Ok, so I do believe I am wrapping my head around Mid/Side processing, however I want to be clear on one thing:
 
If I am processing something with Voxengo's MSED, I want to be sure that stereo interleave is turned on for the track, correct?
 
I am processing a kick drum and it seems counter-intuitive that I would have it as stereo, yet I want it forced to the center with MSED - this means stereo interleave must be enabled?
 
 

No one has any advice?

I am no expert in this and would be interested in an answer as well.

However, If you have a mono source and it is panned to center then you really just have a center channel anyway right.  The Side is formed from the difference of the left and right channels which would cancel out in a mono source center panned channel. 

What are you trying to do on your kick drum that you want to used MS processing? Maybe that would illicit more comments from other posters.

reginaldStjohn, I suppose I don't need Mid/side processing for my kick drum?

I thought by using MSED and forcing it center I would be ensuring it stays center, but I can see that that may not be necessary when panned center in mono.  I suppose there isn't a difference?

I thought noticed a difference in sound between mono center and stereo forced center with Mid/side processing, but I am not sure if it is just the level being different or my ears playing tricks on me.

Ok, how about this - when dealing with mid/side processing the track should always be set to Stereo correct?  It seems that would make sense based on how mid/side works.

Mid/Side processing is typically done for stereo tracks recorded as an M/S pair. One microphone is mono and the other mic is in bi direction mode. These mics are then recorded to a single stereo track. The Mid/Side plug-ins do a process where the mono mic is placed in the center of the image and the bi directional mics signal is doubled and one flipped out of phase to create a stereo image that can then be blended into the mono mic. 

Because the bi directional mic is picking up signal from both sides of the diaphragm, duplicating the signal and flipping one out of phase doesn't cancel out the signal it actually creates a true stereo image.

This works great for overheads on drums, piano, and acoustic guitar recordings. It also has the benefit of being fully mono compatible. 

The reason plug-ins are great for this is that it eliminates the need to create an extra track for flipping the phase on one side of the bi directional mic.

Simpler than that, MS processing is just a different way of seeing the relation between 2 speakers. 

L+R: you see this as the balance between Left and Right
M+S: you see this as a balance between what is in center (common on both channels) vs. the difference between the 2 channels (what you hear as stereo=sides). 

Stereo interleave HAS to be on, otherwise, you're dealing with mono. L+R or MS, when stereo is off= mono ;) 

it's not a bad idead to use MS for your kik, but it depends on what you want narrowed down to center. 
if you want ALL of your kik content narrowed to center, you could use Cakewalk Channel tool plugin (the faders on bottom right), to narrow your kik sound to taste.

or only if you want to tame out what makes the stereo effect (difference between both channels) on your kik, 
you might want to lower the SIDE channel on your MS processor. 

Hope that helps ! 

Cheers ! 

V