Why the Haas Trick Fails (And Better Ways to Mix Wide)

Welcome back to Mix Sessions and the second video focusing on stereo. So, let's just recap what we covered in the first video. Mixing a mono compatible stereo mix is not easy. We need to cater for people with headphones And of course a lot of people use mono devices today. We need to cater for both.

Some people have decided to pretty much mix mono, to remain mono compatible. I don't think that's the wisest idea. You can have both. You can have a wide, fat stereo mix and a beautifully well balanced mono mix hidden on the inside.

So, today I'd like to jump into a couple of stereo tricks, and the very first one that I need to bring up is probably the most popular one on YouTube. If you search for the Haas delay trick, you will find hundreds of videos, and I just sum up what they all say in a nutshell. So, you start with a sound like this, where we have now a drums, bass.

I only have one rhythm guitar going at the moment. Let's have a quick listen to how that sounds.

Cool. Beautiful, beautiful, but it's dead mono, and it's not wide enough, so the trick, according to the Haas legend, is as follows: to simply duplicate your track. Then, we just simply take the files on the track, uh, like so, and then use the shuffle command, or shift command I should say, and make it later.

And now it depends on what video you watch. A lot of people say eight or 10 milliseconds, some people say 20. So, let's just type in 10 milliseconds and shuffle everything later by 10 milliseconds, and then we simply pan it hard left right, and here we go.

And immediately that sound's stereo. However, it is a bit of a lame trick and it has consequences, and I need to talk to you about that because a good sound is not just what sounds good in the moment. You also need to consider any negative side effects, and this has plenty. So, let's just double check this one more time.

Here's the guitar in mono

Okay. And now with the Haas delay

Listen very carefully If you've got headphones on, did you notice that it actually pulls the localisation towards one side? It's no longer sounding like left and right equally. It's actually pulling it a bit one way. That's one negative side effect. By introducing a Haas delay, you actually pan it unintentionally, I guess.

Uh, but okay, that might be acceptable, but here's the big one. Here is the kicker. Check the guitar sound one more time, um, as it sounded in mono

Okay, and now we take the host delay and we simulate how a Haas delay would sound to people who listen in mono. Maybe just from the previous location for that. Longer sustained notes will bring this out better.

Stereo. Mono. Gnarly. This is how phase sounds. It's called comb-filter. and it happens when you have a mirror image, a direct copy. Means same frequency and same amplitude, but one is delayed in time, and this is not beautiful whatsoever.

Let me be very clear with you, I never use the Haas effect unless I have a very good reason to do so, because if I weigh up the pros and cons, to me, this is unacceptable.

I don't do it. I don't like it. I don't use it.

So, is there a better way? And of course there is, and you will be surprised how easy it is to get your guitars nice and wide. So, I am going to get rid of this one. Instead of duplicating my guitar and using Haas, delay tricks, instead I simply double track them, which means: in recording, I actually, send the guitar player back to the live room and we do it again, and record a second take on this.

So this is how the one guitar sounded in mono. And now we are going to add the second take to it and let's just pan this hard left right.

Here it is in stereo. And here in mono. Stereo. Mono. So here's the thing. Uh, sounds really wide, panned hard left, right, and you don't need to go as far.

But once we hit the mono button, it sounds better. It sounds more like a normal guitar, and that is simply because a double-tracked guitar, where a guitar player plays for a second time, has a very slight timing differences, very slight human pitch differences, and of, of course amplitude differences as well.

So it's not exactly the same. That means it does cancel sometimes, but what cancels constantly changes, and that means it's not a predictable comb-filtery pattern. It sounds more natural, and it translates to mono really well. Good. So that's what we would wanna do, re-track your guitars. Let's move on to the next problem.

Later in the song, I have a lead guitar, and that's a good section of the song. I'll show you quickly how that sounds. Here it is.

Cool. Alright. I've got the rhythm guitars a bit low and level at the moment, but let's just see what we can do with a lead guitar. So, at this point, uh, I'll give it to you in solo. Great performance. Love the player. Uh, let's listen one more time

So, as you can see, I've got a slight echo on there, an eighth note. Let's just bring this up a little bit. Means a bit more echo, and I would like to also filter this down a bit. I want to take out... it's too much. Maybe something like about, you know, three to 4K.

Okay, I start to like that. So however, it is not very stereo at all, so let's just investigate this further with our two bus CONTROL. So, on the correlation meter it's still on the mono-side and the minor differences that we do get is actually probably mainly coming from the reverb. So we need to get more stereo out of it and more of the statement lead guitar sound. And the trick that I wanna show you for that is to leave the lead guitar itself exactly as it is.

So at this point, the dry signal is coming through the solo ribbon microphone channel, and the effects are right here. So this is the, uh, lead effects, which is currently the echo. And to make the echo nice and thick and wide, there is a range of different tricks. Today, I just wanna show you one that I really love, and we need to go into multi mono plugins. For that, we find the pitch, and in here is pitch number two, which is a dual mono pitch shifting tool. You can also use the stereo one, which has a left and right side. Doesn't matter. Same, same. So, and now I'm taking the link off so that we can alternate the left and the right hand side separately. So on the left side, I'm now tuning it down by 5 cents, which means the echo is slightly outta pitch on the left channel, and on the right hand side, we bring it up by 5 cents.

Left side, minus five. Right side, plus five. Let's check this out and see how that sounds.

Oh yeah, it's really coming together. It's a real statement right now. It gives it the thick, wide sound, that you want from lead guitars. So the next thing that I really like to do to get it nice and wide is, of course, add a little bit of reverb. However, I'm not adding reverb to the actual lead guitar itself.

Instead, it only leads to the delay effect. However, then I open up another send, which drives the echo effect into reverb. In other words, the lead guitar has no reverb on it, but I'm adding reverb to the echo, and that sounds like this.

Oh yeah! Cool. Look, I'm full of tricks like this. I've got a three hour packed workshop with tricks just like this ready and scheduled for you On this note, the next video that I'm gonna do is a Q and A. So, if you've got any questions about stereo or the workshop, in specific, reach out.

Shoot me an email, post on socials, and I will answer all the questions that you have. And before we get there, let me just drop one more announcement. I just decided to add one extra bonus to the workshop. Everybody who signs up and joins me for three hours of condensed stereo tricks, just like you saw, will also get a unique one-on-one session with me after the workshop.

So if you've got any mixes you work on, you can take the information from the workshop back home, then you can work on it and bring it back, and you and I have another session where we can then speak, just you and I, and, uh, I can give you some more pointers.

So just added it to the workshop. If that's something for you, definitely check it out, and I'll see you again for the next video where I'll be answering questions about stereo mixing and the workshop.

Thanks for watching.