When you think of the iconic guitar sounds on some of the biggest records in rock, consumer equipment definitely isn’t the first type of gear that comes to mind. But a small and mighty consumer device from SRS called The WOW Thing changed that, and proved that great guitar tones can come from the most unlikely of places.
This is the story of how a quirky, lo-fi spatial effects processor built for consumer audio became a studio secret weapon: “the little plastic box that makes guitars a big thing.”
History
SRS Labs began as SRS (Sound Retrieval Systems), a psychoacoustic research branch of Hughes Aircraft in the early 1980s. The mission was to create a realistic 3D soundstage from stereo audio.
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In the 1990s, acquired and rebranded SRS Labs, they brought multiple products to the consumer market, including a tiny box full of sonic voodoo called the WOW Thing. This modest desktop hardware was intended to make inexpensive computer speakers sound more full and spacious.
Nobody working in professional audio should have cared. But a mix engineer working on what would become one of the biggest albums in rock history accidentally stumbled on what it could do, and the secret eventually got out.
Sonic secret sauce
The WOW Thing works by utilizing a unique blend of extreme equalization, psychoacoustic processing and phase delays. This dramatically widens the stereo sound field and boosts low frequencies.
It’s built around three proprietary technologies. SRS 3D widens the stereo image. Originally conceived for car playback where speakers are not ear level, Focus “lifts” the sound vertically. Designed to make small speaker drivers sound huge, TruBass uses psychoacoustic bass enhancement to give the source material a deeper natural low end.
It employs similar EQ moves to what’s traditionally done in mixing guitars – emphasizing low end, a scoop to clear low midrange, and a subtle lift in the high-end presence. Processing like this is ubiquitous today with plugins, but in the early 90s it was fairly revolutionary.
Discovery
“Wider, brighter, and huge.” That’s the way engineer Randy Staub (Metallica, Mötley Crüe, U2) described how the WOW Thing sounds on guitars. He stumbled on the software version while listening to music on his home computer and discovered what it could do to distorted guitars: thicker bass, a high-end lift, and gentle low-midrange scoop that helped them sit perfectly in a dense mix.
At the time he was mixing Metallica’s Black Album and was searching for a way to make the guitars sound bigger and wider. The WOW Thing provided the sonic secret sauce he was looking for.
He told Ultimate Guitar: “I started using the WOW Thing on guitars to spread them out in the stereo image, and that’s what I’ve been using for years and years.”
In the mix
He also set the device to boost the bottom end, add more presence to the high frequencies and attenuate some midrange. It helped the rhythm guitars feel bigger and separated them from the vocals and snare, which tend to occupy overlapping areas of the frequency spectrum.
The WOW Thing provided a way to make doubled guitars larger-than-life in a unique way, rather than standard processing like EQ and compression, which created definition between the layers of tracks.
Since it was designed to process stereo material, Staub used it on stereo guitar busses and pairs of panned guitar tracks. The result is a thick, defined sound that’s still a gold standard 35 years later.
Korneff Audio’s plugin
Eventually, recording engineer Dan Korneff (Breaking Benjamin, Papa Roach, My Chemical Romance, Paramore) got turned on to it and was using it in his mixes when he decided to create a plugin version. “This happy accident changed what we thought was possible for electric guitars,” he says. “Instantly you can hear the guitars get wider and deeper.”
As the WOW Thing secret got out, original units became increasingly difficult to find. Korneff Audio, formed in 2019, designed a plugin version that closely models the hardware in sound and GUI, operates in mono and stereo, and extends the capabilities.
Under the hood are selectable frequency centers for the TrueBass control (from 40Hz to 400Hz) and options of two different spatial processing types for the WOW control to sound like the desktop or Megawide rackmount versions. There’s also a Blend control for parallel processing, and a switch that sets the low end mono to achieve a wider stereo effect.
The TrueBass control adds low-end depth that thickens and cranks a source to add novel low end effects. This makes it versatile enough to use with downtuned and extended range guitar tracks. It sounds equally great on guitar busses too. There’s also a TrueBass Dynamics switch that adds a four-band frequency-dependent compressor for better control over the low end.
As far as why Korneff decided to create the plugin he says, “I wanted my guitars to be as huge as Randy Staub’s,” Korneff said, explaining why he created the plugin. “This does all that and more – like the guitars are giving you a bear hug.”
Happy accidents
Recording has always rewarded outside-the-box thinking and new approaches to timeless techniques. It’s fascinating that a consumer audio device that originally sold for just $20 became a secret sonic weapon that found its way onto iconic rock records.
The effect the WOW Thing has had on professional mixing is proof that the tools used for production matter less than how they’re used.
