Haas effect

    I don't deny this, Chris; I never claimed that it's an effect that collapses elegantly to mono, it's just something that's done in the real world (aka The Wild) for the benefit of people listening in stereo which is most everyone these days. We're all exhorted to Check Our Mixes In Mono, but that doesn't mean that somebody's going to do the math and say "You know what? Damn the AM radio & TV listeners, I can always do a separate mix for those markets" and they do. I guess the most ancient effect like this would be simple M/S widening - overdo it, and the mix sums to... nothing. Zero! That doesn't mean we should ban M/S widening.


    The "prime number" delay thing is sketchy, but it's clever and I give Craig Anderton credit for thinking it up. If you're going to be creating a pair of short delays, one left & one right and summing them under a mix in an aux-send kind of way it's one method to reduce the comb filtering effects of having two short delays beating against each other for the most common harmonics. (This would be fun thing to plot in MATLAB for an AES paper, actually.) Sound production is messy, and it's Art. I've worked on art and sound tools that have had great success in the commercial market, but I don't assume that makes me the most skilled graphic artist or sound producer - you sit back, and you marvel at what others create. Bob Katz's K-Stereo mastering effect is another popular effect that decends from the Hass family tree - the hardware versions of this used to sell for more than the KPA! Stretch the concept further and what you're really working with are Synthetic Early Reflections (another popular Craig Anderton topic.) Do all reverbs collapse well to mono? I would bet that a lot of "Ambience" patches do not.


    What I propose is very simple; all it takes is a Left delay, a Right delay, and a mix knob. Set the Left to 0MS and the Right to 9mS at 100% wet, and you have something like the Bruce Fairbairn effect. Set the Left to 11mS and the Right to 19mS at 30% wet, and you have something like the Craig Anderton effect (very popular on vocals.) Add crossfeed and you're coming close to the K-Stereo effect. Add Pitch Shift with EQ and you're coming close to the Waves Doubler (fantastic plugin, BTW) effect.


    -djh

    As I said, when you put more than one delay into the equation, then this is not the haas effect anymore, and does not create such problems.
    Why would I expect a reverb or early reflections algorithm to collapse when mixed to mono?
    The Haas effect that we talk about is a very special setup.


    The K-Stereo of Bob Katz utilizes the properties of the Haas effect, but not in the way we discuss here.


    The delay network you describe is pretty much realized in our "Space" effect.

    Edited once, last by ckemper ().