is stereo processing kind of dumb

[friendship]

be honest

[oldangelmidnight]

It has almost always seemed like a waste of time to me when I set up parallel chains of effects but I love having two amps going at once.

[Pepe]

Dumb for guitar on stage? Maybe. Dumb for guitar on recordings? Never.

[Gone Fission]

The thing is that the best and most F Yeah stereo I’ve encountered often has trickier topologies than pedals into two amps. I’ve given up on stereo in front of the amp sound because doing the amp sound in stereo is compromised or expensive. But the stereo my rack stuff can do after a good amp sound is worth doing. For me it’s not really about “time effects need to be post distortion”—no, I have those on the floor, too. It’s just easier for me to wrangle the best spatial stuff from the racks that way as a matter of optimal operating levels and not burying all the details or having a lifeless amp sound. So far this has been mainly a headphone sandbox. I don’t know if moderately loud FRFR speakers would give me more liveliness of guitar-and-amp dynamics without resorting to using a stereo power amp and guitar cabs, but moderately loud just isn’t in the cards for what I can go for.

[Blackened Soul]

Yeah…
I’ve been battling a stereo setup (well highs and lows) for the past 3 years and am giving up… when it works it’s cool.. the rest of the time you are battling phase issues, noise, ground loops, and a never ending battle on balance.. last month after my rig randomly deciding to start buzzing after being fine then the next day it was fine again and the thought of every gigging with the rig I got a boss LS-2… I’m still getting my tonal separation without all the bs.. I think stereo is awesome for recordings.. but for running amps… it’s just frustrating

[friendship]

I'm getting annoyed with it in recording, tbh. I've been doing a lot of recordings recently where it's just one instrument, and stereo processing is great for that, but I feel like when I have more than one thing doing stereo stuff, the mix starts getting mushy, hazy, and vague very quickly. It's great ear candy in isolation though. Of course, only after having made an elaborate stereo path for my recording setup did I start to wonder, "wait, do I even like this?" haha

[rfurtkamp]

No, it's not, providing you know what you're using it for.

I want the biggest, most oppressive thing possible, and well, mono rarely does that (and I can make it so mono on demand as well) - but bouncing delays, contrasting modulation, and things like the H9 and Vortex and Lexicon rack verbs say...STEREO yes

If I was doing generic rock shit, I wouldn't give a crap though.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Dumb for guitar on stage? Maybe. Dumb for guitar on recordings? Never.

Exactly this. Never want to do it with actual amps, but on record it can be wonderful and interesting.

[manymanyhaha]

If we only had one ear, I could see the idea of it being dumb............

But we have two. I've been obsessed with stereo and immersion ever since I discovered the pleasure of Mig50/FZ-2 on one side and a JCM900 on the other, back when I was doing heavy band stuff. I can hear it live, because I have two ears.

It's why it was so popular for so long to have one guitar player on one side with a single coil guitar and one player on the other with humbuckers (Dream Syndicate anyone?). It sounds good and the difference in tone creates a stereo separation on its own.

My stereo setups will often have four speakers, one for each corner, with the rear speakers being different the front. A friend of mine and I discovered this one night while sonically enhanced (hehe) and the immersion was beautiful. I like the way it sounds different if I turn my head a little, or move my position a foot over etc. The way it disperses frequencies differently in different rooms.

For a long time now, I play through six amps. Each a different type in a different location in a circle around me, with different effects and tone shapers. Again, I like the way things sound different when I turn my head a little, the layers, the movement, the immersion.

I always start off in mono but never stay there.

Now stereo effects, sometimes don't get the way they are implemented. I prefer them to be "true stereo" or rather, dual mono. If it only has a mono input with stereo output, it is useless for my setup.

So yeah, I love stereo, quad, six amps etc. But then again, as I age, I think of myself dumber every day. So I don't know, maybe it is dumb

[rfurtkamp]

^this.

I stepped long beyond stereo quite a while back but I'm not trying to gig and deal with sound guys either.

My "standard" rig starts at 3 amps, usually uses 4.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I can hear it live, because I have two ears.

I can hear it, I just only have so much time in my life and want to spend as little as possible of it plugging in various guitar amps (while still getting to hear some guitar amps) My opinion is one of my personal pragmatism/laziness as opposed to objective quality. But I'm glad there are people out there rocking the sonic landscapes

[manymanyhaha]

And I hope you didn't think I was trying to get at you or anyone else. I didn't mean for that to sound pedantic or elitist.

It's actually taken me a long time to develop my listening so I understand better what it is I am hearing. What sounded like voodoo to me a couple decades now makes sense to me on a pragmatic level and one of those things is listening in stereo and beyond.

But I agree, I wouldn't take around 6 amps with to play live. I might do two amps if they were small combos. The other problem with large amp setups is they come with larger pedalboards. And routing........ (thank you again Knut for my custom Matrisse, best purchase ever!).

[qersty]

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=a83wrXtcgqE&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE[/youtube]

[coldbrightsunlight]

And I hope you didn't think I was trying to get at you or anyone else. I didn't mean for that to sound pedantic or elitist.

It's actually taken me a long time to develop my listening so I understand better what it is I am hearing. What sounded like voodoo to me a couple decades now makes sense to me on a pragmatic level and one of those things is listening in stereo and beyond.

But I agree, I wouldn't take around 6 amps with to play live. I might do two amps if they were small combos. The other problem with large amp setups is they come with larger pedalboards. And routing........ (thank you again Knut for my custom Matrisse, best purchase ever!).

No don't worry! Tone is hard on the internet but I get we're all talking personal taste and not criticising others

[Gone Fission]

ILF is the bomb because folk here understand what works for them may be particular and aren’t dogmatic about it. Rig design and working methods are of a piece with the Hunter S. Thompson quote, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.” The whole Doom Room/Sunn O))) thing is amazing, but few of us can conduct ourselves like that even if it fits with how our things express. My headphone excess isn’t gonna translate to most people’s four-piece-or-more live bands. I think expressing where hang ups in stereo rigs happen is really helpful here, at least as helpful as what has worked for them. Readers can get an idea in advance of where their own frustrations might lay—that’s why a place like this is helpful, to explore ideas and experiences by proxy first, and then to report for the benefit of the next person.

Stereo is a fucking rabbit hole. I think a lot of people kind of stumble into it, and they find something cool but may not know why or have an idea of why and when something new won’t work without a major reset they run into trouble. Stereo combo amps largely exist for Boss/Roland CE-type chorus, where one side is dry and one side wet. Great for that thing, but the ping pong delays don’t impress with L and R in the same cabinet. But spaced cabs, say on either side of the drummer, make that CE chorus weird because one side is wet and one side is a vibrato. So you might chase a different stereo chorus thing to make this work, or you might just bail or limit the hassle.

Add in how this plays with amps and dirt pedals and speakers . . . a vintage Marshall 1960 cab with old Celestion 25 watt speakers is a delight, but might not be the best thing for translating some effects with high highs or that two-octave-down shifter. Some of this is an issue with mono, too, but how to rig how stereo gets done—in front of clean(ish) amps, in effects loops of two amps, after a preamp or a loaded-down head, or tapped off of a “dry” amp that your augmenting with an-effects-only stereo rig—is a set of choices and of compromises.

I hate to advocate insanity to anyone. But I’ll share some of mine.