that on the right DI. I set the phaser so that the effect is as inaudible as possible while still producing clear comb-filtering. The idea is to basically split the signal into sections of frequency bands spaced across the whole spectrum and then sending one half of that to the left and the other to the right channel. I then threw my Amp sim (STL Amp Hub) onto both comb filtered DIs. The distortion masks the already subtle phasing effect with upper harmonics and it creates an entirely mono-compatible wide-stereo signal that works well even with plugins.
Just for good measure, I decided to also flip the polarity of the right DI track.
So that's my workaround for getting this to work with plugins.
Thanks for the tip, this trick is a game-changer!
Interesting! 🤘
i try this it's clean!!
I think it could work with plugins, flip the polarity before the amp sim, use slightly different settings and a different IR, then flip the polarity back again... I might not have been paying enough attention but when he was doing it with plugins he showed what it sounds like if you flip before the amp sim, and then what it sounds like if you flip after the amp sim, but I don't think he did an example of flipping both before and after an amp sim
I might have to experiment with this because my guitarist is lazy and never sends me double tracks, i always end up having to cannibalize the DI and cut/paste enough pieces to create 2 frankenDIs that are never playing the exact same section at the same time, it's a nightmare tbh
If i can do the flip>ampsim>flip trick and then maybe use something like melda auto-align afterwards that could save me an insane amount of time
Ok, i need to try this right now, will report back with my findings...
Update:
I tried this with Neural Amp Modeller and it worked flawlessly! Ableton's "Utility" insert has an Invert Phase preset so it made this ridiculously easy. Just duplicate the track then put the stock phase inverter at the beginning and at the end of the signal chain!
That said, I got even better results by adjusting the OD's tone knob, making a TINY adjustment to the amp sim's EQ and swapping the IR for a near identical one from the same pack, those minor changes to the settings of the duplicated track resulted in a damn near perfect stereo double-track with no phasing issues at all summing to mono, this is honestly some mind-blowing voodoo stuff!
Now I just need to try it with the Grindstein vst... 😈
@@particlejimthis is gonna speed up demo writing so much. Thanks for testing and reporting back!
@@particlejim Hmmm very strange, it does not work for me. Well it does sounds wider if I flip the polarity before the amp, but not doing that flip back after. Also, mono compatibility is not good at all. In mono it does not cancel out completely the guitar but the volume drops quite heavily. But I am doing that on clean guitars not distorted, so I wonder if this is where is this trick limitation or if I am doing something wrong.
I record in dual mono. One amp left and one right. One take, two different tones. Plus it sounds amazing in the room when just practicing. I use a digital amp on one side and a tube amp on the other just to have a difference in response on the left and right so it sounds more like 2 guitars. Also no polarity issues.
Haha I have two cheap joyos...the Fender and Marshall knockoffs... my effects a Riverside before for different gains.
I put my mono Belle Epoch into a Radial ABY just to practice...
they go out through an Oceans 12 in stereo for delay and reverb.
Like an effects loop in a goid amp.
It's nuts.
@@harrisfrankou2368 nice!
One thing to be careful of with this trick, is that some amps invert the phase of the signal and some don't. So you'll have to keep track of that too.
Here is the true killer method following, it never failed me. As Kohle highlighted, the method in this video does not work so well with plugins, and indeed it is not very good for mono compatibility, there is quite some volume drop actually (because most simulated amps do not care about polarity change). The presented method also have a side effect of still having mid soundy and not true double track sound. Sorry it is a YT comment section so I try to be short still hopefully understandable and useful. Double tracking fundamentally is: random time and dynamic shifts between the 2 tracks, most of the tone changes being carried by the reaction of the amp to the change of the input level (so the dynamic of the guitarist), though the guitarist play has a small impact on it. So the process should be in this order for one of the dupplicated tracks: random gain automation slight modifications over time -> subtle input dependent saturation stage (optional for distorted guitars but mandatory for clean tones, simulating the guitarist playstyle impact on the tone)-> slight time shift random automation -> amp, DONE. Also this method is far superior in realism to the method proposed here, whatever with real amps or not. For automation, one need to use one LFO random controller applied to the gain and another one for the shift value. This is very easy to do at least in Reaper, because LFO random controller is built in the automation section of the DAW.
Any thoughts about the TC Electronic Mimiq pedal? It's pretty convincing.
Great video as always. Cheers!
The newer Neural DSP plugins have a doubler, and Otto Audio II II II II has a neat way of doing a stereo experience as well. I wouldn't use them for a mix personally I would rather double track, but it's cool to play around with.
So far none of them sounded great to me
yes, but that's not the same thing as there are still phase issues. Stereo on amp plugins mostly is for L/R hard panned busses.
The whole point of this video and this trick is to not sound like those doublers because they’re not very great due to the nature of how double tracking works.
The doublers these days are really effective, but they still usually sound bad in mono, in my experience. I use Line 6 Helix and the Double Take effect for my IEMs and it's killer, but I wouldn't use it for a final recording.
Imagine using this technique to beef up an already double tracked recording. I gotta try this.
Exactly what I was thinking, quick way to quad track for demos and such. I'm also thinking with amp sims and such, thinking out loud maybe record the one DI on two tracks, process one on as normal, flip the phase on the other unprocessed DI and send it to a third track where it gets processed, and flip the phase of that processed track? Will need to do some experiments!
While writing the song I always use main guitar track on the left and copy of track with short delay with floating (randomly oscillated) delay time around 15-30ms on the right.
Works well!
But when the song is ready, I always re-record double track from scratch.
Isn't that basically what a chorus pedal does? I guess the pedals will detune the guitar slightly too.
@@OfFormerFame basically, chorus does same trick, but I guess it has certain LFO shapes that make movements cycling.
My idea was to get random delay time at each time point.
Im using this trick in my axefx3 for live use, input split into 2 signals. The second signal runs through a phase reverse filterblock, then amp-cab and then again a phase reverse filter block. Works wonderful!
I actually had this idea years ago and messed with it a bit but I didn't flip polarity twice like that...CLEVER!! Going to give it a shot!!
I tried to do it in the box, as he doesn't explain the way I figured it out. I just duplicated the DI track. In the new track, I used the Gain plugin in Logic just to flip the phase (you can use any plugin that can flip phase, doesn't matter at all). After this, I put an ampsim (BDH 5169) slightly different that the one I have on the other channel (BDH 66o6). And after this one, another Gain plugin to flip the phase again. It works. Not as good as the real amp way in the video, but definetly way better than the classic "20ms delay" trick, specially when you listen in mono. It's an easy way to do it if for some reason you can't make a real reamp
thanx for sharing this "in the box" process 👍
tried this yesterday, but unfortunately it sounded terrible :-/
This depends on the asymmetry of the distortion. Really odd that the plugins do not emulate that. It can have quite a big effect how distortion sounds.
100% this
I`ve tried this recently, Reamping the Left channel like normal and then Reamping the Right channel with activation of phasing (180* button on the reamp Box). it`s an amazing trick! I used to do this with IRs too. Thank you for sharing.
Finally someone talking about the phase problems between panned double track guitars. Thank you!
what phase problems?
This is probably the principle behind the Otto and the Neural DSP doublers
Also Disruptor's and McRoklin's, but more refined and in the case of Disruptor more stereo options.
Check Nugen's Stereoizer and Monofilter, they are The Stereo/Mono Power!
Awesome recording tip!!! I’ll have to try it out for sure!!
I must say tho.. I’m surprised no one mentioned Voxengo Stereotouch (ofc I haven’t checked ALL the comments , so maybe someone did) .
I got turned on to it by Glenn Fricker. While it may not be the most mono friendly way to fatten up guitars, it certainly sounds good and It’s been a life saver for me when I get DI tracks that haven’t been double tracked! It has sounded very decent every time I did use it and I’ve even used it on lead (which aren’t traditionally double tracked) to give tracks a bit of extra flair.
Cheers!!!
Cool trick! It's easy to work out why it does the trick:
- Asymmetric clipping from all the preamp components would affect different parts of the DI signal when the phase is flipped.
- As mentioned, the speaker would react differently when the phase is flipped.
So given these two components we could even find out more permutations, although I guess they could result in a more phase-cancelling output signal in mono.
whoa that's so cool! I wouldn't have thought of this, but it makes sense that the reversed sound of a speaker going backward doesn't quite match up to the sound of it moving forward. And since the signal isn't perfectly symmetrical there's probably a lot going on in the amp electronics too. I definitely want to try it out. I wonder if something similar could be achieved with phase rotation, and I'll have to experiment with that. Super cool stuff!
10:33 This effect (one side flipped) is really nice for delay trails, as in send a copy of your signal with 1 side DC-flipped into a delay. I like also having a second, longer but lower delay with L/R channels swapped, gives this really deep and wiiiide sounding stereo effect on the delay!!
This technique was invented by Ryan. His channel is Creative Sound Lab. The other guy briefly mentioned his name but he really deserves the credit for this.
I think there have been quite a few people using this technique (check the comments) but that’s the reason why Ulf mentions him. It’s where he learned this.
But it’s not about who invented this, it’s about spreading the information so more people can use this!
Ive been doing this with quad tracking. I record two separate guitar parts, flip the polarity and phase, and use the flipped tracks to quad track
Very interesting, thank you!
I'm gonna try this for playing live with my band.
I'm the only guitarist on a Neurald QC, playing in stereo with different amp(sim)s and IRs for L/R already.
FOH is stereo, but our in ears are not, so mono compatibility is very important.
The thing is with AI, it should be easily possible to create realistic double tracks. It would literally be the same technique as vocal synthesis. I'm surprised no one has done this yet.
Not literally
Right time, pitch and tone for the real thing (hit the string slightly different it might give you slightly different tone not just the amp). Of course to simulate the time part a second or third voice can only be delayed. You would need a time machine to put it before the original unless you shift the second on a separate track. The other problem is that the differences in those things often happen for human reasons not because a robotic LFO or even a computerized random function decides to change the time, pitch or tone. Like a singer who might be slightly inconsistent on a high note at the top of their range but it might be slightly flat or sharp or right on at any given time but all because it's hard to reach and takes concentration not just randomly.
This method is really good to at least get some semblance of stereo. The amp with a mic on it might give a slight delay. Not only because the mic is a few millimeters away from the cone but because it is mechanical in nature. if you went out into an amp and then direct in some way it might not have the same result.
If you could pair this technique with using a TC Electronic MIMIQ Pedal I bet that would enhance the effect. Definitely keeping this trick on hand just in case, so cool 🤯
Yeah! That could be a great combination
I find the Mimiq is great, but will occasionally throw in an audible time delay change that causes the spectral balance to shift. It's sort of like the Haas effect flipped to mono. You can hear a phase shift that stays static for a bit until it happens again. Maybe this would help, but I'd still be concerned that when it decides to change the delay it would make an audible shift again.
I will try it and let tou know if it's better.
I've tried it with the Mimiq and well, it's sounds like with the Mimiq. All the things the Mimiq is doing with the phase and the delay and tuning is messing too much with the original signal to make a significant difference. So, re-amping with the Mimiq produce the same result with the inverting phase trick or not.
😮 gotta try this next time!
How would this be done with amp sims and cab IR's? Maybe if you flip the phase of the DI, then flip of the phase of the amp sim signal before it hits the cab IR???
🤯 Definitely trying this! I often run live sound and record the full band multitracked (with DI's) with one guitar player.
That's exactly where this trick comes into play!
for fat rhythm guitars nothing beats good old double tracking. for sounds rather in the higher frequency range (guitar solos, synth arps) plugins can work quite nice. I frequently use the plugin 'wider'. in its latest version you can set it up such that it keeps lower frequencies in the middle while pushing the higher frequencies to the sides.
I was hopeful that this trick would work with a Kemper, but alas it does not. You definitely need a real amp for this. Digital amps reproduce the phase inversion perfectly, they're just doing math at the sample level after all. You need the "weirdness" of analog electronics to introduce the minute differences in the signal. Thanks for sharing this great tip anyway!
Usually we can cut the track into phrases and somehow rearrange it to get same notes from other places. And get an almost true double. If we have the time and desire to do it
That’s stupid simple and smart. Guess it all depends on how repetitive the riff is. If it’s the same thing over and over, you could just have the 2nd track play a bar behind or ahead. Or if the riff is complicated, layer it when it comes up again later in the song.
Otto Audio‘s amp sim called „I I I I“ or „eleven eleven“ has a mono/stereo mode that somewhat emulates a double tracked sound and it sounds quiet good in my opinion.
Such a simple concept, but it's brilliant.
That’s an awesome take! Thank you guys! I’ve used a few dif methods with decent results but I gotta try this one.
that's really really cool!!! Thanks for sharing.
thanx 🤘
hoping for a another video showing how to do this with amp sims 👌
There’s no difference. What do you mean exactly?
@@KohleAudioKult i tried to do this in cubase and must've done something wrong, cause it sounded terrible.
so i mean a tutorial, for all of us who don't have real amps might be needed (or it's just me making some mistake, or i'm misunderstanding the process).
it would definately be appreciated, that's for sure.
this is what i did on my inserts (on the duplicated track):
1 - duplicated the guitar di track.
2 - added pro q3 and clicked on the phase button to change it.
3 - added an amp sim with a good sound.
4 - added pro q3 and clicked on the phase button again to reverse it.
5 - panned both guitar tracks left/ right and played the tracks.
6 - had to stop playback after a few seconds, cause it was too painful to listen to.
@@MrPaperdude1 No mistake on your side. Like Uld said, this works better wth real amps but you might wanna try a few different amp sims. The closer it is to the real thing the better it will work.
But why don't you check out my video about the Mimiq pedal? that was the real game-changer!
I was wondering a while ago if it is actually possible to fix the problem of too few guitar tracks, then thinking about how to turn dual tracks into quad guitars. Thanks for the answer, both of you! I definitely have to try this, maybe even just as a lazy solution for demos and sending the tracks through an amp sim.
Here's another dead simple "trick" to use in some cases: Let's say verse 1 and verse 2 have similar guitar parts, ideally identical. Or chorus 1 and chorus 2. And all is played with a click. In that case you can use the guitar part from the 2nd verse to double the 1st verse and vice versa. Boom, the song is double tracked 🤟
@@mtbsieppo That's true! Unless you're lazy like me and you copy-pasted those parts... 😅
@@SimonKranzDrums haha so true 😄
What a great idea, thank you!
I've been doing this for years since daw's came out and made it easy to do: Most times just copying a guitar track, offsetting it to the other guitar track in the grid by nanoseconds to taste and panning it completely opposite of the other, and adjusting tone to taste. Reamping is fine too, especially if you really want to get something really tonally different in the other guitar. Cool stuff!
The stereo effect obtained through delaying one of the tracks sounds completely different - much more artificial. The essence of this trick is to use the physical characteristics of the analog path - mainly the work of the suspension in the speaker, to produce fully random irregularities in the signal. We are re-amplifying the same signal twice, but the speaker works in a different regime each time.
Yes! That’s what makes the difference. An additional can be used too though
@@KohleAudioKult Absolutely! No hard rules here but one: Whatever sounds good but remember, you're still trying to fatten up ONE guitar player. When it starts sounding like more than one guy is playing, you've kinda lost the plot.
I have this amp sim AHM 5050 v3 by Audio Assault and it has quite good doubler in it. Sometimes I use only the doubler with different ampsims. I think the feature might be present in other plugins from that company as well.
I just tried this last night with a track I'm working on to turn 2 guitars into 4 and the results are phenomenal. I use real amplifiers, but with a load box/attenuator and cab sim IR plugins instead of a real mic and cabinet. I just wanted to reply back here to report that in this scenario it works great. I used a different amplifier for the extra tracks than I did on the originals and it sounds HUGE. Thanks for sharing this cool idea!!!
Great to hear that!
Have you tried the audio assault double take plug in? I know about it but havnt used it to know if it works well or not.
Also can you not just feed your guitar into two Amps with different settings using different cabs to get a pair of mono tracks that are different from the same take?
I am justvstarting into the engineering side of making music so maybe I am ignorant of something?
The Mimiq pedal by TC Electronic does the double tracking thing
Yes. Reamping the dame DI with two COMPLETELY different rigs can work. It works even better if you have a RAM heavy plugin on one of the reamps to give you that few ms delay.
Really cool trick, the most important component must be modulations in speaker microphone chain that reacts different to inverted phase
I think I found a better way how to do it with better results. Playing with phase flipping is quite dangerous because reversed phases of the same waveform only produce silence.
So, here is my way:
1. Use a PITCH-SHIFTER on the channel with your DI track and set it to +3 semitones. Export it as a new track (call it "DI right" for example) and remove a PITCH-SHIFTER.
2. Import this new track into a new channel and apply a second PITCH-SHIFTER of a different brand to it and set it to -3 semitones (different brands of pitch-shifters have different algorithms, so you will get a better result than with two pitch-shifters of the same brand).
3. Pan the first channel with your original DI track 100% LEFT and the second channel with the "DI right" track 100% RIGHT.
4. (Optional) For better results, you can now apply an LFO to both channels on a PITCH-SHIFTER ranging from -1 to -10 cents (3% of LFO strength) on the left channel and +1 to +10 cents on the right channel (the difference in ranges must not be more than 20 cents due to audible detuning!!!).
And/or use a TIME ADJUSTMENT DELAY ranging from +3 to +7 samples on the right channel (don't shift tracks by milliseconds, just samples!!!)
Voila!!! You are done...😀
You can hear how it sounds here:
th-cam.com/video/RcXVjxKRzVg/w-d-xo.html
WOW! This is real!!!
mmm. You can hear shhh in the stereo, but tones are still in mono! so key thing is microtiming differences. But still it's good for solo or complex things. You're right - nothing beats real time double tracking
Correct!
You can furthermore experiment with delays, EQ and different amp settings to improve this. But of course the vs “real thing”
still wins!
Good trick Ulf. Subbed.
There's a plugin that does the doubling of a single DI pretty fantastically that's been out for a bit. I can't recall the name rn but it isn't that phasey chorusey fake bs that most plugs do (haas)
It's a legit and tight double. No phasey, no cheap chorusey artifacts. I'll post it's name when I get home, can;t recall rn.
Which plugin is it? 🥳
@@KohleAudioKult Oh shit my bad. audio assault has a doubler that sounds great. it isnt bundled with every product they sell though. I got mine in a 3 amp bundle called The Classic.
Ive been trying for ages to record just one guitar track and make it stereo with a mic on an amp cause I fkn hate double tracking. It always sounds weird and funky with chorus etc. Cant wait to give this a try !!
I've done it with some pedals for live rigs and it works.
Genius trick! Thanks for the tip!!
I put the lime into the coconut?
Through my pro tools ultimate with Lynx Aurora 16 A/D converter It almost sounds more like 3 tracks where the one in the middle is like 5 db louder than the L/R guitars than normal stereo. Reminds me of a m/s stereo setup. I guess some m/s eq like Epure can make it more even if boosting the highs on the sides. I also tried it through my Maor Appelbaum Stereo Mastering unit Pele Box 2 running left as it is but flipped the phase in on the right and back after in the daw. If adding stereo chorus on a mono clean guitar it sounds slightly wider almost like a stereo input.
Holy shit, this is amazing. Using this for my projects from now on!
Something that works pretty well too if the riff is repeating 2 times is cutting it in 2 parts and on the second track you start with part 2 and finish with part 1, this way it's exactly like 2 performances were captured
That's a good trick as long as you have enough material. There are usually always a few sections that can't be copied.
Incredible, never thougt it could sound so good.
A few things that can take one performance and make it doubled but sound good:
Otto Audio II II II II
STL Tones Amphub with its doubler effect
TH-U with its Space Machine effect
I don’t know the Otto but gotta disagree on the rest! They don’t sound natural to my ears.
@@KohleAudioKult It's an amazing amp sim with a lot of options to craft a cool tone. It doesn't model one amp in particular and has a unique mono to stereo mode that i presume a very similar trick to what is shown in this video.
@@KohleAudioKultwhat's your take on audio assault amp sim.?
I got a pretty decent result with the Grindstein and an offset of 0.86. What work even beter was bypassed the Grindstein part of the plugin and using an HM-2 pedal plugin in front. With the same cabs and settings you get a good enough result that doesn't f-up your track in mono. So great for quick demos or thickening up.
Years ago i did something like that, a live recording band, amp with mic and DI, but i used amp simulator on direct audio (no reamp). Worked ok. But real amps are another world!!
I use two different amp models in Amplitube 5 hard panned LR for live and it sounds pretty good and super wide )
@SpectreSoundStudios Glenn!!!!! This is crazy!!! What a great idea
Congratulations to letting matter and anti-matter sit side by side without annihilating each other!
Hey Kohle, have you messed with the TC Electronic Mimiq? It’s not software but I use this live all the time as a solo guitarist and get a pretty huge sound. I imagine you could use this into two inputs in an interface and it could sound good?
I gotta try that!
So from what I gather reading about it, the mimiq doesn't only just delay the dubs to seperate them (which would only give you that chorusy wash sound) but also varies the delay time slightly with an envelope or something to give inconsistencies... does that sound correct?
@@RLDWEBER you’re correct! That’s why I got mine. Feels much more “real” than simply a basic repeated delay. It randomizes the delay ms
@@ADHDjent thanks for the reply
@@ADHDjent I ended up picking one up and couldn't be happier. I think if I had to pick only one pedal to keep it would be the mimiq.
I have used different effect chains and different cabs and mics settings from various plugins and impulse responses to create a stereo sound, but this technique is far better. Still though, either technique or both can be used to thicken each mono track for quad tracking. I never knew that phase shifting the DI track and back again would create such a natural sounding stereo image. I will try this technique on vocal tracks too or any other mono source.
Using different cabs and mics is not gonna make it stereo. Pitch Shifting and a Chorus will do, but not in a natural way
If we listen closely to the stereo image created by this trick though, it actually sounds like a strong mono image reinforced with some extra stereo qualities on the sides, but it doesn't sound like a double tracked guitar. It would be interesting to modify this trick as follows:
Send the clean DI hard panned left to a Bus, and send the polarity reversed DI hard panned right to the same Bus, and then use a mid/side processor on that Bus to reduce the centre information. Then send each side of that processed bus to it's own amp and reverse the polarity on the second mic pre as in the video here. I'm guessing the result still wouldn't be quite right.
Any tips/suggestions how to combine two different amps (as two guitar players are in the band)? I read that 80s Metal, Thrash, Death mostly combined two amps like an Marshall and a Peavey two get a more layered sound.
Wow, such a simple change to usual signal chain and how good of a result 🤘
I always did it with the haas effect. Since I´m just a hobbyist, "good is good enough" to get it out the door. My question would be: What happens if you use different amps or same amp but different IRs? Are the tracks still too similar even though the amps/IRs convert it to something different? Cheers!
There is still a somewhat of a hollow sound but you can still get some good results
I use an AB/Y Splitter Box to connect 1 guitar signal to 2 amps, 1 panned Left, the other panned Right, or to record 1 amp & 1 DI simultaneously.
I can then easily ReAmp the DI Track whilst also using the Amped Track on the other side.
Too easy, mate!! : D
Aaahhhh!! I like the idea of changing the Polarity on the way in to the Amp Sim or Amp on the 2nd Track then changing the Polarity back after the Amp/Amp Sim.
I am going to have to try this trick, as THAT is something I never considered.
So, That is the main trick to it, then. Hmmmmmm...
Ok so the concept of Stereo is more complex than most would at first assume. So if Im using two mics, an SM57 & Royer R-121, naturally I would record the Dry performance in Mono thru a DI box. Then Reamping I capture each mic on its own MONO Channel, because if I capture both in stereo on one channel/track, panning either way hard right or left would eliminate one mic. So I presume whenever using two mics you would never record them on a stereo track because you would defeat the purpose of panning. If anything it would be more of a blend knob. So upon following this technique of Reversing the polarity of the same Dry Performance going into the amp for Reamping and flipping it back coming back into the DAW through your Preamp this would leave me with 4 Mono tracks. Two mics of the same performance, and two mics of the same performance phase flipped and flipped back. So I would Pan the first two Mics hard left and the next 2 Mics hard right. So I would still be in Stereo despite using 4 Mono tracks. Or would this be considered Quad tracking since after all there are 4 channels? Which brings up another good point. If this is so, it means whenever you have two different guitar parts and are using two different mics for recording a guitar speaker you are technically Quad tracking. Or does this apply only to 4 separate performances? You see where the word Stereo can seam a bit misleading. And lastly one final vital consideration. We were taught that Quad-tracking proper, i.e., recording 4 separate performances, would give us a fuller wider sound because of the slight variances between performances yielding a fatter thicker sound. Now the idea is to create a tighter sound? So I suppose asking which is better depends upon which suits your song better. So Fatter doesn't always necessarily mean better. However, in the end you still recommend slipping the tracks a few milliseconds apart to get that fatter thicker sound anyway. So why not just use separate performances? Whats the point of even using the same performance for a tighter sound in the first place lol The other side of that is that we are human not machines, and it seems we even prefer slight variations vs quantizing everything precisely to a grid, even though modern classical composers do quantize a lot. Id think if you are playing faster more technical music quantizing would still sound better. However my point is, since we are only human and slight imperfections in performance is only expected, mixing it with a different performance would smooth out the imperfections (while creating that richer fatter sound) whereas using the same performance would only accentuate where the imperfections were for that first take. The thing that's a bit frustrating is with every new idea thats another experiment you have to compare to all the prior. Its a lot of work before deciding upon which approach/technique to even use. I suppose to an audio engineer more options mean more tools in your arsenal to mix and match. But when you're also the Musician/Composer things are already too time consuming without making production more laborious and tedious. But Im not saying anything that we aren't all already having to combat every day lol I guess thats why they call it blood sweat and tears and why we are all mostly starving artists lol The best advice is to experiment with all options, and just because one option is better for one song doesn't necessarily mean it will be for the next, but experience may narrow things down a bit. We are recording METAL after all, so there will be some preferences in the tricks of that trade. But right now Im leaning towards (since Im using two mics and composing mostly two guitar parts) Quad tracking, but utilizing the phase flipping technique in one performance, for a smoother fatter effect. Like this I won't have to mess with the timing between tracks. I play really fast shred stuff, so I need things to align as close as possible. Sucks though, I would love to save time and not have to constantly play everything over and over and just use the same performance. But since there are two different guitar parts I'll still have to play two performances anyway. Its only Quad tracking on the technicality of using two mics per performance = 4 Mono tracks. Two panned hard left, and the other two Hard right. Funny how its called Stereo despite using only Mono tracks lol Correct me if Im mistaken anywhere Bud. Love your channel, this new phase shifting procedure is very exciting, thanx for another great revelation Brotha
Curious to know how this reacts when reamping into axefx. Gonna try it
Tell us how it works!
TC Electronic Mimiq pedal does exactly this, been out for almost a decade, dont know how it works, but it achieves the same effect
I'll try it!
What is the cleverest way to flip the phase on the way back if you don’t have a mixer?
Every preamp usually has a phase switch. Otherwise can you do it inside the DAW
Cool, i'm gonna try this! I've used ADT from Waves in the past to fake a double guitar track. ADT basically pitches and delays a track at a rate against the original, If you carefully set this up before re-amping you can get believable double tracked guitars that perfectly collapse into mono.
10:46 ehhh I mean yeah it is doing the same thing that Van Halen did in the 90s with an Eventide rack unit by having a mono track in the middle and letting the doubler spread L and R like a delay effect does. You can still hear the mono track in this song. Nothing beats real stereo with 2 panned tracks of different takes.
Besides plugins or pedals or reamping a fi output i remember that a alreaxy amp recorded track could be hard panned left amd right, one side switched in reverse polarity. Done that add one of the tracks in the middle for m9no compatibility
That wont work really.
How about TC Electronic Mimiq Doubler? Love this box
A sound engineer showed me how to do this 15 years ago. He simply hard panned the same recording left and right and have the 2 tracks out of time of a few ms. Not perfect but that did the trick.
Not even close to being the same thing.
that's what most people do, but is a hell of phase issues and sound crappy on mono
How much do you like the Bomblet on Amps?
An additional effect for the real amps would be that the small piece of atmosphere, which the sound waves travel through on the 2nd reamping, is uncorrelated with the atmosphere on the 1st reamping. And double tracking is, after all, about having similar, but completely uncorrelated takes
To "stereoify" mono overdriven guitars I personally use Microshift. It's great.
Microshift is nice for widening. But it doesn't work for what we are doing here.
@@KohleAudioKult Absolutely correct.
Waves reel tape does a decent job of making a double. Revoice, i think, does something similar.
that new berried alive berry amp plugin has a prettty cool double track simulate feature in its settings !
Wow brilliant, this mmight be a good thing to do for live performances when you only have 1 gtr player, need to amps of course
This is crazy… what I was asking myself: Would this work in a life setup? Like split the signal in your modeler then reverse the phase on one side before the amp and reverse it back after the amp an IR blocks?
It should work if you reverse the phase after the IR. For example on the FOH console. Assuming you don't have an out of phase cab blasting on stage in a small club.
But live it's actually not that important to have a real stereo guitar setup unless you play big stages. And even there it's only important for the folks standing in the center.
Mind blowing! I do follow Ryan but never seen him doing it. What I do sometimes is use baby audio’s plugin that creates random short delays, like an oscilator. It does work with ddoubling a mono track.
So the only stereo component in final sound is even harmonics caused by all nonlinearities. If I understand correctly this means that when you mono-sum results you will have only symmetrical distortion components. It can work good enough, but in certain situations I guess results may vary. For example hard asymmetrical fuzz can be completely ruined. May be good idea will be having a slight time variations at one of the tracks, like some "grid-alignment" stuff. On it's own its not really a good idea, but combining with this phase manipulation technique it should be much better.
Is this possible through line 6 helix?
My mic preamps and mixers do not have polarity/phase switches. Will it work just as well if I flipped the signal coming back in on my DAW?
Sure. Doesn’t matter where you do it. Just make sure you flip it both times.
What about the abbey road adt plugin?
What an awesome trick! I'd imagine with software amp plugins you could probably achieve the same result by making slight differences to the 2nd track like maybe using a different boost pedal or slightly different EQ settings, resonance, cab IR, mic placements, etc.
Now then, how can we apply similar theory to do this with vocals...
Nope! You might think so, but it doesn’t work no matter which amp / cab / mic you use!
That’s exactly what surprised me about this technique.
@@KohleAudioKult Oh I meant still using the phase reversal technique here, but generating a bit more entropy in the 2nd track since software plugins are likely to have a more deterministic output than a hardware amp.
I gave this a try with vocals using an LA2A plugin with light-touch settings in place of an amp, but I don’t think the results were as dramatic. With a vocal cut you may need to do some other things to the 2nd track to add more entropy, slight micro-pitch modulation, maybe a small sample offset. I still think it’s possible to do, just haven’t quite nailed it yet.
Anyway, thanks for this tip it’s a HUGE time saver
Would adding something like a very short reverb, delay, or some other effect alter the harmonics of the DI signal enough? While doing this trick. Also, by short I mean barely perceptible.
EVH's guitar for van Halen was full dry one side and full the other side and did little to no double tracking.
Stereo TC Mimiq and or a torpedo captor x will do this without all the polarity reamping hassle.
Amazing!
There's this guitar VSTI called "Heavier7strings" (virtual instrument, as in it creates a dry guitar signal from MIDI data) that varies the attack times, etc. to get "auto doubling"
I sometimes use "Calf Haas Stereo Enhancer" which is doing decent job in this matter.
I'll check that out! Thanks
@@KohleAudioKult I doubt. It runs in Linux only :) But Two Notes Captor X has such feature as well ("twin tracker" or something like that). There are some videos presenting this feature comparing it to real two tracks and the difference in almost none.