Panning distorted guitars (get the attack sound)

Question

I need a mixing tip: when I try to mix distorted guitars (dual guitars, but in fact, I just recorded once, created 2 tracks, copypasted onto them and hard panned them), I want to have a sound of attack (you might not get it, but I mean, like the initial attack of an unprocessed track comes out from the center and I want that attack to come out of both left and right ears) in both ears. The problem is: when I enable only hard panned left (or right) channel, I hear that attack in the right or left channel, as follows. But when I enable them both, attack again comes out from the center as if I did not pan them at all (sounds like 1 center track with slightly boosted volume).

So, to say easily: I want those tracks to sound only in ears, while having center free for other instruments (like kick and bass). Would appreciate any suggestions. I use Waves plugins, so if you know how to achieve that and you use Waves too, you could write a more precise suggestion – would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

By copy/pasting the exact same sound to two tracks then panning them hard left & right, you have in fact created a mono sound that just takes up two tracks.

In stereo recording, the very definition of centre-panning is that the same sound comes at the same volume from both sides of the stereo field.

The only way to perceive the attack as not centre-panned would be to do something with the time-alignment - if you delay one side by somewhere between 10 & 50ms, the ear will then perceive it as two separate sources from left & right.
This will, however, change the frequency spectrum of the overall sound, as you will get comb-filtering - a kind of slightly 'out of phase' sound.

Using Waves Mondo-Mod or some similar time manipulation plugin, you could make the time-delay vary between the two sources, which might get away with it. You could achieve similar with a panned delay on one of the guitars, varying the delay time. Original signal one side, variable-delay the other. This would only need one source track.

The ideal way to record two guitars hard-panned left & right is actually to record two guitars.