Mixing with The Wow Thing - a deep dive with some hacks!

[@stingylizard]

Salute! We purchased,we like👍 We were messing about with several live 2-track recordings from 1988,extracted stereo track from a VHS tape. Was a bit draggy,NOISY,and had weird fake phasey stereo mix effect from on-camera mic. We threw our WOW on as a master bus effect(just messing about),turned WOW on but all the way down,then added some bass back to the track. The second option,button on top--when engaged it nearly removed all of the tape noise,kind of like the old dolby NR switch;also some high end mixed with hiss. Didn't fix tape drag but WOW,what an amazing accidental use for the plugin. We did that to all the tracks and it was a quick n easy restore. Fun,too. Off to use it like you suggested🤘

[@lukedelalio3155]

Hey there - I a sorry I missed this one. WOW - denoising with the WOW thing, huh? This is excellent. I will have to look into this deeper. Again, sorry we didn’t get your your comment - we much appreciate it. Luke

[@tomdenney9963]

WOW

[@korneffaudio7930]

Wowwowow!

[@gisellechacon7081]

Well, gotta hand it to ya, when you did the A/B, you literally made me say Wow! 😂

[@wouterdesmedt1736]

Really digging the no-nonsense, no-clickbait, no youtuber vibe of these videos. Still have to put my Wow thing to work, but this sounds very inspiring. I'd like to make one suggestion, since you mentioned getting sea sick : try to keep the camera (or phone) more stable during filming. It picks up a lot of vibration from the desk and gets wobbly at times.

[@korneffaudio7930]

Hey there - that is a REALLY good suggestion. I noticed it too. The issue is exactly as you describe it. I definitely have to fix it - thanks for the push on this, I will do so. I’m glad you like our “vibe,” for want of a better word. We try to be exactly what we are! The WOW Thing is way more useful than even we thought it would be. Another way to use it - I should make a video - is to set it up as a send and return, and then feed a little bit of reverb, backing vocals, etc, into it. Doing it this way lets one experiment quickly with it. I’ll have to make a video...

[@wouterdesmedt1736]

@@korneffaudio7930 Interesting idea. Makes me want to throw it on a reverb, just to see what'll happen.

[@korneffaudio7930]

@@wouterdesmedt1736 - My main use for processors like this, specifically the Behringer Edison, was to widen out reverb returns. Try it!

[@wouterdesmedt1736]

@@korneffaudio7930 Yesterday I put it on a rather lifeless stereo synth stab track, which gave it a little more authority in the mix. But then I put a Rat distortion after the Wow Thing and well... Wow. 😂 It gave it that subtle organic stereo movement I've been trying to achieve for a while now, which made me smile like an idiot.

[@stingylizard]

​@@wouterdesmedt1736Thats cool info to know. The WOW has been fun to use,it does something interesting to just about anything

[@minstinct280]

Is there a technical explanation for how the Wow Thing differs to all the other stereo widening plugins out there? I figure if Randy Staub used this device, there must be something special about it. Thx.

[@korneffaudio7930]

That is a good question. There are different ways to get a widening effect, some involve eq’ing, some use delays to cause phase shifts that basically fool your ear into thinking something is more rotated around your head then it actually is. Most are a combination of these methods, and the WOW Thing falls into that category. There is nothing special about its algorithm. What is special about it is that it has a strange overall EQ curve, and that combined with the widening combined with the TrueBass, resulted in a sound that happened to work well for heavier guitar parts, and that’s what caught Randy Staub’s ear. Actually, what caught his ear is that SRS, the maker of the original WOW Thing, managed to get their circuitry licensed intp lots of home computers. It is really serendipitous. It’s kind of like how the Yamaha NS-10 got so ubiquitous: it wasn’t because it sounded good or that it was accurate, because it is neither of these things, but Bob Clearmountain got good mixes with them, and he was a name and the sales took off from there.

[@minstinct280]

@@korneffaudio7930 Thx for the reply! Interesting...will buy it.

[@stingylizard]

@@korneffaudio7930 WOW,in a whole nuther way. Very interesting info regarding SRS. Our waaaay back PC had it loaded via the media player. When napster was about 2 days from kaput,we started grabbing SRV bootlegs 24/7 until they died. We found the SRS was creating a "clean-up" on a many of those stereo .wav tracks. Just now recalled that....cool

[@stm113]

During the creation of this plugin, did you guys ever figure out the kind of settings Randy STaub would have used on the Metallica albums?