Convert ANY Mono Track Into Stereo The Right Way Every Time!

[Martin Barret]

First off, I had a migraine when I put this together, so my terminology and nomenclature is a little lacking - apologies. PHASE ROTATION is the big miss re terminology - again, sorry.

I present this tutorial as a replacement for the one I can no longer find on YouTube. I've yet to find a technique that rivals this and doesn't mess with the stereo-to-mono imaging (as in volume drops or phasey sounding audio).

SCRUB to 00:02:30 to get to the lesson.

Feel free to critique or criticize this all you want if you're feeling particularly nasty and/or technically arrogant - I have thick skin - but all I can tell y'all is that this works. I have no idea how. "I'm a doctor, not a magician, Jim!" 

I use VERY LITTLE to accomplish the job of stereofying a mono track. LESS IS MORE!

Love to hear if anyone's tried this or will try it and what they think?

[mark skinner]

I downloaded Prefix and tried this yesterday. Very Good results after some tweeking. I found a sweet spot sliding 8ms on the copied guitar track. I did some A/B tests against my best widening plugins , this was a winner.  Thanx .  ms

[Martin Barret]

On 2/10/2025 at 10:43 AM, mark skinner said:

I downloaded Prefix and tried this yesterday. Very Good results after some tweeking. I found a sweet spot sliding 8ms on the copied guitar track. I did some A/B tests against my best widening plugins , this was a winner.  Thanx .  ms

That's great! Thanks for the feedback Mark! 

[David Baay]

On 2/10/2025 at 8:43 AM, mark skinner said:

I downloaded Prefix and tried this yesterday. Very Good results after some tweeking. I found a sweet spot sliding 8ms on the copied guitar track.

I saw your post about this in another thread today, and thought there might be more direct way to do this in Cakewalk/Sonar using the included Channel Tools plugin. I gave it a whirl on a guitar track and it seemed to do the trick:

- Without converting the mono track to dual mono, add a Send to an aux track, leaving it default Postfader.

- Add  Channel Tools to the Aux, Invert the right channel, click the Pre button in the Delay section and enable the Link button in the Delay section.

- Start playback and start turning up the delay.

- Initially the right chanel will be completely nulled by the phase inversion and will fade in as you raise the delay. The stereo image will change pretty radically over a useful range of about 2-20 ms. Above that you start to hear the delay more distinctly but that can be useful up to about 50ms above which it start to become an echo. Adjust the level of the Aux track (or send level) to taste.

In addition to saving time and not having to use 3rd-party plugins, the beauty of this approach is that any edits you make to the original track  are automatically reflected on the Aux track without having to do anything, and the postfader send ensures the levels remain proportional. But if you want to EQ or add FX independently, you can make the send Prefader and group the track volumes or whatever works.

There might also be value in unlinking the left and right delays and tweaking them individually or in playing with the Mid-Side controls and channel width/panning,

You migth also consider creating a "Stereoizer" bus and sending multiple tracks to it (the same can be done with an Aux track of course).

[mark skinner]

Thanks , @David Baay I'll give that a try.

 I've actually never worked with channel tools . My mixes are normally so busy I don't do stereo guitars. I get the results I want using seperate L/R mono tracks. I keep planning on doing a simple single guitar/vocal song but , it always eludes me not knowing how to properly treat the guitar.  I used to do a lot of solo gigs. I hope it didn't sound as bad as it does now when I attempt one ..     ms

[Martin Barret]

On 3/22/2025 at 1:47 PM, David Baay said:

I saw your post about this in another thread today, and thought there might be more direct way to do this in Cakewalk/Sonar using the included Channel Tools plugin. I gave it a whirl on a guitar track and it seemed to do the trick:

- Without converting the mono track to dual mono, add a Send to an aux track, leaving it default Postfader.

- Add  Channel Tools to the Aux, Invert the right channel, click the Pre button in the Delay section and enable the Link button in the Delay section.

- Start playback and start turning up the delay.

- Initially the right chanel will be completely nulled by the phase inversion and will fade in as you raise the delay. The stereo image will change pretty radically over a useful range of about 2-20 ms. Above that you start to hear the delay more distinctly but that can be useful up to about 50ms above which it start to become an echo. Adjust the level of the Aux track (or send level) to taste.

In addition to saving time and not having to use 3rd-party plugins, the beauty of this approach is that any edits you make to the original track  are automatically reflected on the Aux track without having to do anything, and the postfader send ensures the levels remain proportional. But if you want to EQ or add FX independently, you can make the send Prefader and group the track volumes or whatever works.

There might also be value in unlinking the left and right delays and tweaking them individually or in playing with the Mid-Side controls and channel width/panning,

You migth also consider creating a "Stereoizer" bus and sending multiple tracks to it (the same can be done with an Aux track of course).

Just Tried it. IT WORKETH!! Thanks mucho! Okay, was trying it some more and then (for fun) I introduced my secret weapon (ARX ONE) onto the master buss to offset any hint of out-of-phase stuff and WOW! Nice tone and spread. VERY COOL! I use ARX ONE on everything I do stereo to keep the mono compatibility of a mix from top to bottom. Lifesaver and a free one at that! 🙂

Edited Wednesday at 01:13 AM by Martin Barret