Jonbouy


The thread seems to be focusing on the single aspect of using M/S for post processing a stereo signal, M/S is also a recording technique that a quick search will yeild much information about.

To use M/S encoding/decoding for stereo signals of course Channel Tools is very effective, MSED (Free from Voxengo) is another alternative, if CT's didn't come with your Cakewalk product. 

To experiment fully with the concept and applying your own recipe for treating mid and side signals independently would be to put Channel Tools on a bus set to decode (that's all, no tweaking required here), 'send' the left and right (mid and side) channels to seperate buses using a send panned hard left for the Mid and the other send panned hard right for the Side component where you can apply any fx you care to experiment with on these now seperated two (mono) channels.

As a destination send these two seperate buses to yet another bus with another instance of Channel Tools to convert back to stereo.

No fancy plugins are required and because you are clearly able to learn about the differing results using this method it is much easier to gain a wider understanding of what is going on as well as gaining complete control over the process between the encode and decode.

Many plug-in do specific jobs these days whilst performing the M/S encoding/decoding principles but you are limited to the functions offered in the package, which may indeed be just what's required but for gaining a complete understanding of the principles I'd suggest making yourself a test-bed as described above and having a good play around.

 
Superb explanation Jon
 
I've shown it here using two instances of Voxengo MSED to do the encoding and decoding.
 
The bussing runs from left to right. Send 1 from the ENCODE bus is panned 100% left and is sent to the MID bus; Send 2 from the ENCODE bus is panned 100% right and send to the SIDE bus:
  
 

Here's an older Channel Tools patch for buses in the bus section. You put the effects in the buses labeled Mid and/or Side:




And a similar example using MSED and Channel tools. You put the effects on the Buses labeled Mid and Side.





best regards,
mike

mudgel


Thanks Billie,

Apart from the bits of trash our friend has sprayed about the place, this has been a really informative thread.
You write very well, and I for one (and many others I'm sure) enjoy reading your comments. It's given me food for thought. Just wish I had a studio in which to play around with it.

BTW - nice to see you around here more regularly now that SONAR is again workable for us. The journey from X1 release to X1C (and now X1D) stability was sure a rough time for some of us.

Hi Mike,


Thanks for your kind words.   I'm not going to dwell on the 'trash' that was floating around ;)   But thought for food is a better deal no? :)


And,yes - I must say again I am extremely impressed and pleased with the way X1 has become do stable (at least for me) and it really is a pleasure to make music with.   The journey was rough, but it just shows how people (a company) with the right intentions and willingness to follow through can make a HUGE difference.

So once again I give kudos to Cake and their teams.

mike_mccue


Hi Billy,

I'd like to explain that my initial response was based on my mistaken impression that the thread was focused on advocating for M/S implementation in ProChannel.

I like the M/S and dislike the ProChannel... so I became confused about your more general intent, which it seems, was to encourage discussion and learning.

Please accept my apologies for having initially responded in a way that served to trivialize your interest and the subject. I see now that my post demonstrated poor behavior on my part.

all the very best,
mike

Mike,


THanks for posting that, but I can assure you I have no problem with you in this thread so no apology is necessary.

Regards,
Blly

Great thread Billy as per usual.  Mid/Side is difficult for some folks (like me when I first learned about it) to wrap their heads around at first.  But after they get the fundementals of it down it can make real and positive differences in their tracks and mixes.  As I think someone mentioned above, the video demos from FabFilter by Dan Worral on the ProC and ProQ in this regard are excellent teaching tools.

Plus, it's always great when the braying sound of petulance is replaced by the serenity of silence;-)

yorolpal


Great thread Billy as per usual.  Mid/Side is difficult for some folks (like me when I first learned about it) to wrap their heads around at first.  But after they get the fundementals of it down it can make real and positive differences in their tracks and mixes.  As I think someone mentioned above, the video demos from FabFilter by Dan Worral on the ProC and ProQ in this regard are excellent teaching tools.

Plus, it's always great when the braying sound of petulance is replaced by the serenity of silence;-)

Thanks Ol Pal.


I remember when I first started diving into M/S processing that I was impressed with hearing the actual M/S material - which gave me a whole new way to look at and listen to tracks/mixes.


Hearing the actual Side material separated from the Mid material was very eye/ear-opening.

Excellent post, Mike! Using your example, someone could apply separate EQ and compression to mid and side components of the master bus without the need for any third-party plugins. 

This is a technique I use often to widen mixes. Because positional information comes entirely from upper-mid and high frequencies (frequencies with wavelengths shorter than the distance between our ears), emphasizing the highs for the sides is a simple trick to make (some) mixes sound more spacious.

Similarly, using different compression settings on the sides can also emphasize the side-to-side and side-to-middle differences. For example, a slower attack on the sides will allow transients to pass, further emphasizing psychoacoustic width cues. This works best if you have a compressor that allows for unlinking left and right channels.

I dont know if I would want an M/S tool in PC as a "next" future option, but I find myself pulling out the waves S1 stereo imager and using its M/S tool to help position multiple acoustic instruments and leave a wider bed for things like vocals...  Its a handy option.

Jonbouy


The thread seems to be focusing on the single aspect of using M/S for post processing a stereo signal, M/S is also a recording technique that a quick search will yeild much information about.

To use M/S encoding/decoding for stereo signals of course Channel Tools is very effective, MSED (Free from Voxengo) is another alternative, if CT's didn't come with your Cakewalk product. 

To experiment fully with the concept and applying your own recipe for treating mid and side signals independently would be to put Channel Tools on a bus set to decode (that's all, no tweaking required here), 'send' the left and right (mid and side) channels to seperate buses using a send panned hard left for the Mid and the other send panned hard right for the Side component where you can apply any fx you care to experiment with on these now seperated two (mono) channels.

As a destination send these two seperate buses to yet another bus with another instance of Channel Tools to convert back to stereo.

No fancy plugins are required and because you are clearly able to learn about the differing results using this method it is much easier to gain a wider understanding of what is going on as well as gaining complete control over the process between the encode and decode.

Many plug-in do specific jobs these days whilst performing the M/S encoding/decoding principles but you are limited to the functions offered in the package, which may indeed be just what's required but for gaining a complete understanding of the principles I'd suggest making yourself a test-bed as described above and having a good play around.

Jonbouy, thank you!!! :-)  

And thanks guys for the great illustrations.  



So let me get this straight...  

If I recorded some instruments, applied affects to them that gave me stereo content (for lack of a better term), I could use a tool that supports M/S decoding (I.E. Channels tools, Ozone, etc...) and then apply affects (panning, eq, reverb, etc...) separately to the mid and sides?   

On the other hand, if I recorded an instrument or vocal using two mikes in the M/S configuration, as illustrated in a link from an earlier post, I would already have a mid and side signal. I would then only have to clone the side, invert phase and adjust?  

Are these then two different ways to get a similar affect (I.E. widening the stereo field) depending on the situation?  In either case, I would end up with a widened stereo image (either on a mix of instruments or a signal instrument), what was the bit about having to encode this back into stereo?  

 Again, great topic, great posts, amazing knowledgeable people. I love it! :-) 


Thanks

Scott Lee


Not at all surprised about John T's trolling behavior, thats why I put him on block long ago.  Glad this thread has emerged into a great discussion about M/S. Like Billy I also use bx_control to do my stereo imaging and find it a must for the music I do. M/S can allow sounds to pop just slightly out of the center field, expose elements that normally maybe a tad more difficult to distinguish.  


Used a lot of the bx_control, M/Sed the mix quite a bit on the master on my album tease from last year.  


http://soundcloud.com/dezacrator


Billy, I approve this message. 

Heh, you're funny Scott :)

Funny how a little plugin like bx_control can take on such importance, eh?

Thanks Billy--this is the kind of thread I love to read ,learn from and come back to these forums hoping to find. 

maximumpower

Jonbouy


The thread seems to be focusing on the single aspect of using M/S for post processing a stereo signal, M/S is also a recording technique that a quick search will yeild much information about.

To use M/S encoding/decoding for stereo signals of course Channel Tools is very effective, MSED (Free from Voxengo) is another alternative, if CT's didn't come with your Cakewalk product. 

To experiment fully with the concept and applying your own recipe for treating mid and side signals independently would be to put Channel Tools on a bus set to decode (that's all, no tweaking required here), 'send' the left and right (mid and side) channels to seperate buses using a send panned hard left for the Mid and the other send panned hard right for the Side component where you can apply any fx you care to experiment with on these now seperated two (mono) channels.

As a destination send these two seperate buses to yet another bus with another instance of Channel Tools to convert back to stereo.

No fancy plugins are required and because you are clearly able to learn about the differing results using this method it is much easier to gain a wider understanding of what is going on as well as gaining complete control over the process between the encode and decode.

Many plug-in do specific jobs these days whilst performing the M/S encoding/decoding principles but you are limited to the functions offered in the package, which may indeed be just what's required but for gaining a complete understanding of the principles I'd suggest making yourself a test-bed as described above and having a good play around.

Jonbouy, thank you!!! :-)  

And thanks guys for the great illustrations.  



So let me get this straight...  

If I recorded some instruments, applied affects to them that gave me stereo content (for lack of a better term), I could use a tool that supports M/S decoding (I.E. Channels tools, Ozone, etc...) and then apply affects (panning, eq, reverb, etc...) separately to the mid and sides?   

On the other hand, if I recorded an instrument or vocal using two mikes in the M/S configuration, as illustrated in a link from an earlier post, I would already have a mid and side signal. I would then only have to clone the side, invert phase and adjust?  

Are these then two different ways to get a similar affect (I.E. widening the stereo field) depending on the situation?  In either case, I would end up with a widened stereo image (either on a mix of instruments or a signal instrument), what was the bit about having to encode this back into stereo?  

Again, great topic, great posts, amazing knowledgeable people. I love it! :-) 


Thanks

One of the neat things about M/S processing plugins is that you get to hear the material being affected (as one should with any processing plugin of course).  SO the ansewrs become self evident.


At the end of the day, it all falls to how one uses the tools and on what material.

Scott Lee


Absolutely!

M/S image placement can play a major factor in how effective an instrument is delivered. For example, if you are working with a muddy narrow heavy bass, this can eclipse a softer element. Just simply chugging its stereo position just slightly can let such an element breath and give life to the mix much as EQ dynamics do. 

It would be a welcome addition to the Pro Channel.

It would be welcome indeed -- if they keep it simple like the bx_control plugin ;)

In the meanwhile, I'm glad we have many 3rd party alternatives ;)

Beagle


is the purpose of M/S simply to rearrange the output so that what was on the left is now in the middle and what was on the right is now on the sides?  it seems to me that's what the examples above are showing.  if that's the case, why would I want that?

if that's not the case, what is it?  I thought the point of M/S was to move things out of the middle to make room for those things that belong there like bass, kick, lead vox?

the illustrations above don't seem to me to accomplish that.  or am I missing something?

Beagle,


Yeah, you could 'rearrange' the material's destination if you want.  And that might fall into what some would call surgical editing perhaps; but I think most uses for M/S are actually simpler.


As we've been discussing and as you point out, cleaning up some mud in the center (where SO much signal content ends up) is a more common use.  Channel / side swapping certainly is an M/S function and is used, however.

There are those who use M/S processing in ways I might not though.  That's where experimenting and being creative comes in. No?

I am really interested in M/S now. I did try tracking with an M/S technique a while back, but I was not happy with the results. I think I probably was doing something wrong. I admitt that I am not well versed in this regard.

I used a KSM44 in figure 8
Then a SDC.

The 44 was perpendicular to the SDC, and the SDC was pointed at the source.

I think I cloned the SDC track, panned to opposite sides and flipped the phase on one side. But my image became scewed and not centered. So I abandoned it alltogether.

Someone please point out my mistakes and guide me in proper M/S micing tecniques. I would like to do M/S from the source (micing).

Perhaps I should discuss this in the Techniques forum.

Thanks,
-Charles