Using Audition, knockout VST and the Waves MS-Stereo filters

Sorry if someone’s posted anything similar, I haven’t been able to read all the threads lately.

Just some ideas, using the multitrack mixer and the FX rack so you can experiment real time (for use with stereo material, of course)

Rather than explain in extreme detail, I’ll give a brief summary and tons of screenshots…

you’ll need (as noted above)

1. Adobe Audition
2. knockout VST
3. Waves Bundle (whichever one has the MS-Stereo plugins)

—-

to begin, open audition and switch to multitrack view

insert your stereo file into track 1 and click on the track 1 fx mixer settings

in the left-side list, browse to
Direct-X -> Waves -> S1-Imager
select it, and then press ‘Add’

This adds a filter that lets us play with the stereo imaging real time, shifting the channels wider (more stereo) or narrower (less stereo), which will allow us more flexibility over what knockout can do… more on that later

now we must add the rest of our filters… first add
DirectX -> Waves -> S1-MS Matrix

then
VST -> Knockout

then we add one last filter, and i’ll explain why. add it first:
Amplitude -> Channel Mixer

We need this filter because knockout outputs its filter results to ONLY the left channel… for convenience, we will set the Channel Mixer to make it output to both.

Your rack should now look like this. It is important that it does.

If not, start over.

If it does, let’s continue. Click OK.
You’ll see the FX 1 button is now activated on track 1, meaning effects are on for this channel. Right click the button and go to ‘FX Settings’

You should now have this (below), switch to channel mixer

Switch to preset "Both = Left" or just configure it as below.

Press the play button (you need NOT close the FX Settings window).

Switch back to the controls for the S-1 Imager and play with the settings. Here are a few screenshots, along with a text description of what the setting is basically doing.

This will give you the audio elements that are present in ONLY the left channel (this is basically a Dolby Pro Logic surround channel, for those interested). This isn’t the same as the right channel, because the center channel data has been removed from it.

This is the opposite of the first example, ONLY right channel audio elements.

This is a kinda in between setting. You’ll basically end up with the furtherest left-panned audio with all right channel audio extracted, except for the bit of right channel data that is closest to center (it’s hard to explain, just try the settings, you’ll hear it!)

You can substitute any type of stereo effect for the S-1 Imager, experiment with chaining different effects together, adjust your knockout settings, leave the S-1 MS Matrix filter out (or bypass it using FX Mixer).

If you really want to kick things up a notch, use FX buses to route different combinations of stereo effects into separate left and right channels to have EXTREME control of what knockout can really do!

This may not make an acapella every time either, it’s just an additional resource for your arsenal. If nothing else, this is great for isolating stereo elements very easily, which also makes it handy for sampling.

More to come later.