Stereo Images

I have three short questions about stereo imaging that needs clarifying.
 
1) When a CD has fantastic stereo imaging and you rip any of the songs into Sonar Prod (8.5) why do you end up with missing stereo information such as a much smaller width..?
 
2) I have tried to do some stereo panning in two recent CD project but found that when i used anything beyond about 20 % I started getting phase issues showing up on some of the monitoring plug-ins i use (Durrough meters.) I can't honestly say that i could actually 'hear' any phase issues however.
I also notice that even some of the best CDs exhibit some phase unbalance on these meters. ( Eric Claptons new 2010 CD eg.)
Is this something that should concern me or is it acceptable to have some phase shifting if it is below a certain value..??
 
3) I recently tried the MS (Mid-side) mic technique on some acoustic guitar tracks i wanted to come out in stereo. I was able to duplicate the side mic track and then flip the polarity on the duplicated track. This did result in the side tracks (2 & 3) being silent (as required apperently) when the mid mike (tr 1) was muted. However it didn't seem to give me a wider stereo image when i turned the side mic tracks up..? Louder for sure but not really wider.
I have rechecked my monitors with all the test CDs I have (chesky records Test CD for example) and they are working properly as far as i can tell.
 
Any ideas for some of these issues above or even articles that could help me over the issues mentioned..?
 
Thanks
 
sandy
 
 
 

Not sure what Matt is saying above there but in order to decode an M/S recording you need three channels of a mixer. The M recording is panned to the centre. The Side recording is panned to the LEFT and a 180 degree phase inverted of the Side is panned to the RIGHT.

This will result in the stereo being extracted from the M/S recording. When you sum to mono the Side will disappear because the Side will be cancelled out completely leaving only the Mid part.

Check this link out here:

http://www.paia.com/ProdArticles/msdecwork.htm

Scroll down to the Alternatives section and you will see a diagram.

But you don't need to do this either there are many plugins out there that will decode M/S recording directly back to stereo.

To widen the stereo image you increase the Side component relative to the Mid component. To make the stereo image narrow you reduce the Side component.

1) When a CD has fantastic stereo imaging and you rip any of the songs into Sonar Prod (8.5) why do you end up with missing stereo information such as a much smaller width..?

Depends on how you're ripping them. If you're using Windows Media Player, for example, it creates WMA files. Other ripping utilities create MP3s. Both formats are prone to narrowing the stereo image, because a) "low" frequencies are combined into a single stream for compactness, and b) very high frequencies are attenuated and most of our stereo perception comes from high frequencies. Make sure you're ripping CDs to 44.1/16 PCM wave files, and there should be no degradation.

Mid/Side processing makes things wider only to the extent of the differences between what's in the mid versus side components. 

To use an extreme (not real-world) example, imagine that both mics were picking up exactly the same thing. With no differences between M and S, you've just got a mono recording. For M/S miking to work, you need differences between the two channels. Best place to start is recording in a nice-sounding reverberant room so that the figure-8 mic hears something very different from the straight-on mic.

After tracking, you can help further bring out those differences with EQ and compression, assuming you have an equalizer and/or compressor that features internal mid-side processing. 

bitflipper


Mid/Side processing makes things wider only to the extent of the differences between what's in the mid versus side components. 

To use an extreme (not real-world) example, imagine that both mics were picking up exactly the same thing. With no differences between M and S, you've just got a mono recording. For M/S miking to work, you need differences between the two channels. Best place to start is recording in a nice-sounding reverberant room so that the figure-8 mic hears something very different from the straight-on mic.

After tracking, you can help further bring out those differences with EQ and compression, assuming you have an equalizer and/or compressor that features internal mid-side processing. 

I will thank all of you for the great info. I have the MS down pat and the info Bit flipper says here about the "Difference" required for it to really show up as evident stereo is the Key to my problem. I set up the mics so close and directly in front of the amp in my 'dead' studio desk room. There are no diferences for the side mic to pick up so moving the side channels up only widens and crightens the signal perhpas 20-25%.
 
Also the issues around reading the phase meters are probably not nearly as problematic as i thought at first.
I will attempt some more mono track panning (Duplicate then pan original Left to ?% and the copy (or ghost) to Right ?%.
I have seen other responses to stereo questions that have upwards of 20 or more tracks panned to multiple degrees left & right. So it has to be possible i just need to keep experimenting with methods and material till I get it i guess.
 
thanks again guys,
 
sandy