Steijing 2.0

Steijing is a simple, yet powerful, plugin to handle the stereo image while mastering. Steijing is a playful way of spelling Staging, as in Gain Staging.

The Balance section:
Consists of two individual level control for the Left and Right channels with a Bypass switch in between.

The Sum/Diff section (Mid/Side section):
Consists of individual level control for the sum (mid) and difference (side) channel. In between them, you have a bypass switch and below there’s a switchable high-pass filter for the difference (side) channel.

The Auto Balance section:
This is a bit harder to explain and should be used with care because it can create some undesirable side effects, we get to that further down.

Background
While working with Steijing I started to make a function that would calculate the level difference between the channel to automatically compensate for differences in level between the channels. I ended up not implementing it as initially intended because I realized that an exact level match is not desirable, it’s just not how music works, you set the levels way faster by ear.  However, I discovered that if I set the attack and release times way faster than the slow RMS reading used to level the left and right over time I got a widening effect that made the music sound more full and engaging, pretty much what you’re after while mastering. So, I decided to implement that as a feature in Steijing.

Controls
– At the top, you have a bypass switch to toggle Auto Balance on and off.
– The knob is the amount (for mastering, I suggest you stay within the green area but you may go higher if you set the filter to work on the spectrum above 1000 or 3000 Hz).
– Filter switch – Auto Balance will work with frequencies above the set value
– Null – this is a simple null-test to hear what the effect does (often called “Delta” in other plugins). You will hear how the audio pans between the left and right channels.

– Method – You can either set the effect to compensate for differences between the channel by compression or expansion. As a general rule, use expansion with heavy compressed material and compression with very dynamic content, but, there are no rules. Expansion will sound better to most because of the increase in level, it’s a psychoacoustic fact to be aware of. If you level-match and compare you may think otherwise.

Undesirable side effects:
Auto Balance measures the difference between the channels and tries to compensate for that by either expanding the opposite channel or compressing the strongest channel. So, in mastering, say if you have a break with just vocals. In the middle of the break, there’s a big floor tom hit panned to the right channel. If you set Auto balance to strong and to expand, the vocal will jump to the left channel when the floor tom hits. A small panning move may be inaudible and beneficial, it may increase the feel of the impact of the tom hit but it gets ugly pretty quick. On the other hand, if you’re mixing, try to use it on your drum bus!

Master Section:
A global bypass and a simple Gain control.