German plug-in coders Brainworx have unveiled an unusual new processor, the BX Shredspread. Like many of their products, the BX Shredspread is a stereo enhancement tool that employs Mid/Side processing techniques to achieve impressive stereo effects, but, as its name suggests, this one is designed primarily for guitars.
Of the Shredspread, Brainworx say its “main purpose is to make sure your stereo (doubled) guitar signals sound wide and ‘phatt’”. Designed to be inserted across stereo channels in your DAW, the plug-in is apparently suitable either for truly double-tracked guitar parts, or single guitar parts that have been artificially doubled by copying and delaying them, and panning the copy and the original left and right.
Most of the controls are fairly intuitive, but some require a little explaining. Gain is your run-of-the-mill input level control, which is pretty self-explanatory. Solo Pan and Threshold, however, are less ordinary: these controls work in tandem, and allow you to collapse your stereo guitar sound to mono when either the left or right channel’s level drops below a user-defined threshold. The Solo Pan knob dictates the positioning in the stereo field of the remaining channel so that, for example, when two guitar parts are playing they are panned hard left and right, but when only one is, it appears in the centre. This feature can be engaged or bypassed by clicking on the Auto Pan button that sits between the Solo Pan and Threshold dials.
Mono Maker, meanwhile, eliminates the stereo information of everything below the frequency you set it to, so that the low-end weight of your guitar sound won’t disappear when your track is listened to through a mono playback system. Additionally, it automatically compensates for signal loss when mono-summing, so the tonal balance of your guitar parts will remain unaffected. This control goes from 20Hz all the way up to 22kHz, which means you can automate a ‘blend’ from mono to stereo (so if you want your guitars mono for the verses, and then to open up into stereo for the choruses, the Shredspread will allow you to do just that).
Continuing from left to right along the UI, we come to Shred, about which Brainworx are being rather coy: “Shred is an ‘intelligent’ EQ that emphasises the tone in guitar sounds,” say the makers, and it apparently “stops your guitars sounding harsh when you crank them up”. Which isn’t very informative at all, but at least ease of use won’t be an issue: “Turn to the right until things sound nice” is a refreshing thing to read in a product manual!
And finally, the Spread control adjusts the relative amounts of Mid and Side signal in your stereo track. This ranges from 0 percent to 200 percent, with 100 percent being ‘normal’ stereo (ie. the stereo width of your guitars will remain the same). Below one percent your guitars will be completely mono, and at 200 percent, the left and right channels will be completely out of phase. Of the more extreme settings, Brainworx wisely warn the user that, above 100 percent, some elements of your stereo signal will disappear when mono-summed. Metering for both left and right channel levels and correlation allow you to keep an eye on clipping and excessive out-of-phase content.
The Brainworx BX Shredspread will be in the beta stage of development next week, and should be released shortly thereafter. And in other Brainworx news, the company have just announced that all of their products will be available to demo for 14 days, without potential buyers needing an iLok key, thus addressing a frequent gripe of would-be plug-in purchasers. For more info, check out the Brainworx web site, below.
