Stereo Seperation Knob In FL Studio... Help.

[mthrfnk]

Ok so if you're moderately accustomed to FL's mixer you know what the stereo seperation control/knob is. If you don't please don't start filling this thread with misinformation.

Now here is what Image Line say about this in the manual:

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Stereo Separation - The stereo separation filter allows you to enhance or reduce any stereo effect in the track. In the default position (middle), the stereo separation filter is disabled. Turn the knob right to decrease the stereo separation (sum L+R to mono), turn left to increase stereo separation. This control has no stereo effect on mono sounds as it works by taking the difference between the L and R channels, if there is no difference then there is no stereo to enhance. 

I've been using this for a while, because on my setup (decent well placed monitoring) by "enhancing" the stereo on tracks I've made to be wide (through stereo spreading and things) it does sound better. I also use it on a lot of basses to decrease the stereo seperation.

Now my problem is that I'm starting to think it's messing my mixes slightly up because when I'm listening back in say my car or on my headphones stuff that I've enhanced seems too wide and stuff I've centered sounds more muffled maybe (not too sure on this one). So do any other FL users actually use this, if so how and in what way? I'm starting to think I should just leave it disabled and trust that by making things wider/more central within my synths and FX that it will sound better anyway.

[mthrfnk]

Bump

[benjam]

I've started to use it a bit more often, sounds good on reverb sends

[Augment]

I use it mostly for reverb stuff yeah, I generally have maximus on the tracks where I want to increase the stereo spread, since it's a multiband comp thing, so I don't push the lowend out in the stereo field, but keep it mono. If I have channels where there's almost no lowend, I tend to use that knob tho.

[WAREHOUSE]

Yeah i think using this sparingly is the way forward.

There is a filter in FL that does pretty much the same job.. it comes up with 4 faders red and yellow... stereo enhancer maybe, mess with that too.

[Monowan]

I only use it to force mono.

[mthrfnk]

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to back off it unless it's for FX send channels like Reverb or for my subs to ensure it's mono.

[Basic A]

I use it infinitely in every project... to mono sounds that need to be.

I dont think Ive ever used it as a 'stereo enhancer' once...

L+R panning has the same psychoacoustic effect of creating spacial sound...

If your left ear and your right ear hear something out of time your brain has a function to correct it, we make millions of these corrections in daily life...

Learn what you can from that