how often do you use the HAAS effect? advice?

[alexanderrness]

how often do you use it on a track for your project? i've read that you would hard pan, say, 2 vocal tracks, one left and one right with the .25 ms delay, would it be then advised to keep a centered track to fill the void? or would the haas effect essentially eliminate any need for that. also, is it common for the haas effect to be used on drums (kick, snare mostly)?

 

[chris carter]

I use it frequently. There's a sticky thread with links to a video mix walkthrough where I show several examples. The most important thing is to tweak the delay time and check in mono so there are no nasty surprises. I will use haas delays on synths all the time. On vocals? Pretty much never. If you need another voice, record another track. I don't think I've ever used it on kick, but on snare maybe once in the past five or six years....

 

[CPhoenix]

The most important thing is to tweak the delay time and check in mono so there are no nasty surprises. ...

Thanks a lot for this tip bro. Never thought to check it in mono. It's possible I missed a few issues in my last project b/c of not checking in mono! Thanks.


I've used the Haas effect more and more since I've learned it. Maybe 50% or more of my songs benefit from it... give or take.

Agreed.. i never use it on vocals. I want those in the middle, front and center. As well as the kick, bassline, and snare. If i'm doing soething funky w/ the snare... i may do some minor panning... but definitely no Haas.

I essentially use it when I want things to sound very wide and sometimes to make it pronounced. I deliberately want the listener to hear that it's coming out of both speakers to either 1) make em pay attention to it, or 2) to subtly add something interesting to an otherwise boring mix. So I, like chris carter, also use it on synth leads. I haven't used it on horns yet but i might try... same w/ piano. The biggest thing I use it on is background rhythms that counter the kick/snare rhythm i have. Sounds really good having congas or shakers spread out that wide. I likey, i likey.

 

[JC Biffro]

Hmmm, never heard of this 'Haas Effect'. Gonna have to research this me thinks.

 

[bandcoach]

Named for the guy who first described it.

Used for accentuating perceived stereo placement and distance
by feeding a (mono) signal into a pair of one-shot (no feedback) delays that have complementary delay times
- original signal is most often included with the delayed signal(s)
- left side delay time starts low and goes high; right side delay time starts high and goes low; single control acting as a pseudo-pan-pot
- delay times are in the 0-45ms range, giving enough information to move a signal to the left or right significantly
- the delays mimic to an extent the way a sound takes longer to reach the opposite ear the further away it is, aka intra-aural delays.
-the limit of perception to distinguish single events in time is ca 40ms for single events; this is why the Haas Effect is particularly useful as it exploits a perceptual limitation and uses it to provide additional spatial width and depth information

 

[CPhoenix]

- left side delay time starts low and goes high; right side delay time starts high and goes low; single control acting as a pseudo-pan-pot

Okay now this is personally new to me. (Sorry for hijacking the thread)..

How exactly does one accomplish this in a DAW? I'm not even sure where to begin to automate this.

What I've normally done is just duplicated a signal so I have two copies... hard pan one L and one R, and then zoom in and nudge one of them a few notches forward and maybe the other a few notches back to keep the rhythm steady.


Is there another way to do the Haas effect? Or... let me rephrase the question... am I not doing the full Haas effect and there's more steps to get an even wider effect?

 

[bandcoach]

don't apologise.

I set up a Haas effect combinator in Reason 4 years ago that did just this - avoids the trickery of fiddling with audio files (which back then you couldn't do in Reason anyway).

I'm sure that there has to be a Haas effect vstfx modules out there (I remember reading about them a few years ago also)

 

[CPhoenix]

I'll certainly take a look....

b/c i can't even fathom how to automate the delay time without a plugin lol

 

[ferez21]

I still don't get it.....
The Haas Effect will ALWAYS "ruin" the sound when combining to mono, but still i see it being used very widely everywhere i read\watch. It makes me think, doesn't anybody care about mono compatibility anymore? Maybe i should stop searching for alternative ways to widen my stereo and just use it like everybody?
I'm very confused about that, because on one hand i hear many people yelling "mono compatibility is important", but on the other hand, it seems like nobody give a shit about it anymore and just using the Haas Effect.

:\

 

[bandcoach]

there is mono compatibility and then there is stereo placement; the two are not exclusive and the comb filtering that you might get from a mixdown to mono is something that you would get in most mix situations regardless of whether you used the Haas effect or not - if you are panning your sounds for stereo imaging, then a mono mixdown will have some stereo borne artefacts that may be incompatible with a mono mix.

Fixing it is the trick of knowing when to use what and when to pan everything up the guts and turn off certain effects - i.e. deliberately make a mono mix to avoid the issues you perceive to be borne of using stereo imaging techniques

 

[ferez21]

there is mono compatibility and then there is stereo placement; the two are not exclusive and the comb filtering that you might get from a mixdown to mono is something that you would get in most mix situations regardless of whether you used the Haas effect or not - if you are panning your sounds for stereo imaging, then a mono mixdown will have some stereo borne artefacts that may be incompatible with a mono mix.

Fixing it is the trick of knowing when to use what and when to pan everything up the guts and turn off certain effects - i.e. deliberately make a mono mix to avoid the issues you perceive to be borne of using stereo imaging techniques

I'm talking about widening the stereo for...say...the snare - which is a solid and repetitive element throughout the mix. Many producers use the Hass Effect on it which does have the most drastic effect in stereo, but it never folds down to mono without some serious comb filtering. Should i even care about how my snare will sound in mono? I mean, of course the aspiration is to have your mix sound perfect on both mono and stereo, butit's almost impossible to get the stereo widening effect like the Hass one, in any other way + everybody seem to do this and get away with it.

 

[MarcDHall]

I think (I could be wrong) but Phoenix thinks that Bandoach means that the delays of the left and right signals are automated over the course of the sound. They can be but I don't think thats what Bandcoach meant. I think what he meant was that a single knob is wired up to control the delays of both channels, but one is inverted. When he said:

left side delay time starts low and goes high; right side delay time starts high and goes low

He meant 'start' as in leftmost position of the knob, not the start of the sound.

All that aside, there is no reason that you can't automate the delay but you need a delay plugin that can support its delay being changed in real-time without stuttering. It would need time-stretching built in. The delay in Ableton can be set to 'stretch' (IIRC) that does this.

Personally, the issue with Haas effects is that it makes the sound sound more prominent on the side that has the least delay. So for transient sounds it makes them lean to one side. For smoother pad sounds the Haas effect is less effective as a stereo widener and really acts like a comb/flange type effect. If you can use time stretching you can get the best of both worlds. So for a snare, you can duplicate the sound and time stretch one slightly. That way the initial transient is unchanged but the time difference increases as the sound goes on. So the tail is spread with the haas effect. But, of-course, that only works with sounds that have some internal structure. If the tail is just a noise fall-off it doesn't give you much.

For stereo widening I tend to get better results using effects (whatever effects) applied different to either side. Like using different amp/distortion on either side, different reverb settings. Lots of parallel stuff. In the real world you have components coming at you from all directions all the time.

 

[bandcoach]

you are on the money: it is a single knob controlling two sets of values: as you increase the knob one side goes up the other side goes down.

using automation on that kind of thing (i.e. slowly shifting it left and right by using the Haas effect knob) is cool, but in most cases you will get aliasing artefacts as the delay times change; better to automate a pan-pot instead, knowing that the Haas effect will still apply to the sound no matter where you place it in the stereo spread

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

I do it every now and then for distorted guitars. So we'll record a guitar track and then we'll double that up by recording another. I'll then duplicate the tracks, set the volume where it needs to be in order for the effect to work and then I'll pan opposite of the originals and slip it until it feels right. And also, anything I do to one duplicate I do to the other.

 

[SUB LEVEL MUSIC]

Have a read through some of my posts related to this effect... and yes always check your mixes in mono when using this technique...

Achieving Stereo Width with Simple Delay
Widening Basslines in Ableton

 

[chris carter]

Haas effect is created simply by panning the dry sound to one side and a very slightly delayed copy (up to about 50ms) to the other side. It's not any more fancy than that. You can do it by copying and sliding the track or using a delay plugin. Check mono so there are no nasty surprises.

 

[HERESY/KNOKK SHOPE]

Indeed, and what happens when the duplicates are more than 10db louder than the original?

 

[bandcoach]

Haas effect is created simply by panning the dry sound to one side and a very slightly delayed copy (up to about 50ms) to the other side. It's not any more fancy than that. You can do it by copying and sliding the track or using a delay plugin. Check mono so there are no nasty surprises.

This is the essence of the Haas effect. The method I described above was a more generalised approach for a combinator I made that allowed me to use it to place the effect on either side of the stereo spectrum along with the original source.

If I were to design it today, I would probably make it less cumbersome and streamline it to do two things:

• add the delay to one channel
• have a switch to reverse channels (so that it is a more generalised tool - no point in making a LHS only Haas or RHS only Haas)

Indeed, and what happens when the duplicates are more than 10db louder than the original?

you take steps to avoid that - it is about stereo placement and so a delayed version (kind of like first reflection) on the other side of the stereo spectrum is what is called for. Level should be the same as the original or maybe 1-2db down

 

[chris carter]

Usually what I do is put the sound on a stereo track and insert a stereo delay. Don't delay one side (mix 0%) and put a small delay on the other side (mix 100%). Takes like 15 seconds tops.

 

[MarcDHall]

I don't think the point of the thread is how it's done or how long it should take to achieve.

Indeed, and what happens when the duplicates are more than 10db louder than the original?

D'you mean like left is 10dB+ louder than right? Or that the sound with the effect is 10dB+ louder than without? If left is 10dB louder than right you wouldn't be able to hear the haas effect. It would sound more like an extreme left panned sound with a faint slap-back echo. The effect (as it's discussed here) isn't like a wet/dry effect. You have two copies of the sound, one is delayed a bit. Both are the same as the original. Thats the basis. If you meant the former... I'm not sure it's even possible to combine two signals to get something 12dB louder. Even if you combined two perfectly in-sync sine waves you'd only get a 3dB gain. So (again assuming the basic effect discussed here) you only have 2 duplicated signals. In practice the interaction between those two would introduce a complicated varying new signal level. If the sounds are complicated that would (as Bandcoach said) probably be just a dB or two here and there.