DOUBLE tracked STEREO GUITARS with just ONE DI track! 

Who's gonna try this? 🤯

I've been recording music since the good old tape 4-track days and am constantly astounded at how often people can still tread new ground with the simplest of concepts that no-one had thought of yet. Genius

I've been playing around with similar ideas using plugins and ended up basically using a phaser to comb-filter the left DI with only very narrow cuts and then doing the inverse of that on the right DI. I set the phaser so that the effect is as inaudible as possible while still producing clear comb-filtering. The idea is to basically split the signal into sections of frequency bands spaced across the whole spectrum and then sending one half of that to the left and the other to the right channel. I then threw my Amp sim (STL Amp Hub) onto both comb filtered DIs. The distortion masks the already subtle phasing effect with upper harmonics and it creates an entirely mono-compatible wide-stereo signal that works well even with plugins. Just for good measure, I decided to also flip the polarity of the right DI track. So that's my workaround for getting this to work with plugins. Thanks for the tip, this trick is a game-changer!

One thing to be careful of with this trick, is that some amps invert the phase of the signal and some don't. So you'll have to keep track of that too.

Imagine using this technique to beef up an already double tracked recording. I gotta try this.

That’s an awesome take! Thank you guys! I’ve used a few dif methods with decent results but I gotta try this one.

whoa that's so cool! I wouldn't have thought of this, but it makes sense that the reversed sound of a speaker going backward doesn't quite match up to the sound of it moving forward. And since the signal isn't perfectly symmetrical there's probably a lot going on in the amp electronics too. I definitely want to try it out. I wonder if something similar could be achieved with phase rotation, and I'll have to experiment with that. Super cool stuff!

that's really really cool!!! Thanks for sharing.

What a great idea, thank you!

Wow, such a simple change to usual signal chain and how good of a result 🤘

Awesome recording tip!!! I’ll have to try it out for sure!! I must say tho.. I’m surprised no one mentioned Voxengo Stereotouch (ofc I haven’t checked ALL the comments , so maybe someone did) . I got turned on to it by Glenn Fricker. While it may not be the most mono friendly way to fatten up guitars, it certainly sounds good and It’s been a life saver for me when I get DI tracks that haven’t been double tracked! It has sounded very decent every time I did use it and I’ve even used it on lead (which aren’t traditionally double tracked) to give tracks a bit of extra flair. Cheers!!!

Holy shit, this is amazing. Using this for my projects from now on!

Genius trick! Thanks for the tip!!

Mind blowing! I do follow Ryan but never seen him doing it. What I do sometimes is use baby audio’s plugin that creates random short delays, like an oscilator. It does work with ddoubling a mono track.

I think it could work with plugins, flip the polarity before the amp sim, use slightly different settings and a different IR, then flip the polarity back again... I might not have been paying enough attention but when he was doing it with plugins he showed what it sounds like if you flip before the amp sim, and then what it sounds like if you flip after the amp sim, but I don't think he did an example of flipping both before and after an amp sim I might have to experiment with this because my guitarist is lazy and never sends me double tracks, i always end up having to cannibalize the DI and cut/paste enough pieces to create 2 frankenDIs that are never playing the exact same section at the same time, it's a nightmare tbh If i can do the flip>ampsim>flip trick and then maybe use something like melda auto-align afterwards that could save me an insane amount of time Ok, i need to try this right now, will report back with my findings...

I have this amp sim AHM 5050 v3 by Audio Assault and it has quite good doubler in it. Sometimes I use only the doubler with different ampsims. I think the feature might be present in other plugins from that company as well.

Incredible, never thougt it could sound so good.

I record in dual mono. One amp left and one right. One take, two different tones. Plus it sounds amazing in the room when just practicing. I use a digital amp on one side and a tube amp on the other just to have a difference in response on the left and right so it sounds more like 2 guitars. Also no polarity issues.

Very interesting, thank you! I'm gonna try this for playing live with my band. I'm the only guitarist on a Neurald QC, playing in stereo with different amp(sim)s and IRs for L/R already. FOH is stereo, but our in ears are not, so mono compatibility is very important.

Such a simple concept, but it's brilliant.

Any thoughts about the TC Electronic Mimiq pedal? It's pretty convincing. Great video as always. Cheers!

Inside the Kemper there’s a EQ function call Double-tracker and it work very well. I use it for record my demo and pre production but also this is a very cool way to do it.

🤯 Definitely trying this! I often run live sound and record the full band multitracked (with DI's) with one guitar player.

Cool trick! It's easy to work out why it does the trick: - Asymmetric clipping from all the preamp components would affect different parts of the DI signal when the phase is flipped. - As mentioned, the speaker would react differently when the phase is flipped. So given these two components we could even find out more permutations, although I guess they could result in a more phase-cancelling output signal in mono.

Finally someone talking about the phase problems between panned double track guitars. Thank you!

10:33 This effect (one side flipped) is really nice for delay trails, as in send a copy of your signal with 1 side DC-flipped into a delay. I like also having a second, longer but lower delay with L/R channels swapped, gives this really deep and wiiiide sounding stereo effect on the delay!!

Otto Audio‘s amp sim called „I I I I“ or „eleven eleven“ has a mono/stereo mode that somewhat emulates a double tracked sound and it sounds quiet good in my opinion.

I`ve tried this recently, Reamping the Left channel like normal and then Reamping the Right channel with activation of phasing (180* button on the reamp Box). it`s an amazing trick! I used to do this with IRs too. Thank you for sharing.

I got a pretty decent result with the Grindstein and an offset of 0.86. What work even beter was bypassed the Grindstein part of the plugin and using an HM-2 pedal plugin in front. With the same cabs and settings you get a good enough result that doesn't f-up your track in mono. So great for quick demos or thickening up.

Im using this trick in my axefx3 for live use, input split into 2 signals. The second signal runs through a phase reverse filterblock, then amp-cab and then again a phase reverse filter block. Works wonderful!

Sounds great!, I guess this takes advantage of some slightly assymetrical clipping aspects of the pedal or amplifier. In AB power amplifiers, I believe the power tubes are split into powering each half of the wave, would be interesting testing this in class A vs class AB amplifiers. I also noticed that when in mono the guitar sounded 'cleaner' as the higher harmonic information on each seemed to be cancelled out a little, but very cool overall.

The newer Neural DSP plugins have a doubler, and Otto Audio II II II II has a neat way of doing a stereo experience as well. I wouldn't use them for a mix personally I would rather double track, but it's cool to play around with.

This will save me a massive headache! Thanks for posting this. The only alternative I have is reamping with the TC Electronics Mimiq pedal but although it's pretty convincing, it has its flaws. It works better with two different amps. Maybe I could try to combine this trick with it.

The thing is with AI, it should be easily possible to create realistic double tracks. It would literally be the same technique as vocal synthesis. I'm surprised no one has done this yet.

Amazing!

Very cool!

This depends on the asymmetry of the distortion. Really odd that the plugins do not emulate that. It can have quite a big effect how distortion sounds.

This is probably the principle behind the Otto and the Neural DSP doublers

Ive been trying for ages to record just one guitar track and make it stereo with a mic on an amp cause I fkn hate double tracking. It always sounds weird and funky with chorus etc. Cant wait to give this a try !!

Really cool trick, the most important component must be modulations in speaker microphone chain that reacts different to inverted phase

Amazing!!! :O

Wow brilliant, this mmight be a good thing to do for live performances when you only have 1 gtr player, need to amps of course

I've done it with some pedals for live rigs and it works.

for fat rhythm guitars nothing beats good old double tracking. for sounds rather in the higher frequency range (guitar solos, synth arps) plugins can work quite nice. I frequently use the plugin 'wider'. in its latest version you can set it up such that it keeps lower frequencies in the middle while pushing the higher frequencies to the sides.

WOW! This is real!!!

Years ago i did something like that, a live recording band, amp with mic and DI, but i used amp simulator on direct audio (no reamp). Worked ok. But real amps are another world!!

This technique was invented by Ryan. His channel is Creative Sound Lab. The other guy briefly mentioned his name but he really deserves the credit for this.

I just tried this last night with a track I'm working on to turn 2 guitars into 4 and the results are phenomenal. I use real amplifiers, but with a load box/attenuator and cab sim IR plugins instead of a real mic and cabinet. I just wanted to reply back here to report that in this scenario it works great. I used a different amplifier for the extra tracks than I did on the originals and it sounds HUGE. Thanks for sharing this cool idea!!!

Would adding something like a very short reverb, delay, or some other effect alter the harmonics of the DI signal enough? While doing this trick. Also, by short I mean barely perceptible. EVH's guitar for van Halen was full dry one side and full the other side and did little to no double tracking.

While writing the song I always use main guitar track on the left and copy of track with short delay with floating (randomly oscillated) delay time around 15-30ms on the right. Works well! But when the song is ready, I always re-record double track from scratch.

The torpedo captor x has a doubling effect for the guitars it’s not a plugin but i think it works pretty good I still prefer to double track, but I would even go as so far to say that this feature makes the guitars sound wider, you have to record it as a stereo track though to get the full effect

I've been doing this for years since daw's came out and made it easy to do: Most times just copying a guitar track, offsetting it to the other guitar track in the grid by nanoseconds to taste and panning it completely opposite of the other, and adjusting tone to taste. Reamping is fine too, especially if you really want to get something really tonally different in the other guitar. Cool stuff!

I was wondering a while ago if it is actually possible to fix the problem of too few guitar tracks, then thinking about how to turn dual tracks into quad guitars. Thanks for the answer, both of you! I definitely have to try this, maybe even just as a lazy solution for demos and sending the tracks through an amp sim.

Now this is some good ass shit. I am using this immediately

Definitely a great trick!

@KohleAudioKult I've tried this within the DAW but I got an out-of-phase sound. Is it possible to do in the DAW? My approach was sending the track output to one of my interface's output and bring it back in to the DAW. I flipped the phase as you and Ulf described but I''m not sure why it didn't actually work.

Have you see (heard) the doubler feature in neural daps newer pluggin’s? Would love to hear your opinion on that

Have you tried the audio assault double take plug in? I know about it but havnt used it to know if it works well or not. Also can you not just feed your guitar into two Amps with different settings using different cabs to get a pair of mono tracks that are different from the same take? I am justvstarting into the engineering side of making music so maybe I am ignorant of something?

Right time, pitch and tone for the real thing (hit the string slightly different it might give you slightly different tone not just the amp). Of course to simulate the time part a second or third voice can only be delayed. You would need a time machine to put it before the original unless you shift the second on a separate track. The other problem is that the differences in those things often happen for human reasons not because a robotic LFO or even a computerized random function decides to change the time, pitch or tone. Like a singer who might be slightly inconsistent on a high note at the top of their range but it might be slightly flat or sharp or right on at any given time but all because it's hard to reach and takes concentration not just randomly. This method is really good to at least get some semblance of stereo. The amp with a mic on it might give a slight delay. Not only because the mic is a few millimeters away from the cone but because it is mechanical in nature. if you went out into an amp and then direct in some way it might not have the same result.

I use two different amp models in Amplitube 5 hard panned LR for live and it sounds pretty good and super wide )

Through my pro tools ultimate with Lynx Aurora 16 A/D converter It almost sounds more like 3 tracks where the one in the middle is like 5 db louder than the L/R guitars than normal stereo. Reminds me of a m/s stereo setup. I guess some m/s eq like Epure can make it more even if boosting the highs on the sides. I also tried it through my Maor Appelbaum Stereo Mastering unit Pele Box 2 running left as it is but flipped the phase in on the right and back after in the daw. If adding stereo chorus on a mono clean guitar it sounds slightly wider almost like a stereo input.

Any tips/suggestions how to combine two different amps (as two guitar players are in the band)? I read that 80s Metal, Thrash, Death mostly combined two amps like an Marshall and a Peavey two get a more layered sound.

thanx 🤘 hoping for a another video showing how to do this with amp sims 👌

Btw how does torpedo captor twin tracker work then? Or you don’t consider it as a good alternative?

How would this be done with amp sims and cab IR's? Maybe if you flip the phase of the DI, then flip of the phase of the amp sim signal before it hits the cab IR???

I have used different effect chains and different cabs and mics settings from various plugins and impulse responses to create a stereo sound, but this technique is far better. Still though, either technique or both can be used to thicken each mono track for quad tracking. I never knew that phase shifting the DI track and back again would create such a natural sounding stereo image. I will try this technique on vocal tracks too or any other mono source.

My mic preamps and mixers do not have polarity/phase switches. Will it work just as well if I flipped the signal coming back in on my DAW?

This is some next level shit! Home made DI box? Whaaattt!?

Yes. Reamping the dame DI with two COMPLETELY different rigs can work. It works even better if you have a RAM heavy plugin on one of the reamps to give you that few ms delay.

that new berried alive berry amp plugin has a prettty cool double track simulate feature in its settings !

Some of the Audio Assault amps have a simulate double track option, it is really interesting. I like it for jamming, but I rather record in mono and double or quad track.

Ist wunderbar!

The Mimiq pedal by TC Electronic does the double tracking thing

Usually we can cut the track into phrases and somehow rearrange it to get same notes from other places. And get an almost true double. If we have the time and desire to do it

Good trick Ulf. Subbed. There's a plugin that does the doubling of a single DI pretty fantastically that's been out for a bit. I can't recall the name rn but it isn't that phasey chorusey fake bs that most plugs do (haas) It's a legit and tight double. No phasey, no cheap chorusey artifacts. I'll post it's name when I get home, can;t recall rn.

GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I always did it with the haas effect. Since I´m just a hobbyist, "good is good enough" to get it out the door. My question would be: What happens if you use different amps or same amp but different IRs? Are the tracks still too similar even though the amps/IRs convert it to something different? Cheers!

If you could pair this technique with using a TC Electronic MIMIQ Pedal I bet that would enhance the effect. Definitely keeping this trick on hand just in case, so cool 🤯

Congratulations to letting matter and anti-matter sit side by side without annihilating each other!

Gotta try that.

@SpectreSoundStudios Glenn!!!!! This is crazy!!! What a great idea

does this also work with a kemper? because if I understood that right Ulf flipped the polarity of the mics recording? and that doesnt work with the kemper i think

I tried to do it in the box, as he doesn't explain the way I figured it out. I just duplicated the DI track. In the new track, I used the Gain plugin in Logic just to flip the phase (you can use any plugin that can flip phase, doesn't matter at all). After this, I put an ampsim (BDH 5169) slightly different that the one I have on the other channel (BDH 66o6). And after this one, another Gain plugin to flip the phase again. It works. Not as good as the real amp way in the video, but definetly way better than the classic "20ms delay" trick, specially when you listen in mono. It's an easy way to do it if for some reason you can't make a real reamp

Will this work if we use the phase switch in the daw? Say reversed on the way out and the opposite coming in? I tried this once before..I did not flip the phase. Good catch. As always, super in depth info and presented in an easy to understand straightforward example.

How much do you like the Bomblet on Amps?

Any tips to get this for acouostic guitars ??

Something that works pretty well too if the riff is repeating 2 times is cutting it in 2 parts and on the second track you start with part 2 and finish with part 1, this way it's exactly like 2 performances were captured

would this work digitally? as in flipping the polarity before your amp sim/ir and then flipping it back?

Wow!

What happens if you change anything on the second track (changing amp/preamp eq, mic placement etc), would that cause phase issues?

Been waiting for the mention of Ryan Earnhardt to see if this is what I know from his channel for quite a while now.. This is a great trick and I do this with all my guitar tracks, even leads.

mmm. You can hear shhh in the stereo, but tones are still in mono! so key thing is microtiming differences. But still it's good for solo or complex things. You're right - nothing beats real time double tracking

That is absolutely life changing hahahaha

This is fucking mind-blowing

Hey Kohle, have you messed with the TC Electronic Mimiq? It’s not software but I use this live all the time as a solo guitarist and get a pretty huge sound. I imagine you could use this into two inputs in an interface and it could sound good?

hmmm have you tried the waves adt ?

That’s fucking amazing! 🔥💪😁😈🤟👍🏻

FINALLY!!!!

Moises is by far my most used software except Reaper. I make a new backing track with that separation feature 3x a week.

Cool, i'm gonna try this! I've used ADT from Waves in the past to fake a double guitar track. ADT basically pitches and delays a track at a rate against the original, If you carefully set this up before re-amping you can get believable double tracked guitars that perfectly collapse into mono.