Guitar stereo splitter - MN3007, MN3207, PT2399 ...

[uli]

Hi guys,
I suppose you know the trick in the recording when you don't want to double the track; you take a copy of it, and you delay it by around 10ms and pan the original and the delayed copy to sides of the mix, and you have nice left-right stereo sound. I want to create the same effect for live performances when I am alone with one guitar in the band. I created one circuit using PT2399, but around 30ms is too much. However, the stereo effect was nice and worked almost as I wanted.

So, can you suggest to me a short echo circuit where I just remove feedback and create two outputs - one from just the input buffer (or directly from input) and a second delayed around 10ms - MN3007 or MN3207 are preferred because I have them.

I suppose I would put the box as last in the chain between the pedalboard's output and two returns of two amplifiers.

Thanks for help
Uli

[StephenGiles]

Better to use an old, most probably free now, version of Adobe Audition!

[uli]

You are probably responding to a different thread because I cannot imagine how to involve Adobe software in my live rig. But thanks anyway.

[Mark Hammer]

Thomeque drafted and posted a relatively simple circuit in 2010 for producing thru-zero flanging.  That effect, you'll remember, relies on the "dry" signal being briefly delayed, such that the modulated delay signal can actually move "ahead" of it in time.  The circuit  can produce a fixed delay of up to 8msec, although I imagine it can be a smidgen longer by changing one capacitor.  Here is the MN3007 and MN3207 version.  There are toner transfer patterns for each if you're interested.  Much credit to Thomeque for such a great act of forum citizenship.

[Rodgre]

I am posting this, fully aware of the fact that it's a "get off my lawn" post, so maybe just let me vent, but don't bother reading or commenting on this. I already know I sound like an old man griping about "in my day..."  With that said, you might want to skip down to below the separation line where I might have some useful thoughts about how to go about this technique.

Here we go...

Since the dawn of very affordable and infinitely-optioned DAW-based recording, it's been easier for people who don't really understand the way that sound works and why we have and haven't done certain things a certain way for many decades of recording. Of course, there a so many ways that one can accomplish the same task, and as long as the task is accomplished, that really should be all that matters. With that said, though, I feel like sometimes people new to recording will start habits that the forefathers who art in heaven, George Martin be thy name, have worked their way through and figured out that there are reasons NOT to do things a certain way.

I have seen and heard about people doing this "copy a track and move the file back and pan them out in stereo" trick for quite a while and I can't exactly figure out why it triggers me so much. I have been obsessed with making guitars stereo since I first listened to a Rush album in headphones when I was in jr. high school in the 1700s so I know of this quest very well. I have done all kinds of experiments and learned tricks, developed tricks I thought I was inventing, only to realize that I was just mimicking some other device was already commonplace. One trick I have never liked was to just delay one channel off the other by a few milliseconds in recording (live is another story, which I will explain later). Doing that does a couple of things that my ears don't like: one is that it shifts the image of the guitar to the side that isn't delayed so it will always sound like it's "pulling" to that side. The more you delay the other channel, the further toward the dry side the imaging pulls. That goes against my personal love of a true stereo guitar that sounds like it's all around me, not just panned to one side (even though the sound of the guitar is in both channels, the imaging makes it still feel like it's pulled to one side). The other thing that my ears don't like is unwanted phase cancelation. Maybe your song will never be played in mono on some AM radio station like was a possibility back in the stone age, but people might listen to your song on some crappy phone speaker or some sort of playback system that collapses a stereo mix to mono or close to it. If that happens, and it's your choice if this matters to you, of course, you won't hear a wide stereo guitar, you'll hear a comb-filtered guitar that will essentially sound like an Electric Mistress in filter matrix mode. It's a cool sound, but is that the sound you intended? It's your call to care or not.

Also, and I think I know why this triggers me so much, since I've been doing this so long, I have learned the "proper" ways to do certain things, even though I am also a big fan of throwing the "rules" out of the window sometimes. It just makes me cringe when I get a session from someone that I have to mix and I see stuff like this and I'm saying to myself, "why didn't they just make an aux bus, put a short delay on that and send the dry track to that so they could make it much easier to adjust the delay time to taste?" I think someone chastised me once many many years ago about doing something like that and it trained me to always use a bus to do things like that. That's my hangup. I mean, all of this is my hangup. Why am I even posting this? Ugh I hate myself sometimes. Sorry folks. Ignore me.

I fully admit that I sound like an old person (that's on-brand, because I am one) and that recording and people's expectations and ways to listen to music have changed a lot in the last 20 years. I fully admit that what used to be a big "no-no" in 1980, no one gives a rat's ass about in 2023. I know that I sound like a dinosaur. I apologize for my Oxford commas and "proper" grammar as it was taught to me whilst traveling to America on the Mayflower. I'll go sit in my rocking chair and watch my stories.

______________________________________________________________________
Okay, It's safe to read now


What you're basically talking about is a chorus without modulation. I think a lot, if not most people will realize this very quickly, but for some, this might be a lightbulb moment. If you take any chorus circuit, disable the LFO, fix the delay time to taste (somewhere in the 20ms range, perhaps) and split it wet and dry, voila! In doing this experiment, you might build a chorus circuit with a simple modulation depth control (like we used to do in the 1500s with our old blue-faced Delatalab Effectron delays) and set the delay time, and adjust the modulation depth to the tiniest amount with a medium rate and you will hear that stereo image get wider than with just the static delay. That may or may not sound too "dated' or too chorused for some, but you'll be able to experiment and decide what you like.

You might come to the conclusion that every LA studio rat did in the early 80s, and find that you don't like the sound of the sound psychologically pulling to one side and you might want to try doing this trick with TWO delayed sources. In the DAW situation, you would create an aux bus, send your guitar to that, and put a stereo delay on that track, set it to 100% wet, and set one channel for, I dunno, 15ms and the other for 30ms and pan that out hard right and left, then keep the dry track in the middle. With a pedal, you would essentially split your signal into two delay circuits, set them for 15 and 30ms and finish the circuit with two mixing stages, one for the right channel that mixes the dry and one of the delays, and the other mixing stage for the dry and the left. That would tend to give you a more balanced stereo image, while still being wide.

Some vintage chorus pedals, and one of my favorites, the lesser-known EHX Stereo Memory Man with Chorus/Vibrato, will do a similar technique, but instead of using two delays, they just invert the polarity of the delayed signal in the mixer stage on one channel. The dry stays the same at both outputs but the delay is inverted in phase from each output. It's a very wide and 3D sound.

Why do I hate this in recording but think it's okay for a live situation? Because live, you have the benefit of two different amps that have different sonic characteristics and you can place them in different acoustic locations so wherever you are standing, they are mixing in the air and reflecting off the surfaces in the room so you get a bit of smearing that helps with the weird phase cancellation/comb filter effects. You don't have that benefit when you do that in a DAW with processing the same dry track. If you play live like this and you mic both amps and put them through a mono PA system, you might not like what you hear (I know this from experience).

My final "get off my lawn" comment is that I still love stereo guitars very much, and I will always choose to actually doubletrack (play the same thing twice, perhaps mixing up some element like a different guitar, different amp, different speaker, different mic, different EQ, but maybe not) a guitar than to process it some predictable way to make it stereo. It will always sound way bigger and wider to my ears.

Thank you for coming to Grandpa's Fireside Rant. Please feel free to take a cookie and some juice on your way out.

Roger

[Mark Hammer]

Sometimes grandpa knows whereof he speaks.

I recall a chip that Philips briefly made for "stereofying" a mono signal.  (Some here may be old enough to remember those albums labelled as "Monophonic, electronically reprocessed for stereo.").  It would introduce a succession of complementary notches to the two outputs that made each "sound" different than the other, without introducing time or audible phase delay that could pull the stereo image to one side, in the manner Rod describes.

Having said that, I've been toying with the idea of using two drives with a very short delay between them, to mimic the technique of micing two amps: one right up close, and the other from a distance (i.e., across the room).  Haven't done it yet, so it may turn out to be disappointing.

[Ben N]

The ES56033E karaoke echo chip has a min delay of 14s, not the 10ms you seek, but definitely in the ballpark, and a lot cheaper than analog (although if you already have your BBDs I guess that's different).
Our very own Ripthorn has an ADT project using the ES56033E, with optional stereo mod, worth at least a gander, if not a build: The Stalker.

[Rodgre]

Sometimes grandpa knows whereof he speaks.

I recall a chip that Philips briefly made for "stereofying" a mono signal.  (Some here may be old enough to remember those albums labelled as "Monophonic, electronically reprocessed for stereo.").  It would introduce a succession of complementary notches to the two outputs that made each "sound" different than the other, without introducing time or audible phase delay that could pull the stereo image to one side, in the manner Rod describes.

Grandpa thanks your vote of confidence.

I'm not sure about this particular Philips chip you speak of, but there were several devices that did this trick in the 70s and 80s. Some of them were called Stereo Synthesizers, which was a much more interesting name than what they were. Some of them did the trick just by, like you said, adjusting EQ notches opposite each other on either channel (meaning the left might have sharp notch filters at even frequencies, which the right channel would have sharp notches at odd frequencies, for example). Some probably did it with short delays and possibly some crossover filters to just expand above a certain cutoff frequency (as to not mess with the bass end of the spectrum). Like the original Aphex Aural Exciter circuit, sometimes these devices were closely guarded with gooped circuits to obfuscate what they were doing by reverse-engineering (sound familiar?) and sometimes, like the original Aphex units, you had to rent them from the company to use them on a mix and pay a licensing fee per song it was used on. Seriously. Also, we used to get electricity from a water wheel and trade crops for services and goods that we needed.

B.A.S.E. was one such device. I'm not sure if the schematic ever got published, but knowing the internet, it has. Orban made one, I think, for use in radio broadcasts.

Mark mentions something that is along the lines of what I would probably do. If I was to build a specific custom device to make my guitar stereo, I would do it with two delays, one on either channel, but EQ them differently and a little darker than the dry signal, which I would still keep in the middle.

In the Back in My Day department, I remember the first time I ever heard a stereo chorused guitar in real life. I think it was playing through a Roland Jazz Chorus amp in a store around 1983. I was obsessed with the expanse of the sound and how much it sounded like those Rush albums I was about to not listen to anymore because I was about to discover The Cure. I soon bought an Arion Stereo Chorus (awesome pedal, but at the time, I just cared that it was only $40 brand new) and I HAD to use it in stereo with two amps. There was no other option for me.

I kept a stereo rig of sorts (for a while it was a Roland JC-120H through a 4x12 in stereo, but only when I kicked on the chorus, but I had an ART Proverb which had a specific effect that was sort of mild chorusing with a haas effect, split through the Roland and a second amp, which was my baseline of stereoness, and when I wanted to blow people's minds, I would kick on the Roland's chorus for three sets of speakers all wobbling between themselves. Now, I am happy to bring one mono amp to a gig because it finally occurred to me that the audience can't appreciate the glorious expanse of my tone when things are mic'd up and put through a mono PA system).

I love stereo, though.

Read up about the haas effect, by the way. Also look at the Electronic Musician Magazine (EM) Stereo Spreader circuit, which might be an interesting adjunct to whatever you might be using to make something stereo. It's pretty much what any stereo manipulation device or a plugin like the Waves Imager does, which is mixing a variable amount of the left channel, inverted in polarity, to the right channel and vice-versa. It's essentially reducing the level of the mid channel a bit (and sometimes with a crossover to leave the low end un-altered), and making the sides seem to get wider. I used to use that trick in the old analog recording days in order to get effect returns or stereo overhead mics on drums to sound like they're coming from beyond the speakers.

Roger

[Mark Hammer]

Always remember that some "stereo" effects which can sound very good through headphones, or speakers - if you're standing in the right spot - can either cancel out "in air" or sound considerably less exciting, if in the "wrong" spot.  I have a Fender SK20 amp, which is a dual TDA2030 amp in a cab with one 8" speaker assigned to each channel.  Think of it as a baby JC120.  The chorus is "stereo" just like a JC, but you MUST be no more than about 3-4ft from the unit for it to sound lush.  Farther than that, and it effectively becomes mono, "in air", and not nearly as impressive and immersive.  I also have a DOD FX20 phaser, which has two outputs.  One is dry plus wet and the other is dry minus wet.  Very different sounds, but should one run them to two amps, the complementary outputs cancel out the effect in air.  The dry signals from each output are in phase, but the wet portion of one output is antiphase to the other.  In headphones, it might sound pretty neat, but in air it vanishes.

Stereo imposes its own rules that we need to abide by.

[StephenGiles]

You are probably responding to a different thread because I cannot imagine how to involve Adobe software in my live rig. But thanks anyway.

My tired eyes missed your words "live performances"!!

[Amitay3333]

Hi guys,
I suppose you know the trick in the recording when you don't want to double the track; you take a copy of it, and you delay it by around 10ms and pan the original and the delayed copy to sides of the mix, and you have nice left-right stereo sound. I want to create the same effect for live performances when I am alone with one guitar in the band. I created one circuit using PT2399, but around 30ms is too much. However, the stereo effect was nice and worked almost as I wanted.

So, can you suggest to me a short echo circuit where I just remove feedback and create two outputs - one from just the input buffer (or directly from input) and a second delayed around 10ms - MN3007 or MN3207 are preferred because I have them.

I suppose I would put the box as last in the chain between the pedalboard's output and two returns of two amplifiers.

Thanks for help
Uli

John Petrucci tech showed in one of his recent videos that he uses this one small white pedal for replica double track in live, but I can't remember the pedal name...

[mac]

You are probably responding to a different thread because I cannot imagine how to involve Adobe software in my live rig. But thanks anyway.

My tired eyes missed your words "live performances"!!

Use a laptop as a pedal and play with the audio system latency.



Or you can try Lubuntu installed in a pendrive + Audacity + Jack, etc.
Check if Audacity or any other audio software can deal with the delay you want without clicking.
See the manual online,
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/devices_preferences.html
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/latency_test.html

mac

[uli]

I am posting this, fully aware of the fact that it's a "get off my lawn" post, so maybe just let me vent, but don't bother reading or commenting on this. I already know I sound like an old man griping about "in my day..."  With that said, you might want to skip down to below the separation line where I might have some useful thoughts about how to go about this technique.

Here we go...

I fully agree. When recording I always double-track guitars - I don't like the sound of copied and shifted track either. But for a live gig, I would like to try it. Also, the last week our second guitarist was ill and I had to change the settings in the mixer for our in-ear rehearsal mixer because my guitar was on one side. If I had this splitter I could use his amp to maintain the stereo guitar sound.

I suppose I will go the chorus way without LFO.

Maybe one more question. For the dry through signal - should I just connect input to output or would it be better to connect output after input buffer. Or even use two output buffers.

[Rodgre]

Maybe one more question. For the dry through signal - should I just connect input to output or would it be better to connect output after input buffer. Or even use two output buffers.

If you are combining signals at the end with a mixer stage, I would suggest an input buffer just to be on the safe side. If you're building a Chorus without the LFO (or just with the LFO depth "off", which gives you options to be a chorus if you need it) and want a stereo output, either with dry and wet or dry + wet/dry - wet, or two chorus/delay circuits with different delay times blended with the dry on either side, I would definitely suggest a buffer on the dry signal. What have you got to lose?

Also, be aware that if you build a stereo effect and want to use a mechanical footswitch, you need a 4PDT switch to bypass both outputs to the input signal. These are a little more expensive than the standard 3PDT that we've been using for years, but they are available. I would love to hear someone else chime in here, but I am thinking that if the pedal is in bypass and you're feeding two amps from the mono input signal, you might want the buffer to be BEFORE the bypass switch, because it's acting as a buffered splitter, instead of a Y-cable. I think there is some benefit to using the buffer in regard to impedance loading from the inputs of the different amps, but like I said, I would like someone smarter than me to confirm this.

You can also do electronic switching or relay switching, if you like.

Roger

[bean]

Thomeque drafted and posted a relatively simple circuit in 2010 for producing thru-zero flanging.  That effect, you'll remember, relies on the "dry" signal being briefly delayed, such that the modulated delay signal can actually move "ahead" of it in time.  The circuit  can produce a fixed delay of up to 8msec, although I imagine it can be a smidgen longer by changing one capacitor.  Here is the MN3007 and MN3207 version.  There are toner transfer patterns for each if you're interested.  Much credit to Thomeque for such a great act of forum citizenship.

I kicked this idea around a bit yesterday to see what I could come up with as a standalone circuit. Here's where I ended up.

- I went with buffered bypass but it could be made true bypass with a 4PDT. Buffered only uses a 3PDT. "BYP1" probably isn't even needed so in that case it could be a DPDT.
- I included a phase switch on the wet output. It might be interesting depending on what comes before the circuit or if other pedals are used after on the separate outputs.
- Since I had a free op-amp, I used that for the BBD output filter instead of a transistor.
- Other thought: the MN3009 RI is available, so I wonder about just tweaking the clock a bit and then omitting the clock buffer (with appropriate changes to the BBD power)

Just an idea on paper for the moment.

[Ripthorn]

I've actually got boards back that I have to try out for a two voice double tracker (triple tracker?) called the Double Wide. I'll post the circuit here when done, but it will have stereo out with two independently adjustable voices and delays down to 1 ms or less (if all goes well). That's all I'll say for now, otherwise the teaser becomes a spoiler and we can't have that 

[uli]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I will play with the circuits for hobby and research purposes, but I have found that TC Electronics MIMIQ does precisely what I need. So, I will probably get one. I didn't want to use any choruses or delays, or echoes without feedback; therefore, I thought I would need to do it myself. But this pedal is exactly what I was looking for.