Topic: Rendering M/S with outriggers: all together now?

[thunderbolt]

I recorded a college jazz band last night using mid-side in the center of the room and omni outriggers.  I have duplicated my side channel, inverted phase, panned hard left and right and settled on the stereo width.  As far as rendering/mixdown in Audacity, should I render just the three mid-side tracks, and then render that with the omni outriggers in a second operation?  That's what my brain tells me is correct, but I need someone to confirm, or tell me I'm wrong.

[Gutbucket]

For M/S decoding, only invert polatity of the 'side' copy which is routed to the right channel bus, do not invert polarity of the 'side' copy routed left .

Other than than that find a good M/S balance, then bring up the omnis panned hard left/right to find a good blend.  You might then want to go back and tweak the M/S ratio after you bring the omnis up to find a good balance across the playback image.  You can probably lean more towards center on the M/S pair with the omnis in there than you would want to with the M/S pair alone.

[thunderbolt]

Check on all that.  What I'm wondering is if I should "render" aka mix in two separate operations: render the m/s and then render that again with the omni pair.

[Gutbucket]

I don't think it maters, as long as you can listen to the mix and tweak both the M/S ratio and the mix of that with the omnis.  You can do that in one step or two seperate ones.  I'd do it in one simply because you can go back and forth and tweak each before rendering rather than locking in one M/S ratio and being stuck with that when bringing up the omnis.

[thunderbolt]

Thanks man.  Appreciate it!

[noahbickart]

you might even want to tweak the M/S ratio of the omni pair themselves.

Remember, you can apply M/S processing to *any* stereo file.

[thunderbolt]

Actually, I've just made a recording that I'd like to try encoding to mid-side.   

Don't know if it will be worth it.  I have learned from folks here how to record and decode M-S.  But I don't know how to ENCODE an a "regular" stereo recording to M-S.  Could you tell me the steps?  I looked around on the web and could not find anything that made sense.  Several just looked flat-out wrong.  Like this one: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFiIJAIKN0o

[Gutbucket]

sum (mix together) L + R and you get M
Flip the polarity of R and sum (-R) + L and you get S

[noahbickart]

sum (mix together) L + R and you get M
Flip the polarity of R and sum (-R) + L and you get S

There are plenty of Plugins in AU or VST format which make this very easy. Here's a free one: http://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/

This can save you time if all you want to do is adjust the ratio of M to S in a L/R file.

If you want to perform EQ or Dynamics processing to only M or S, many EQ or Compression plugins allow for this as well.

[thunderbolt]

Thanks guys.

[F.O.Bean]

Boltman, got a link? What exactly was your setup? MK4/MK8 + MK2s Or MK41/MK8 + which Schoeps omnis

You in for All Good again next year?

Thanks,
Bean

[thunderbolt]

I ran an Avantone CK-40 in M-S with Schoeps Mk. 5 in omni.

All-Good next year: are they even going to let tapers in? . They're getting pretty harsh.  I'd sure like to sleep in greater comfort--I wanna borrow an RV!