Topic: HELP: Mono Board Feed, Stereo Mics x2. How to matrix this one...

[adrianf74]

Not sure if I should ask in here or in post processing but I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to complete work on a show I recently recorded.

I was able to roll open with AKG 480s/CK61 (approx. DINa) and a mono (1 channel) board feed to one deck and DPA 4061's to a separate deck (my 9100 preamp and M10 took a small spill--about 3 feet off a table but were relatively unharmed (a small nick in the corner of the 9100). 

The omnis sound really bass heavy as I was standing about 12' feet off the ground (about 3-4' from the ceiling rafters) at the back of the venue near the bar (also where the soundboard is located).   The omnis are very chatty/noisy/etc. and I'm tempted to not even use them (or maybe at 10% to pick up some extra bass/room sound that the cards didn't get).

The AKGs did a very nice job -- the vocals are a little low as I was situated about 50 feet from the stage but I thought the hypers would've been overkill for this.

The sound guy was very helpful (as they usually are) but could only give me a mono feed out of the board.  Obviously I'll duplicate the channel for two-channel mono.   He did inform me that it was a stereo output to the stacks, however, he said there was very little panning, etc., because of the nature of the music so he said it was very close to mono.  Obviously the mics would demonstrate some separation but not a lot.

I've done a number of matrix recordings in the past with no real problems; now that I have stereo and mono to deal with, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the mono board recording.

The artist is a singer/songwriter-type who had two percussionists, a bass player, keyboard player and backup singer on a tiny stage with him so it's not LOUD ROCK or anything like that.  Obviously I wanted the board recording to help "aid" the lower vocals in the audience mix (keeping in mind that audience interaction was more or less missing in the board feed).

--

Question: What is the best way to proceed with this one?

Thanks in advance.

[acidjack]

Just treat the dual mono tracks as a stereo track - just double them as you said.  Most small venues have very little panning between channels anyway, so it really doesn't make much difference. The audience mics should give you the stereo effect you need.

I'd carefully consider whether you really want to use the omnis and cards in the mix also.  Unless the omnis were onstage (i.e., picking up something very different), I think an omnis/cards audience recording of the same house PA mix is not only overkill but likely to worsen what you've got.  Omnis + hypers, maybe, but with an SBD AND using those AKGs, I just don't think your 4061s are going to add that much, honestly.

I don't know how often you get SBD feeds, but I find they're mono fairly often - and even if I get a discrete L/R feed, it's rarely all that compellingly "stereo" in terms of the mix anyway.

[SmokinJoe]

I've done this many times. Like you said copy the mono sbd to stereo and mix it with the AUDs. The thing you'll notice when mixing is that more sbd/less aud sounds narrow, and you have to balance that along with flavor. If you are mixing with headphones the narrowness might really bother you, but it will sound fine on speakers.

When I know I'm getting a mono board feed, sometimes I'll run my mics wider, like 12" split (NOS) instead of DIN/DINa. The time delay on the mics then provides a little more stereo information.

[adrianf74]

Just treat the dual mono tracks as a stereo track - just double them as you said.  Most small venues have very little panning between channels anyway, so it really doesn't make much difference. The audience mics should give you the stereo effect you need.

I'd carefully consider whether you really want to use the omnis and cards in the mix also.  Unless the omnis were onstage (i.e., picking up something very different), I think an omnis/cards audience recording of the same house PA mix is not only overkill but likely to worsen what you've got.  Omnis + hypers, maybe, but with an SBD AND using those AKGs, I just don't think your 4061s are going to add that much, honestly.

I don't know how often you get SBD feeds, but I find they're mono fairly often - and even if I get a discrete L/R feed, it's rarely all that compellingly "stereo" in terms of the mix anyway.

Thanks acidjack. 

The last time I did a matrix (with the same AKGs and a STEREO board feed) was for a rock/reggae/blues band and I maybe used the omnis at about 12-15% of the mix [and they did add something positive in that case].   That time around, the venue was a 3000 capacity club with very high ceilings.  In the last night's case, after having a chance to listen to about 10-15 minutes of each recording, I'm gonna archive the omnis and work with the material recorded on the DR-680 since it will also be clocked the same and were the better pulls.

I usually get board access about 10-15 times a year and the majority I have gotten have been stereo with panning on them.  Last night's show had a very narrow stereo mix (according to the sound guy as well) so I'm guessing the AKG's will give me that.  Now it'll be a matter of finding a weight between the two sources.   

Thanks again for your input.

I've done this many times. Like you said copy the mono sbd to stereo and mix it with the AUDs. The thing you'll notice when mixing is that more sbd/less aud sounds narrow, and you have to balance that along with flavor. If you are mixing with headphones the narrowness might really bother you, but it will sound fine on speakers.

When I know I'm getting a mono board feed, sometimes I'll run my mikes wider, like 12" split (NOS) instead of DIN/DINa. The time delay on the mics then provides a little more stereo information.

Thanks, Joe.  I always mix with headphones as I find it gives me a more accurate listening point (especially when trying to sync up multiple sources).   Needless to say, I'm sure I'll hate how this sounds with the headphones.   

The gear I was using is actually a close friend's (I know, people trust me with a couple of grand in gear)  .   He'd only supplied me with a small mount so I had no way to run NOS even though I wanted to.   The room is also pretty noisy and because I was pushed into a corner -- about 5 feet from a wall (and not in the middle -- where the bar was) -- DINa seemed to be the only reasonable option available to me.   Next time, I'm gonna make sure he includes both mounts.

[SmokinJoe]

OK, it's a bigger club (3000), so the SBD feed will probably have a good mix of all the instruments on stage.  I was originally thinking mono SBD in smaller places, like 200 people, in which case the sound from guitar amps and cymbals puts enough sound out into the room that they aren't reinforced much through the PA, and the SBD feed is basically kick drum and vocals.  In that case I usually end up with a 50/50 mix, or more AUD than SBD.   If you have a really nice SBD mix and want to use mostly SBD, most editors have plugins like "sound expander" etc to try to make it a stereo image sound wider.  I've never had much luck with the ones I've tried, but it's probably worth a few minutes trying some and see if you have one that is beneficial.

[adrianf74]

OK, it's a bigger club (3000), so the SBD feed will probably have a good mix of all the instruments on stage.  I was originally thinking mono SBD in smaller places, like 200 people, in which case the sound from guitar amps and cymbals puts enough sound out into the room that they aren't reinforced much through the PA, and the SBD feed is basically kick drum and vocals.  In that case I usually end up with a 50/50 mix, or more AUD than SBD.   If you have a really nice SBD mix and want to use mostly SBD, most editors have plugins like "sound expander" etc to try to make it a stereo image sound wider.  I've never had much luck with the ones I've tried, but it's probably worth a few minutes trying some and see if you have one that is beneficial.

My confusion in the above post... I'll clarify -- I used the three source split for the show that was a rock/reggae/blue show in a larger club late last year and that was the one with the stereo board feed.  Last night was 200 capacity (and very close to sold out).  There was minimal difference between left and right (according to both the sound guy and my ears) and the board feed was mono in this case.  Vocals and acoustic guitar are very promiment in the board feed and less promiment in the audience capture which makes me thing it should be a good fit when put together.  Had some chatty cathys in and around so I might have lower the audience recording during some of the solo numbers so it isn't as distracting.   I'm gonna start with 50/50 (once I get my levels "similar") and then play from there.  I know there are no "hard and fast" ways of doing this and that a lot of it is subject to "taste"; as always, it will take some trial and error.

As for the "expander" -- I avoided bringing this up intentionally because I've always felt "meh" about the results.  I'll likely play around a little and see what works.  The artist did ask me for an MP3 copy to start so I'd like to give him something decent because I'd definitely like to have this access again down the road (which seems to be probable).

[F.O.Bean]

Good thread

[capnhook]

That VST plug-in, "MSED", can help a little, if your matrix sounds "narrow" from the mono SBD...

http://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/

[Gutbucket]

I've done a number of matrix recordings in the past with no real problems; now that I have stereo and mono to deal with, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the mono board recording.
 

It can be just as easy if not easier mixing three channels down to two than it is mixing four.  Simply pan the mono board recording to center. 

 

Obviously I'll duplicate the channel for two-channel mono.   

Sure that works, but I don't understand why everyone recommends doing that.  Why not simply pan the single mono channel to center in the DAW? Is this specific to the software being used? Is this a Wavelab thing which I'm not familiar with since I don't use it? Same goes for stating mixing percentage ratios.. is that another Wavelab thing? I simply pan the stereo and mono tracks as appropriate and bring up the faders on each until they are mixed to ear.  I can check the RMS difference between the sources if I really needed to know the difference in level between them, but I never see a mix percentage anywhere in the software I use.

He did inform me that it was a stereo output to the stacks, however, he said there was very little panning, etc., because of the nature of the music so he said it was very close to mono.  Obviously the mics would demonstrate some separation but not a lot.

More than you may think.  The degree and nature of the stereo component of that stereo AUD depends on the mic setup of course.  A stereo AUD recording captures sound arriving from all directions in a 3-dimentional space and flattens that to a one-dimensional line between playback speakers.  The resulting recording is stereo regardless of the nature of the sound source.  Otherwise why would we ever need to use more than one mic to record a solo performer without PA-  a ‘mono’ source? 

[rant]
I don’t mean at all to harp at you about this at all, but it stirs a peeve of mine concerning something I see repeated here at TS frequently and I’ll take this opportunity to finally say something about it.  There seems to be a common fallacy I see expressed frequently around here which assumes there is, or should be, some sort of link between the spatial aspect of whatever is making the sound being recorded and the spatial aspect of the recording setup we use to record. Huh? Maybe it’s better explained by a few common examples: “I’m stack taping so there is no stereo anyway” or “surround recording doesn’t make any sense when all the instruments are on the stage in front”, or “the PA is mono anyway”, or some platitude like "two ears, two mics"*.  All of that is absolute hogwash.

*except one special case of “two ears, two mics” (which is never the way I see the phrase used around here) if it refers to binaural recording specifically for binaural playback. But  then it only applies if using a dummy head, not standard mics.  I can often get improved results for headphones by mixing down my 3 channel L/C/R recordings (C becomes analogous to the mono SBD in your mix) or 4 channel surround recordings (4th channel adds rearward-facing room ambience mic) than I can with straight two channel stereo ‘non-binaural’ recordings.

..and sometimes those are recordings made of solo performers!  The surround playback of those solo performer recordings is always better than stereo playback of the same, which always handily beats playing it back in mono! Shocking I know.
[/rant]

Ooops, lost my head there for a minute, thanks for the indulgence.

When I know I'm getting a mono board feed, sometimes I'll run my mics wider, like 12" split (NOS) instead of DIN/DINa. The time delay on the mics then provides a little more stereo information.

Joe understands what I’m getting at (at least before I went off the deep end).  I often do the same thing in that situation.  The mono center fills the middle of the playback stage nicely so you can err to the side of over-wide with your stereo AUD recording.  Playback of the resulting AUD alone may be ‘overwide’ with a ‘hole in the middle’ without mixing-in the mono SBD (or the center mic).

That VST plug-in, "MSED", can help a little, if your matrix sounds "narrow" from the mono SBD...

http://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/

That works by increasing the Side component of stereo relative to the Mid component, ‘widening’ the resulting stereo. You can apply that to the whole mix, or achieve the same thing by applying it only to the stereo AUD channels.  Doing that is somewhat analogous to what Joe suggested in running a wider stereo pattern with the AUD mics, only applied to your existing stereo recording after the fact. 

Any M/S decoder can do it if you use two instances: the first converts from L/R stereo to M/S stereo, you then adjust the balance to increase S relative to M, then another instance of the M/S decoder reverts back to L/R again.  The MSED plugin which good captain hook suggests makes doing that easy because it can do all that in a single instance of the plugin.  Another way of doing the same thing is using the stereo width control feature if your DAW has that.  If available it’s usually found as an alternative to the traditional PAN control on stereo channels.

[NOLAfishwater]

Winner

3 channel L/C/R recordings (C becomes analogous to the mono SBD in your mix)

[yltfan]

Great thread

FTFY

[adrianf74]

Thanks to everyone for their advice here including the rants.  There's always a lot to learn in this situation.  I ended up running MSED to "wet" the dry board feed just a little.  I'm not a huge fan of screwing with sources and have always hated "faking stereo" because it's against my basic principles, however, it was needed this time.

The end result was a very nice sounding matrix, if I may say so.  I ended up running three or four different settings within MSED (degrees) and went with something closer to the middle of my maximum versus none-at-all.   I didn't pan the mono channel although that would've saved me some processing time (and I'll do this the next time since I have the ability to do so within audition).

Again, thanks to everybody here for their input.

[Gutbucket]

Good to hear you got the results you were looking for.  I also find most artificial stereo processing usually sounds, well, artificial, and rarely find it useful.  A short delay can work sometimes though.  The advantage of the M/S processing is that it isn't doing anything artificial, just changing the balance of the mono/stereo information which is already there, so it tends to create less artificial nastiness.  Yet like most things, adjustments are usually best made in moderation rather than through extreme settings.

BTW, that same L/R > M/S (make adjustment) > L/R technique is useful for other adjustments besides re-balancing the width of the resulting stereo image.  EQ'ing the center differently than the sides is a good example and is often more useful than EQ'ing L and R seperately.  Many plugins now offer the option to convert and work with M/S internally, which makes doing so simple.  Although I don't use the Voxengo stuff myself, I know that option has been added to most of his plugins, probably even his free EQ's and dynamics tools at this point.  I'm sure it's the same MSED code integrated into them.

The example of EQ'ing the middle and sides differntly is useful for adjusting an existing stereo file, but in the situation you had here, you could accomplish the same thing more simply by just EQ'ing the SBD and the AUD seperately, since the SBD ends up contributing most of the Mid component of the resulting mix and the AUD ends up contributing most of the Side component.

[Gutbucket]

More thoughts on the fake stereo thing..  if all you have is a mono or mostly mono source, something which often works better for me than 'stereoizing' plugins is applying a very slight delay to one channel (too short to be detectable as an echo- often refered to as a hass delay), EQ'ing each channel slightly differently, or a combination of the two.  And often those things can work better and be more convincing when applied to the M and S components instead of the L and R channels as described above.  Doing it that way applies the stereo difference between the center and sides, instead of between Left and Right.  So for example a slight delay applied to the Side component perceptually anchors the sound in the center and blossoms out to the sides based on the delay.  Hope that makes sense.

[adrianf74]

Good to hear you got the results you were looking for.  I also find most artificial stereo processing usually sounds, well, artificial, and rarely find it useful.  A short delay can work sometimes though.  The advantage of the M/S processing is that it isn't doing anything artificial, just changing the balance of the mono/stereo information which is already there, so it tends to create less artificial nastiness.  Yet like most things, adjustments are usually best made in moderation rather than through extreme settings.

BTW, that same L/R > M/S (make adjustment) > L/R technique is useful for other adjustments besides re-balancing the width of the resulting stereo image.  EQ'ing the center differently than the sides is a good example and is often more useful than EQ'ing L and R seperately.  Many plugins now offer the option to convert and work with M/S internally, which makes doing so simple.  Although I don't use the Voxengo stuff myself, I know that option has been added to most of his plugins, probably even his free EQ's and dynamics tools at this point.  I'm sure it's the same MSED code integrated into them.

The example of EQ'ing the middle and sides differntly is useful for adjusting an existing stereo file, but in the situation you had here, you could accomplish the same thing more simply by just EQ'ing the SBD and the AUD seperately, since the SBD ends up contributing most of the Mid component of the resulting mix and the AUD ends up contributing most of the Side component.

I always EQ my sources individually because I know each recording will have its own set of issues.  In the case of the board recording, it sounded overly dry (mono, small room) but running the VST plugin helped make the vocals a little more "wet" and better sounding overall (and I'm pretty particular).  The end result is a great sounding pull (in my mind) that I'm looking forward to sending back to the artist.

Thanks again for all of your help/advice.