Ah yeah, the different visualizer modes are just different ways to see the stereo width and how much of the sound is directly out of phase. Doesn’t affect what it’s doing and it doesn’t do any kind of spectral processing. I like the visual and it’s great for dialing in how wide you want things, for example you can tighten up a really wide sound without killing all the width, but then when you check the mix in mono it has way more presence than something that’s too stereo and starts to kind of disappear. It has a stereoizer feature for mono stuff too that does kind of a Haas effect type thing but with less phase cancellation than a regular Haas effect deal, not sure how it works exactly
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Ah ok will have to research a bit more. Most what you said went straight over my head haha
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Anything that’s called an imager is usually to do with stereo in my experience. Yeah it’s really good to understand how stereo sound actually works and what to watch out for with it, definitely worth some time reading up on. Basically an imager lets you reduce or increase the perceived “stereo-ness” of the track you put it on, all the way down to mono if you want (some are multiband, so you can affect different parts of the frequency spectrum differently. The free Ozone Imager on the iZotope site isn’t, but the one that comes with the full licensed Ozone is, kind of confusing cause it’s called the same thing. Anyways…) That said, if I’m making a wide sound fully mono I’ll just use a utility plugin to take one channel (left or right, doesn’t matter which) and isolate that instead.
But put more simply, you can get general weirdness from having your sounds be too wide, or having too many different wide sounds in your mix overall. And anything below ~100-120hz region should be totally mono. Reason being is that for something to sound “stereo”/aka wide in a 2 channel stereo system, it has to be different in one side than the other. Usually that happens by a slight time delay between the two which literally means that with stereo effects (chorus, phasers, stereo delays, reverbs) the sound coming out of the two channels is out of phase (basically, the two channels are in different points in the waveform) which carries inherent problems with it (phase cancellation, basically like putting a comb filter onto the sound. Dips a bunch of notches out of the frequency spectrum). Not to say you shouldn’t make sounds stereo obviously, just have to have to manage the issues that come along with that. So that’s mainly what you’d use it for. That said what I’ve heard of your tracks it hasn’t sounded like you have major issues with that
And Haas effect refers to using a delay to separate the left and right channels by a few milliseconds (say about 10-20) to make the sound wide. Choruses do that in combination with some pitch modulation and things like that, but you can do it with a basic delay by just turning the feedback to zero and setting both sides to a very short time, but slightly off from one another by about the amount mentioned (say, 1ms left, 11ms right. Doesn’t have to be exact). Good for sounds in your track that you want to have that width and aren’t central elements. If you do it directly on drums, sub bass, leads and other things that need to be really central and present in your mix, you will have phase cancellation issues. But you can mitigate it afterward, when appropriate, if you want the sound to have width but be less wide than it is by using an imager. Wouldn’t go to that though if a better solution is to just remove the stereo effects in the first place, or put them as a send so you maintain the original signal separately. Hope that all made sense 
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Stereo width!! requires email
I recently finished making an online class on LMMS (open source DAW).
so double free: free DAW and free class.
here’s 10 free access codes for DSF members
(codes expire end of 2019)
Enroll in my class for free: “Make Electronic Music (using open source software)” https://skl.sh/2PWuLJl via @skillshare
Gonna add to this list:
I love the Tal-Dub series of Delays (version 1 -3).
Especially, obviously, if you’re making any kind of dub music.
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Been playing around with some free maxforlive devices I came across through a youtube channel today.
Mainly I’ve been working with one called ml.distance. Basically, sort of an auto-pan and filtering device, made by Robert Henke / Monolake (one of the guys that made Ableton) for “careful placement of sonic events in the stereo field.” ml.Distance version 1.2 by alkman on maxforlive.com
Also gonna check out the following:
-Highschool Crush (multiband bitcrusher). High School Crush version 1.1 by CaligulaCuddles on maxforlive.com
-College Dropout (tape/vinyl warping effect) College Dropout version 2.2 by CaligulaCuddles on maxforlive.com
Bonus:
A github depository with a lot of different, creative midi tools made buy a guy on youtube called Stretta. Can’t say I’ve tried em all so not sure what all of them do, but there’s at least some interesting sequencers and the likes in there.
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Dammit wish I used Ableton. Feel like the feature set is so big at this point it’s take me another 5 years just to get where I am with Reaper (which isn’t terribly advanced.)
I don’t know if this is true. I mean. There’s a lot of stuff available but you can kind of just ignore it if you don’t get it, doing the basic things is pretty streamlined in Ableton. imo more streamlined than a lot of DAWs. If you have an interest in switching I’d recommend going for it, I doubt getting solidly proficient with it would take more than 6 months to a year if you “get” DAWs, if that. Guess it’s hard to predit someone else’s experiences though. And that said I know the price is a hurdle for a lot of ppl but ofc there are other ways of obtaining it too… but I used to use a shitty DAW (not that Reaper is shitty) and then switched to Ableton and it really has reduced the work it takes to get an idea out by a lot. It’s got a lot of flexibility in how you want to work and as mentioned a lot of fun little tools to play with since anyone can make racks & devices pretty simply and people give them away all the time. Your mileage may vary though I guess
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This is a nice free plugin bundle, especially like the frequency shifter and comb filter.
https://www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeFXBundle
Even though it’s “trial” it’s still very useful, I have had fun with the freq shifter and had some pretty interesting results from it.
Also the comb filter it has some nice creative delay presets that are pretty cool
Once I’ve finished my tuna for this week I’m going to give this a whirl…
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From now until October 2nd, Ozone 8 Elements is free for all users. It is a full license for Ozone 8 Elements that is yours forever!
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i know its me being a spoiled brat but am unreasonably annoyed at these free plugins where you need to enter an email and create an account, just gis me a dl link
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I would highly recommend this, ozone 8 is absolutely sick so even a ‘lite’ version of it being free is frankly amazing
Ozone 8 Elements is decent. I have it. I should try to use it more. I recall the EQ being pretty nice.
Downloaded and installed. Had a quick fiddle - looks good.
if it has the track referencing master assistant that feature is so so so sick for doing quick masters
I just looked at my mastering chain and I have the Ozone 8 Elements in there. I couldn’t remember what I had in that chain.
I just checked and it does have the Master Assistant included. I couldn’t remember if it did or not.