Topic: Duplicating audio across channels - make it sound more "stereo-like"?

[terabyte23]

I am working with an audio track from a video.  The audio is in one channel only, so I duplicated it across channels.  It sounds a lot better, but it would be great to have more stereo presence.  What tricks can I use to achieve this?  I delayed one of the channels a few milliseconds and that seemed to help a bit.  Thanks for any advice.

[if_then_else]

I am working with an audio track from a video.  The audio is in one channel only, so I duplicated it across channels.  It sounds a lot better, but it would be great to have more stereo presence.  What tricks can I use to achieve this?  I delayed one of the channels a few milliseconds and that seemed to help a bit.  Thanks for any advice.

There are some plugins for audacity which offer a "stereo spread" effect.
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Download_Nyquist_Plug-ins

However, I don't know if it's a good idea tempering with the original audio track.

[mr qpl]

delay effects on one channel, also try differing graphic eq on each one seperately. As with all audio editing, saving the original files and many times thru the process as different file names is a good plan.......if you run into what you think sounds really good, please share your methods....

[friday]

Hey! I recognize you!

In your case I think your best option is just what you did, because you made it better and haven't lost any of the original audio. Around 10ms delay seems to be good. You can also try multi-tap delays too, but they can easily just make things worse.

The EQ advice someone gave will work, but will result in an unbalanced sound (well, that's the thought isn't it?). I don't think this method sounds very good with headphones, but better on my stereo.

There are stereo widener plugins that work pretty well, but only if your recording is already stereo. I've tried one of them (Waves S1) with a delayed mono source and it did not improve the sound but only seemed to add mid-range.

[Patrick]

Hey! I recognize you!

In your case I think your best option is just what you did, because you made it better and haven't lost any of the original audio. Around 10ms delay seems to be good. You can also try multi-tap delays too, but they can easily just make things worse.

The EQ advice someone gave will work, but will result in an unbalanced sound (well, that's the thought isn't it?). I don't think this method sounds very good with headphones, but better on my stereo.

There are stereo widener plugins that work pretty well, but only if your recording is already stereo. I've tried one of them (Waves S1) with a delayed mono source and it did not improve the sound but only seemed to add mid-range.

A multi-tap delay is not what is needed here at all.  We're talking single delays of around than 20ms (anywhere past about 35-40 will start to give you a slapback sound, and will most certainly cause some severe phase cancellation.)

Adding some differentiating EQ's to each channel is a good idea and one that I haven't thought of until this thread.  This will give you the impression that the source was more "stereo" than before, since what you're hearing right now is a mono recording set to a stereo output.  Make sure that the EQ's are not drastically different, and don't cut/boost frequencies much over/under than 3db.   Good Luck!

[terabyte23]

Hey Friday

Thanks everyone.  I think it actually sounds pretty good using a slight delay on one channel.  The differing EQ sounds like a neat approach, I might try that sometime when I have a better source (the audio from this video is not great to begin with).