How did I ever live without bx_control?!

[The_G]

Monomaker is brilliant and it's just an all-around fantastic tool for widening/narrowing the stereo image.

[arkos]

Brilliant indeed, almost everything those guy's put out is.

[Huck Farper]

I put that ish on everything

[mindflex]

totally agree, bought it during there end of year sale, and their saturator. Currently I'm working on headphones only and Now my mix's have gone from sounding naff to sweet. Clearer and more accurate. Brainworx are my new false god.

[terly]

Yep, it's a great plugin. I use it on every track I make.

[buffered]

just a query....could i achieve something similar to monomaker if for example i sent a stereo channel to 2 sends. Send 1 gets lowpassed below 160hz and send 2 hipassed above 160hz. Send 1 gets converted to mono then send 2 processed with a stereo imaging utility. Original channel has no output.
Could also use a multiband compressor with band muting depending on send.
Apart from gain and frequency crossover issues to correct, what would be a disadvantage of doing this? Is there a method to achieve what bx_control monomaker funtion does with basic native fx of any daw?

[terly]

Technically that could work but I find that I have some issues with ultra steep eq curves.

[terly]

Re-reading your post, I see you have addressed that. I would say that you could probably achieve what you get with monomaker but there is a lot more to brainworx than just that. It's a deep set of plugins.

Off topic a bit, how's the saturator? I have the full suite but have mostly just used control.

[Críoch]

I know this plugin.. but hadn't realised it's features. Will keep an eye out for a sale price. I get emails from plugin alliance with offers regularly on that bx stuff.

[dubdub]

Off topic a bit, how's the saturator? I have the full suite but have mostly just used control.

Pure sex. I slap it on the master bus and always saturate the hell out of my mixes, it sounds so silky smooth and gentle and gels everything together and you have to push it pretty hard to get agressive sounding distortion. The low/mid and M/S options are also nice if you already have a really satured bass for example and just need to push the higher end or you just want to give some additional spark to the sides.

[Lost to the Void]

just a query....could i achieve something similar to monomaker if for example i sent a stereo channel to 2 sends. Send 1 gets lowpassed below 160hz and send 2 hipassed above 160hz. Send 1 gets converted to mono then send 2 processed with a stereo imaging utility. Original channel has no output.
Could also use a multiband compressor with band muting depending on send.
Apart from gain and frequency crossover issues to correct, what would be a disadvantage of doing this? Is there a method to achieve what bx_control monomaker funtion does with basic native fx of any daw?

No, you will more than likely get phase issues at the crossover point. It takes a specific type of filter to band split something.

[Lost to the Void]

Off topic a bit, how's the saturator? I have the full suite but have mostly just used control.

Pure sex. I slap it on the master bus and always saturate the hell out of my mixes, it sounds so silky smooth and gentle and gels everything together and you have to push it pretty hard to get agressive sounding distortion. The low/mid and M/S options are also nice if you already have a really satured bass for example and just need to push the higher end or you just want to give some additional spark to the sides.

It's actually quite deceptive. There is a lot more distortion in there than you would expect, it all becomes apparent in mastering, but I got tricked by it on my own tunes.
It's because it adds so much pleasing harmonic you get easily tricked by it and don't notice the distortion.
Get it to where you think it sounds good and then dial it back by 5-10% to be safe.
On accurate monitors it is surprising how messy it gets anything over 25%

[dubdub]

You might be right, it's easy to get a little... trigger happy. But I generally don't saturate that much on a track-by-track basis, so i'm saturating sounds that aren't already super driven or anything. I will try dialing back a bit, might be a good idea anyhow. What drive stage are you referring to with over 25%? I often just use 1 or 2 and they sound quite subtle to me even when using higher % values. 1 especially just somehow makes everything louder without actually making it louder

edit: Although I just did some testing on solo'd sounds and there is audible (although pleasant) distortion happening even on 1 at 100%. I guess you are right in that with a whole mix you just notice the pleasant overtones etc.

[msl]

Yeah Saturator is a bit of a secret sauce for sure. I prefer to use it subtly.

What drive stage are you referring to with over 25%? I often just use 1 or 2 and they sound quite subtle to me even when using higher % values. 1 especially just somehow makes everything louder without actually making it louder

I usually leave it at 20% and master drive at 4.

[dubdub]

Btw, regarding bx_control, is it a no-go to ever go into the red (even slightly) on the correlation meter when making club tracks? I've of course read that information gets lost when bouncing to mono and the signal has phase issues, but i'm not sure how much it actually matters when it's something like a high-pitched noise that's really wide.

[arkos]

Btw, regarding bx_control, is it a no-go to ever go into the red (even slightly) on the correlation meter when making club tracks? I've of course read that information gets lost when bouncing to mono and the signal has phase issues, but i'm not sure how much it actually matters when it's something like a high-pitched noise that's really wide.

I was told it's ok for individual sounds but not your whole mix, I once started to check every channel and making sure none of them were going over the line but I found that my mixes sounded way to mono and all the nice stereo information was just gone. I am sure someone with more technical knowledge will come and clear this up in more detail.

[Lost to the Void]

You always going to have movement on the correlation meter in a mix, that`s fine, what you are looking for is extreme swings either size, especially if they are consistent and repetitive.
Again not a massive issue unless you want to cut to vinyl, overall regardless of frequency, vinyl does not like big phase swings, the literally cannot be cut, and the head will essentially null them.

[dubdub]

So if it's the swings that are bad it's fine if an individual sound stays consistently in the red without big swings?

[Belka]

Remembered this thread and the Low Mono Talk. For the ones on low budget i found this Tool
cheers

[paclos]

I don't know if I'm a wizard... but is not the same to have:

Channel1a: only bass cutted with a LPF & set to mono
Channel1b: only not bass cutted with a HPF

And you can spare 139€