As many as you like. This is where EQ comes in to make it all gel together. You use EQ to keep just a portion of each layer, then mix (or "buss") them all together to create the overall multi/combi for that musical part. You may or may not be able to do this in realtime, it depends on lots of things.

It's not conventional, I know, but personally I love adding reverb then compressing subtley afterwards. The compression release phase acts to bring up the tail end of the reverb so it all interacts and sounds big, but you have to be careful as it would be easy to overdo - less is more. I also love tape saturation. Splitting the L&R (Left & Right) signal into M&S (Middle & Side) for separate processing is interesting, too.

I know how to layer inside cubase sx its inside my virus im wondering about. i know to layer on the virus but i'm not sure about where to pan the layered sounds.I've got 2 pads layered and they are clashing a bit and sounds a bit too unfocused so maybe i'll change 1 of the pads. then on top i've got a little bell kind of trance arpegio so it is sounding good but not amazing.

I'll get there, it wont take me long i'm a very fast learner. By the way I prefer to get the sounds, whether its layered or not sounding as good as I can while its still in the virus. I dont like using much eq in cubase cos it takes away the character and clarity from the original preset sound on the synth.

Aye, that's why I chose to grab an analogue desk (Soundcraft Ghost). Makes things easier in a lot of ways, and the EQ isn't bad.

Pick your layers for definitive reasons, so they compliment each other when they're mixed and played on the same part, as opposed to clashing/overlapping and sounding a general mess.

As a example, for kick drum synthesising, many people use several kicks layered together... Such as an 808 kick for its low-end (which they filter out the mid + top end), another kick for its initial punch (and EQ out the low end so it gels with the processed 808 kick), and maybe even more kick layers... All for their individual, isolated characteristics.

Use that way of working for many of your musical parts, and I think that's a big piece of the puzzle.

Mate I use to have a soundcraft ghost. What a mixing desk, amazing sound quality and made everything I put through it sound a lot better.Thats the trusty old analogue circuitry for you. I'll practice layering and cut off the sounds high and low to make them fit better. I guess maybe where I wa going wrong is, I was trying to layer 2 pads with the filter fully open on each pad. I guess thats why they clashed.

To get a wider stereo effect you should try PSP's Stereo Enhancer... that plugin allows you to adjust the breadth of a given signal making it more mono or more stereo, it can do wonders to the sound making it fit into the mix. I'd recommend doing that over anything else, its much easier to get quicker results than trying to EQ the mix to death or nitpick over other aspects. Check out PSP, theyve got some of the best plugins out there by a long shot.

Thanks but most stereo enhancement plugins just push the sound to the back of the mix and barely effect the actual stereo width of the sound. I've heard the most effective way, even though it can mess up mono compatability is to use phase tricks. I did the old phase trick on my old soundcraft ghost when I had it and the effect was astonishing but now when I tried the phase trick in cubase the effect was totally crap. All it did was push the sound to the back of the mix which just says how crap software sequencer mixers really are.

You can do the phase trick using any program.

Take a copy of the L channel. Let's call this L2.
Take a copy of the R channel. Let's call this R2.

Take R2, invert the phase and add it to the original L channel.
Take L2, invert the phase and add it to the original R channel.

Voila. Awesome stereo width that goes far, far wider than your stereo speakers suggest, but gives utter shit mono compatibility. (If you now sum both L and R channels to mono the signal will disappear completely, because both L and R would cancel each other out.)

However, if you have a couple of channels spare on the mixer you can use these to split up the M & S channels (middle and side) and then use the faders to increase or decrease the stereo enhancement to the mix so that it's not an "all or nothing" effect.

But there are other, better ways to increase the stereo width without losing mono compatiblity (double tracking, delays, layering, etc. as mentioned).

"I don't take drugs, I am drugs" - I like this


I agree with Tomer, hard pan your mono sound left, then bus it to a simple 400m/s or thereabouts sample delay panned hard right. The effect makes the sound reach right to the edge of the speaker's stereo field. Sounds great on hats too :)

I've tried all that and it just pushes the sound to the back of the mix and sounds totally crap.

It depends if the sound is mono-heavy or not. The technique effectively cancels the centre channel. So, on mono sounds (but with a bit of stereo reverb applied), you'd be left with just the reverb, as the central mono channel would cancel out and just leave you with the wishy washy stereo reverb tails all on their own.

It's also how karaoke machines work to subtract the vocals from a pre-mixed track. (Traditionally vocals are mono and panned centrally. But so is bass, so that generally cancels out too.).

Try reducing the centre-channel in this way on just individual audio track subtly - by around 20%, or similar - then compress it to bring it back up. All the extra surround sound information will be enhanced and boosted, but with the central channel reduced, so depending on the stereo data being treated the overall panarama should be widened up moreso (but, again, losing slight mono compatibility for that particular musical channel - not by much, though, if you've only processed it by 20% or so at most).

If not, your sounds are too mono to start with. The above technique only acts on stereo information that's already there, so otherwise you'd need to look at the source material itself and get some modulation happening.

Look at a phase-meter (showing lissajou patterns in realtime) to see what kind of stereo information is happening. I use the one in Wavelab v5.