Topic: Levels of Mid Channel vs. Side While Recording

[yug du nord]

^^^I know what yer sayin........  I was more commenting on the academic desire/achievements differences between EU and USA.  Tune In Turn On Drop Out. 

[SmokinJoe]

Back to the original topic... how to record mid/side.  I don't think there is one right answer, just preferences, so I'll throw in mine.

A few years ago I had a UA-5 with the little knobs and I generally cranked the side to make the levels come out on my recorder the same as I did when running XY.  When I got home, I really had no idea how much "extra boost" the side had, and so I would try to mix by ear, and went through many iterations.  I think probably my mixes were very "side" heavy when all was said and done.

Now I have a V3 where I have the ability to dial in the gain just about identical on both channels, I generally prefer to do it that way.  Or sometimes, I'll run my Side exactly 5db hotter, and write that down.  Either way, when I go home, I know I can make a 50/50 mix.  This is a good starting point which kind of corresponds to XY90, and then I tweak the mix to ear from there.

I understand what people are saying about "don't waste perfectly good headroom", but it seems to me that my mics and pre are so damn quiet I can't hear whatever it is that I'm supposedly wasting.  I'm more into science than art perhaps, but I like being able to have that 50/50 known anchor point that I can start with and then deviate from.

Then I have another friend who runs Mid/side mics using a preamp that internally does mid/side -> XY mix on the fly.  He thinks this is great, but I can't imagine doing that myself.

[DSatz]

> A few years ago I had a UA-5 with the little knobs and I generally cranked the side to make the levels come out on my recorder the same as I did when running XY.  When I got home, I really had no idea how much "extra boost" the side had, and so I would try to mix by ear, and went through many iterations.  I think probably my mixes were very "side" heavy when all was said and done.

If that was your choice when listening to loudspeaker playback at home, then that was your choice and I see no reason to second-guess it. Maybe you were recording in a relatively dry space and the additional "S" signal increased the reverberation and the stereo image width. Maybe your figure-8 "S" microphone was a few dB less sensitive than your front-facing microphone.

There's nothing magical (or Officially Scientifically Correct, either) about recording the M and S channels with identical gain settings in the two channels. The two microphones often don't have the same sensitivity, and the whole point is to have the choice of varying the relative proportion of M and S signals in playback. So, in my opinion, you made good use of M/S's possibilities.

--best regards