How is it possible to make a mono recording, like vocal to a M/S signal.
My goal is to get the vocal further back in the mix,  without using Delay or Reverb.
As i understand it, with less mid signal and more side signal that would push the vocal back, or
any mono source.

My first thought was to just put a M/S tool on the vocal track, but that did not work, 
as the side signal is not present and the Side buttons on the tool was greye'd out.

Then i just wonder, is there a plugin that can make a Mid signal into a M/S signal
so i can tweak the mid's. I am not talking about an stereo enhancer to do this.


As i know it so far, a mono source tend to sound close, and up front.
while a stereo signal tend to sound wide and further back.

So how can i do this, the simplest way :) 

There won't be any side signal in a mono source. The side signal is the difference between the two stereo sides of a signal. Obviously on a mono source there is none.

This is just a shot-in-the-dark, as I have not had reason to try it, but if you could convert the Mono track to Dual-Channel Mono, I THINK you could process it the same as you would a Stereo signal. Don't know for sure.

Hi Soundblend,
Like Karl said, a mono signal panned center is, definitionally, a mid signal in M/S decoding. The only way to get it to the "sides" is to "stereoize" it in some way. You could use a doubler to get it out to the sides or you could copy your mono track, pan the two tracks L and R and process one differently than the other

Good luck
Dean

To put a vocal in the back of the mix, I wouldn't worry about using M/S recording. I would use a mono track, play around with panning and add a nice delay plug-in.

For M/S to work correctly you need to begin with stereo information and I mean true stereo information. Converting a mono signal to a stereo track won't achieve anything either. With only one signal present there will be no S signal to work with.

In this case you are better off forgetting any form of M/S processing and just get back to the concept of working with your mono signal and use other more traditional approaches to giving it space etc.... delays, reverbs, early reflections etc. 

Once you have got your mono signal now into some form of stereo field you could convert that to M/S and alter the M S relationships and then convert back but that would not achieve a lot either as you can also do that by simply adjusting the Wet/Dry balances of the various effects that you are using on the mono signal anyway to do the same thing.

You can use the process of converting a final stereo mix to M/S and then alter the M S relationships and convert back too but this tends to be used in situations where a mastering engineer only has access to the stereo mix only and may want to change some aspect of it. But as you are mixing too you can also do all that during the mix.

So to sum up M/S processing is not really the way to go here, just more normal techniques of placing that mono signal into some space etc..

What you could do though is to record the vocal etc using M/S recording to track the signal from the start so you are making a two channel recording right up front. And if the room sounds nice you will have the option later of altering the balance between the direct signal and the amount of room you want to hear later on when you are mixing. In that situation it could be quite useful. That is where M/S recording really excels. 

One way to use M/S techniques on a mono source is with M/S "widening".

This is what many "wideners" or "exciters" do.

The mono source is converted to a two tracks of matched material, then it is sent into a M/S matrix. explanation of edit in subsequent posts

The Mid and the Side will be the same at this point, but now you may discretely effect either or both so that they differ.

One popular technique is to add more bass to the "mid" track while boosting the treble and adding some delay or modulation effect to the "sides" track.

When you decode it back to left right stereo the track will have a sense of spaciousness that will be reminiscent of a poorly recorded stereo track, or a pop song from the late 80's.

Of course, you can do this with many all in one plug ins using just one or 2 knobs so I imagine the best reason to do it the long way as I described above will be simply to enjoy exploring the nature of sound and learning more about how it synthesizes when you blend it together in original ways.

Once you've got something that serves as a mid and a side then you can mash up just about anything crazy you come up with.


best regards,
mike

I think Mike's suggestions are interesting but if you feed that mono signal (even if it is converted to two channels of identical information) into a matrix then some encoders will still only give you a zero output on the sides signal so you wont have any signal to process at all. But what Mike is talking about may only be possible if you can get inside the matrix and that matrix allows you to insert effects etc into the S components. You need to check that you can actually do this with the matrix involved.

If it does then this is a very good way to go for sure because you can effect the M part of the sound differently to the part of the sound that is on the extremes of the stereo image and that opens itself up to some interesting effects.

If you do go down this route I would still suggest checking for mono compatibility on a single point source mono speaker with your L and R outputs summed to mono just to make sure. You might also be horrified when you do this.

You could try bx_stereomaker :-

http://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/plugins/detail/bx_stereomaker.html 

Of course you are right Jeff. I had a brain plough.

You do not need to send the 2 mono tracks to a matrix... I will edit that in the post above.



You only have to conceive of the two examples of the mono track as Mid and Side and then treat them as if they are. 

Then when you are done with the effects you send them thru a M/S "decode" process and turn them into Left and Right.

Voxengo MSED lets you encode and decode easily... In SONAR you can put MSED on a bus and pan the 2 track sends to the "mid" and "side" of the bus respectively.


best regards,
mike