Whether you are looking into widening up a stereo mix, individual drums, piano, or guitars without causing phasing issues, then StageOne is a good one.
You can add depth to dry sound recordings without changing the tone or timber, turn mono instrument recording into a stereo and even keep mono compatibility with this simple and intuitive plugin.
Let's Get to Know Some of Its Features:
Width:
The Width - well you guess - widens the stereo field, and off-center content will move toward and beyond the speakers. Also, it features a highpass filter for further customization. The good thing about this feature is that it doesn't wear off in mono, in other words, - mono-compatible
Depth:
The depth adds directionally optimized reflections to create an enhanced sense of depth in the sound field, this is good if you want to add a deeper perspective to your mix or sounds that are too flat, you can also color the sounds - The color applies a custom tilt or seasaw EQ to the added Depth reflections, with the color slider, you can either darken or brighten the Depth effect.
Note: This EQ does not affect the direct signal, it only affects the added Depth reflections.
Mono Spread: This can be used to convert a mono sound into a stereo sound, it is as easy as that, you can also play with the center of gravity to move the overall weight of the processed signal to left or right, so, left is up and right is down.
StageOne Pricing
It is priced at $199.00 at the time of writing this review! This is on the high end, so, if you are on a budget you might want to check the list of the best stereo width plugin for other affordable alternatives.
Is StageOne Worth Using?
Yes, but it would be dependent on several factors, do you already have one that does something similar but wants something better, and easy? All in all, these are some use cases:
- Want to convert the mono sound source into stereo? The mono spread slider got you!
- If you want to add a deeper perspective to your mix or your sounds are too flat, you can use the Depth slider to add more depth to the mix
- If you have a stereo recording with too dense off-center panned sounds and you just want to spread it out to the side, you can trust the width slider as it allows you to remap the stereo field towards and beyond the speakers, while keeping mono compatibility!
Key Features:
- WIDTH ‘stretches’ the stereo field; off-center content will move towards and
beyond the speakers. The phantom center is left untouched, everything around
it gets stretched or remapped to a wider stereo field. - DEPTH adds directionally optimized reflections to create an enhanced
sense of depth in the sound field - MONO SPREAD utilizes a unique filter design to convert a mono signal into
a pseudo-stereo signal - Mono downmix compatible
- High-quality audio processing algorithms
- Beautiful Retina interface with a unique design focused on the
optimal workflow - Available as a 64-bit plugin only, and not compatible with 32-bit
Video SneakPeek:
System Requirements:
- Windows 8, 10 (64-bit only)
- Mac OSX (10.9 +)
- AAX-Native
- VST
- VST3
- AU