Overview
The everyday tool: swap or pick channels, flip polarity, narrow or widen the stereo image, put the lows in mono, pan, mute, and see the stereo picture with correlation and balance.
Getting started
- Look at the scope and correlation; if it reads below zero, try Invert on one side.
Controls
| Channels | Stereo, Left (on both), Right (on both), Swap. |
| Polarity | Invert L, Invert R. |
| Width | 0 % mono to 200 % twice as wide. |
| Bass mono | The side taken away below a frequency. |
| Pan | Left to right. |
| Mono, DC filter, Mute | Sum to mono, remove DC offset, silence. |
Settings
The gear in the header opens the settings panel; it covers the lower panel until the gear is clicked again.
| Pan law | Balance, or Constant power (+3 dB on the near side). |
What the screen shows
A goniometer (mono is a vertical line), correlation from -1 to +1 and the balance of the sides.
Tips
- Bass mono at 120 Hz tightens a wide mix for club systems.
Technical notes
- Every switch fades through a 4 ms dip, so nothing clicks.
Common to every plugin
| The header | Every window opens with the same header. On the left a dot-matrix display shows the main reading large and the details under it; text that does not fit scrolls. Next to it a hint with a coloured dot says what the plugin is doing or what to do next. On the right: Undo and Redo arrows (up to 100 steps of everything done in the window), the Bypass button, and the gear, which opens the plugin's settings panel when it has one. |
| Bypass | With Bypass lit, the plugin lets the sound through untouched. It is the same switch as your DAW's own bypass for the plugin, so either can be used and automated. The input is held back by exactly the plugin's latency, so the timing stays right, and switching fades over 10 ms, so it never clicks. Bypass is not part of Undo. |
| Input and Output | Most plugins have a column on the right with a pair of VU meters for the input and the output, each with its own gain knob (plus or minus 24 dB). Analog shows the classic VU scale, dBFS the digital one. A click on a meter opens a large view of it. The CLIP lamp lights when a sample reaches 0 dBFS. |
| Knobs | Drag a knob up or down to turn it. Knobs that go both ways, or that have a natural middle, catch briefly at their centre. A double-click returns a knob to its default. |
| About and the demo | A click on the xsidfx logo in the footer opens About. In the demo version the plugin's name ends in (demo), its settings are not saved with your project, and About opens each time the window does. |
