Hi

I remember reading an article about creating a semi stereo effect on backing vocals from a mono source, I can't remember where I found the article but I was wondering if any of you guys known the technique and help me out.

The technique involved duplicating a mono backing vox channel and nudging the copy by x amount of milliseconds and panning the original to one side and the copy to the other and if needed, applying EQ or an ever so slight pitch shift to the copied version, to give it it's own identity in the mix.

I get this part and have tried it and it sounds great, it really opens up the mix and gives the main vox it's own space. what I am needing help with, is what the article said next, It went on to talk about making the vocals mono compatible. Creating the effect, as stated above, the mix, when collapsed down to mono will produce phasing problems in varying degrees by how much the two tracks are off set by. The article explained how to get round this by creating another duplicate vox and inverting the phase so that when the mix is collapsed down to mono the inverted version would cancel out the other duplicate.

I can't really remember how you get the inverted version to work, I understand why it will cancel the track but I don't know where to place the panning of the track, to make it sound good within a stereo context and retaining an open sounding image and still work in mono to reduce phase issues.

If anyone has any ideas on how to use this technique and make it sound good in both mono and stereo it would be much appreciated