What’s The Best Stereo Widener Plugin for Your Metal Mixes?
Nail The Mix Staff
You know that feeling when a massive metal track kicks in? The guitars feel like they’re outside your speakers, the mix is huge and three-dimensional, and every element has its own space. While a lot of that bigness comes from the fundamentals—like killer tones and extreme panning—sometimes you need an extra tool to push your mix from wide to colossal.
That's where stereo widener plugins come in.
But here’s the thing: like any tool in your production arsenal, it’s not about having the most expensive or hyped-up plugin. It’s about understanding what you’re trying to achieve and picking the right tool for that specific job. A great producer can make a mix sound massive with a free plugin, while a beginner can turn a great recording into a phased-out mess with the priciest one.
So let's break down some of the best stereo widener plugins for metal, what makes them tick, and how you can use them to add serious size to your tracks without wrecking your mix.
What Makes a Stereo Widener Work (And What to Watch Out For)
Before we dive into specific plugins, you need to know what you’re messing with. Most stereo wideners work by manipulating the mid and side information of your signal. Some use subtle delays (the Haas effect) or other phase tricks to create the illusion of space. This is powerful stuff, but it comes with a critical warning.
The Mono Compatibility Minefield
This is the number one trap. You dial in this incredibly wide sound on your studio monitors, but when you check it on a phone, a Bluetooth speaker, or in a club with a mono PA system, it all falls apart. The wide guitars disappear, the snare sounds thin, and you’re left with a weak, phasey mess.
Always, always, always check your mix in mono. A good stereo widener adds width that doesn’t completely collapse when summed to mono. Your goal is dimension, not self-destruction.
Targeted Application is Key
Resist the urge to just slap a widener on your master bus and crank it. That’s a fast track to a washy, undefined mix. Instead, think about using width on specific elements to create contrast and space.
- Synth Pads & Layers: Make them wide to create a backdrop for the focused, central elements.
- Lead Guitar Effects: Widen the reverb or delay on a lead to make it feel epic, while keeping the dry guitar signal solid.
- Stereo Room Mics: Enhance the natural width of your drum rooms.
The Best Stereo Widener Plugins For Your Arsenal
Here are a few go-to plugins that you’ll see in the sessions of pros. Each one has its own flavor and ideal use case.
iZotope Ozone Imager
This one is a fantastic starting point for a simple reason: it’s FREE (the standalone version) and it’s incredibly powerful. The best part is the visual feedback. The vectorscope and correlation meter give you a clear picture of what you’re doing to your stereo field, helping you learn to connect what you hear with what you see.
How to Use It for Metal:
The real power is in its multiband functionality. You don’t have to widen the entire signal. Instead, you can surgically widen just the high frequencies. Try this on your drum overheads or a full drum bus. Leave the low-end of the kick and snare (<200Hz) completely mono for a solid foundation, and then gently widen the high-end sizzle of the cymbals. This adds excitement and space without making your kick drum feel weak and flabby. It's a precise move, much like the surgical cuts you'd make when EQing metal guitars to remove fizz.
Brainworx bx_stereomaker
What do you do with a mono synth lead or a vocal sample that you want to feel bigger? The bx_stereomaker is a beast for this exact task: turning a mono source into a believable stereo one. It creates a virtual stereo signal without the weird chorus-like artifacts you get from other methods.
How to Use It for Metal:
Got a mono synth line in an industrial metal track? Use stereomaker to give it width and push it to the sides, clearing up the center for the main vocals. Use the "Tone" control to prevent the newly created low-end frequencies from getting muddy, and keep an eye on the mono compatibility. It’s a lifesaver for adding dimension to samples and single-mic recordings.
Soundtoys MicroShift
Technically, MicroShift isn't a traditional "widener." It’s an emulation of the classic pitch-shifting and micro-delay tricks from vintage hardware like the Eventide H3000. And it’s one of the absolute best ways to get width and character on vocals, leads, and harmonies.
How to Use It for Metal:
This is your secret weapon for making lead vocals and guitar solos pop. Don’t put it directly on the track. Instead, set it up on an aux send, just like you would a parallel compression bus. Send your lead vocal to it, pick a style you like (Style I is a classic), and blend the wet, wide signal in underneath the dry, centered vocal. It adds a professional sheen and size that sounds lush and expensive, not fake.
Waves S1 Stereo Imager
This plugin is an old-school classic for a reason. It’s been on thousands of records and it just works. The S1 is simple, low on CPU, and gives you direct control over your width, asymmetry, and rotation. It’s a testament to the idea that you don’t need the latest shiny object to get pro results.
How to Use It for Metal:
Already have your rhythm guitars panned hard left and right? You can use the S1 to give them a final nudge. Put it on your main guitar bus and push the “Width” control up just a hair—think 1.1 or 1.2. Don’t go crazy. This can subtlely extend the image just beyond the speakers. The "Asymmetry" and "Rotation" controls are also useful for balancing a stereo image if one side feels sonically heavier than the other.
Polyverse Wider
Here’s another free one with a unique trick up its sleeve. The team at Polyverse (co-founded by the legends from Infected Mushroom) designed Wider to create the illusion of width while always remaining 100% mono-compatible. When summed to mono, the effect completely disappears, leaving your original signal intact.
How to Use It for Metal:
Because it’s so safe, this is a great tool for adding subtle width to elements that are critical in mono, like a bass guitar with some distortion on the top end, or even a lead vocal. You can push the width up to 200% and know that you won’t have phase issues later. It's a fantastic, worry-free tool for adding a bit of extra dimension.
The Mixer's Mindset: It's the Decision, Not the Plugin
Do you need all of these? Absolutely not.
You could get incredible results by just learning the iZotope Ozone Imager inside and out. The real takeaway is that the tool doesn't make the mix. Just like you could give 100 chefs the same ingredients and get 100 different dishes, you could give 100 producers the same plugins and get wildy different results.
Don’t get "Plugin Acquisition Syndrome." The top-tier producers you see teaching on Nail The Mix—guys like Jens Bogren, Will Putney, and Joey Sturgis—aren’t getting massive mixes because they have a secret plugin. Their mixes are good because they have incredible skills and taste. They know why they’re reaching for a tool and exactly what they want it to do. They could probably get a killer mix using only stock plugins because their decisions are what matter.
Ready to See How the Pros Create Width?
Learning the tools is step one. Step two is watching them being used in a real-world mix.
Imagine seeing the original producer of a Gojira or Periphery album pull up a track, choose a widener, and explain exactly why they're using it on a specific synth pad but not on the guitars. That’s the kind of insight that turns you from someone who just uses plugins into a true mixer.
On Nail The Mix, you get to be a fly on the wall for exactly that. Every month, you get the full multitracks from a massive metal song and watch the original producer mix it from scratch, explaining every decision along the way.
Check out the full catalog of NTM sessions and see how the pros build those huge, powerful, and perfectly wide mixes from the ground up.
