I recently read an article by Dave Moulton, one of my favorite audio geek-gurus, in which he suggested a technique called "listening in side". He said he'd learned it from Bob Ludwig.

The idea is to use Mid/Side encoding and to solo the Side component to gain insight into how a record was mixed and produced. I gave it a go, and it really is quite revealing and educational.

If you have Ozone 4 or 5, you have the ability to do this very easily, as the equalizer has a Mid/Side mode and solo buttons for the Mid and Side components. (The solo button is the blurry red splotch on the right side of this blurry screenshot.)



Just enable the equalizer, click the "S" button and you're listening to your favorite references in Side-only. Which is to say you're hearing only what was panned to the extremes. It's like getting an inside look at the multitrack.

If you don't have Ozone, you can use Voxengo's free MSED plugin. Just insert it on the master bus and turn the "Mid Gain" control all the way down:



[EDIT: I'd originally said here that the Channel Tools plugin would not work for this, but I was wrong. Steve Corey straightened me out. You can in fact use Channel Tools for this exercise if you don't have Ozone.]

I created a SONAR project for this and loaded up 8 of my favorite reference songs, representing a wide variety of styles from different decades.

First up was "Eclipse" from Dark Side of the Moon. There is no kick or snare, but cymbals and toms were surprisingly present. This tells me that the overheads contributed more to the toms than close mics, which I'd think would be atypical today. There is also no organ in the sides, which is surprising. It means the Leslie was recorded mono and put in the center, definitely atypical. (That organ sure sounds good for being mono! So much for my long-held belief that Leslies must be stereo to sound good.)

Next, I listened to a clean, modern, semi-aggressive, typical Nashville-style country-pop song by an artist whose name escapes me at the moment (I know he wears a cowboy hat, though). It features acoustic guitars panned hard L-R, which are back in the mix when heard normally, but in Side mode they're pretty much all you hear until the drums come in. That, and some vocal reverb. Many of the references had that characteristic: wide-panned vocal reverb. 90% of the elements of this record are panned up the center, but it has a very satisfying stereo image nevertheless, which goes to show that width depends on what you choose to pan out there.

In Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'", you hear the trademark double-tracked and wide-panned 12-string guitars as expected, but the surprise is how much snare is in the sides. On closer listen, it became clear that the snare had a subtle delay on it, and the echo was panned partly to one side, making the snare sound bigger and wider. I wouldn't have noticed the technique if not for listening "in side".

"Pull me Under" by Dream Theater was interesting. There's a lot more happening in the sides than in any other reference I listened to. Lots of drums, including hats and snare are panned out (I'm surprised at how common it is to not have the snare down the middle). And of course, lots of distorted rhythm guitar, as is required by the genre. Once again, the vocal reverb is spread way out.

I won't bore you with all my observations, but rather invite you to try out this technique for yourself.

Channel Tools does work for this, unless I'm missing something. Just pop it on, and turn the "MID GAIN" knob all the way down. Don't put it in Mid-Side mode, keep it in Stereo mode.

I can't wait to try this.

Bore us?  Please.  I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect I'm not the only one who sees a post from bitflipper (or Jeff Evans or Danny Danzi) and thinks "Okay kids, class is in session."

Hmm, snare not down the middle?  That's just crazy talk!

SCorey


Channel Tools does work for this, unless I'm missing something. Just pop it on, and turn the "MID GAIN" knob all the way down. Don't put it in Mid-Side mode, keep it in Stereo mode.

Thanks for that tip, Steve. I misunderstood the function of the "input mode" selection and had selected M/S rather than Stereo. So I stand corrected: Channel Tools does indeed work for this experiment, exactly the same way as MSED does it.


I still recommend Ozone if available, because it can easily be toggled between Side-solo and normal with a mouse click. When I hear something interesting, I can pop over to full stereo and hear it in context.


Oh, and I neglected to link to the original article that initially set me on this course of investigation, so here it is: http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/stereo_reconsidered/P0/. Note that in this article, he refers to the side-solo as the "A-B version".

RabbitSeason


Bore us?  Please.  I can't speak for everyone, but I suspect I'm not the only one who sees a post from bitflipper (or Jeff Evans or Danny Danzi) and thinks "Okay kids, class is in session."

Hmm, snare not down the middle?  That's just crazy talk!

+1   +1    +1    +1 .............................................
 
Would you please consider boring us a little more Mr. Bit....
 
I found this topic very intresting since I know very little about it or how it works........but I do find your insights very helpful!
 
Mr. Clifford
 
:-)
 
P.S. I got the link and now am reading it.......this will take me a few readings to digest and understand.
But thank you for bringing it to OUR attention.... 

Absolutely LOVE it. Thanks for sharing!! Real insight into the subtle stereo techniques employed by the masters.

Silly question: what is considered Mid and what is considered Side, is Mid from 50% L - 50% R and the rest Side?

alexoosthoek


Silly question: what is considered Mid and what is considered Side, is Mid from 50% L - 50% R and the rest Side?

I took bit's explanation, and the Moulton Labs article, to mean this:
 
Side: anything panned extreme L or R
Mid: everything else, that appears in both L and R
 
In my mind, I was picturing the reports I sometimes run at work, comparing two lists (like products sold or customers) looking for variances.  And that always makes me start to hum "One of these things is not like the other . . ." from Sesame Street.  And from there on out, my day is constant stream of pop culture references, while work just piles up on my desk.

It's my understanding that mid is the Sum (L+R) of the stereo channels and side is the Difference (L-R). Flip the polarity of one side L or R gets you the difference. Moulton has had this stuff on his website and used to do CDs for "Home Recording Magazine" back in the late 90's early 2000's.

Jimbo's definition is correct, although it's kind of the wikipedia-type definition that may be hard to picture in your head.

Our perception of stereo-ness (width, spaciousness, the illusion that instruments are arrayed across the panorama) is all about what's different between the left and right channels. That doesn't just mean where instruments are panned, but where every component, including harmonics and ambiance, appears in the panorama.

You might, for example, have a lead vocal panned dead center (meaning it's identical in both left and right channels) but have a delay that's panned to one side. When "listening in Side" you hear only the delay, not the main vocal. And if that delay's been only moderately panned to one side, it'll be faint because most of the energy is still split evenly between L and R.

Another example might be an instrument with a stereo chorus on it set to a wide spread. The instrument itself may be panned center, but we picture it as being very wide, and that's because the chorus is generating L-R differences that confuse our natural sense of directionality.