Review: Stage One 2 from Leapwing Audio

In this article, we’ll be checking out the stereo widening plugin, Stage One 2 by Leapwing Audio.

Stereo widening, even in the best of scenarios is a risky business most of the time. However, Leapwing has been one of those developers that have been known to tackle very delicate tasks with high precision and care. This makes them one of the elite when it comes to high-end, mastering-grade plugins.

The original StageOne was quite revolutionary at the same in terms of mastering level stereo management. But since then, there have been a few developers who have put out similar plugins with some added features. StageOne 2 adds a few new key features and aims to be bigger and better than ever.  

StageOne 2 gives you unparalleled control over aspects of your stereo field, either to widen stereo audio, add perceived depth, or even give mono signals a stereo image so they fit better in the mix. You can adjust width, depth, and mono spread without phase or mono-compatibility problems; all thanks to a unique algorithm that produces clean results every time.

Leaepwing Audio

Slick, Simple, and Blue 

The UI is quite familiar and is similar to all the other Leapwing plugins. The monochrome aesthetic interestingly seems to add an element of exclusivity to the whole look of Leapwing StageOne 2. The controls are all simple, sparse and very neatly laid out. 

We start with the absolutely beautiful Visualiser in the middle. It manages to show amplitude (intensity of dots), frequency (Y-Axis) and perceived stereo width (X-axis) of both input (Dark blue) and output (Ice Blue) signals. It really is quite mesmerising to look at and extremely responsive. The visualiser features two crossover points that allow you to set the ranges for Low, Mid and High. 

To the left of the visualiser, we have the three main controls of the plugin. All three controls are split for the three available bands and each features an on/off toggle switch at the bottom. There is also a small Link button that links the controls of all the bands. 

The Width control stretches the stereo field and pushes things wider (positive values) or pulls everything in and makes it narrower (negative values). Next, we have the Depth control. This adds a bunch of reflections to add a sense of depth to your material. The last of the main controls is the Phase Recovery button. This identifies out-of-phase components between the left and right side, and re-aligns them to avoid losing information when summed to mono.

To the right of the visualiser, there is a Mono Spread control. This takes your mono material and turns it into pseudo-stereo with full mono down-mix compatibility. It works on monophonic sources and can also widen the phantom center content in a stereo source. Lastly, we have the Center Gravity control which is a fancy panning control that shifts the weight of the mix left to right. The plugin features a small output trim slider with a meter at the extreme right. 

Wide, Deep, Large, Massive

This plugin, on the surface does something very simple and very mundane. It is just a widener but what justifies the Leapwing name and the high price tag?

The Widening effect it produces doesn’t really sound like anything you get from other plugins. When you push everything to the extreme, sure, it sounds like a lot of other plugins that do the same or similar things. But in reasonable amounts, there seems to be a little bit of magic that happens. When used right, it feels like every element in the mix just has a bit more space to breathe and move about. It feels like when you widen a YouTube video just a bit to fit the screen and you realise that there was empty space that could be filled.

More impressive is the Depth control. Leapwing says it ‘adds directionally optimised reflections that can psycho-acoustically adjust the position of audio within a sound field until you feel everything is in place’. That’s just a very fancy way of saying we added some very small amounts of reverb/reflections to help things be placed in space. While that sounds simple enough, the effect is quite clever and extremely transparent when used sparingly. It allows you to just create a little bit of depth and bring some of that 3D-ness to your mix.

The Phase recovery tool is a nice addition as well. It just helps bring in some of the stuff that’s strayed a little too far off the stereo field. It all happens automatically eliminating the need to use visual tools and guesswork to bring stuff in.

Personal Thoughts

Leapwing StageOne 2 is a big improvement on the first iteration. All the added features definitely make it more likely for me to use it. It is a real lifesaver when you are mastering and you just need to open the track out a little bit. There are very few tools that achieve this kind of widening and space with this less work and this little damage. The way it preserves your phantom centre information is very impressive.

I personally love the Depth feature and it can be really powerful to use on your busses, drum elements, synths etc to just place stuff front to back in your mix. It can be really subtle sometimes but the cumulative effect can be quite dramatic and impressive. I sometimes find it nicer to use the depth control instead of adding very short decay reverbs. It sounds more sophisticated.

Mono Spread is a neat little party trick that I personally don’t see myself using too much but I am sure that someone will love that feature as well. It does sound quite phasey quite quickly. The plugin does seem to add a little bit of volume sometimes so beware when you A/B stuff. And like with any stereo imaging tool, experiment a lot and exercise some amount of control and discretion.

Find out more about Stage One 2 from Leapwing Audio