Topic: Mid/Side Saves my Butt

[WiFiJeff]

I generally record Blumlein for a weekly chamber music recital series, I can get the mic (AKG 426B) up close enough so that audience noise is not a killer issue.  Last Friday I arrived early and spent a lot of time getting a good balance between the violin and piano (Bach and Prokofiev violin and piano sonatas).  Then the audience arrived, the soloists came out, and the violinist, looking at the now filled stadium seating of the hall MOVED HIS MUSIC STAND BACK three feet.  During the Prokofiev he did not use the stand, but stepped back another few feet from the microphone (pretty much doubling the distance I had done all the checks for).  The piano of course did not move. 

The raw Blumlein tape as expected had the piano covering the violin sound much of the time.  Boosting the left (violin) channel led to a sound like having the violin out of the hall stage left and the piano all over the stage, not to mention an unreal ambiance.  So I finally was motivated to try M/S, I downloaded one of the VST plug-ins for Wavelab, boosted the left channel even more and made it the M/S center, the VST plug-in then put the piano on the left (wrong) side so I flipped the channels and VOILA, a not-too-bad result.  I think it would be better to NAIL THE VIOLINIST TO THE FLOOR, but M/S is a next-best option.

Jeff (so now should I get a Josephson C700S, hmmmmm)

[Gutbucket]

Cool M/S mastering trick. That can be a powerful technique.  Glad to hear it worked well.

I have some recordings I'd like to try something similar on.  They are from some 4 channel surround recordings I made which I would best describe as using two sort-of Jecklin-disk setups with one normal Left-Right microphone pair and baffle plus a second pair and baffle turned 90 degrees to generate a Center and Rear pair. On the recordings in question a technical problem caused a loss of the Left & Right channel recording, leaving just the Center and Back pair.  The imaging is screwed but the sense of depth is strong. It actually sounds similar to un-decoded M/S and I've wondered about doing some kind of M/S type manipulation using the Center as the Mid and the Rear as the Side input.  I just haven't had the time to play with it.

[manamana]

Which MS wavelab plugin did you use? is there a "best" or "most user friendly" when it comes to MS decoding?

[WiFiJeff]

Which MS wavelab plugin did you use? is there a "best" or "most user friendly" when it comes to MS decoding?

I just googled "vls stereo tools" and came up with the free Kelly Industries download kelly_industries_stereo_tools, this is pretty easy to use but there may be better ones out there.  It is a really small zip file download.

Jeff

[Gutbucket]

Which MS wavelab plugin did you use? is there a "best" or "most user friendly" when it comes to MS decoding?

Its a pretty simple routing and summing operation.  I use Samplitude which has the decoding function built in, but I've heard Voxengo MSED recommended as a good freeware plug-in. It can encode, decode or do both in series (to adjust the mid/side ratio of a L-R stereo feed and convert back to L-R within instance of the plug-in).

[F.O.Bean]

the Schoeps Double MS plugin also works w/ WL

[Gutbucket]

I don't own any Schoeps but I did read up on their plug-in when they first released it.  I registered but never got a download link via e-mail. [shrug] I could be mistaken but I believe theirs also incorporates built-in eq to adjust for the frequency response of of the mics, tailored specifically to the Schweps caps of course.  That probably means a low freq boost for the Side signal that is an inverse curve of the MK8 roll-off.  It might also incorporate less boosty curves for whichever Mid cap you choose, and perhaps adjust for the Side high frequency eq too. 

That bonus feature may or may not play well with other manufacturer's microphone response curves.  Of course I could also be totally wrong.

[boojum]

I like MS and use it whenever I am not sure of the venue.  I use it in these instances because I can fiddle with the sound in post.  A tip: any file can be encoded to raw M/S and tweaked on the decode.  I use VoxenGo for this and it is sweet.  It takes a long time on a four hour file, but I go and do something else when it is doing the lengthy recode or decode.

I will try the Schoeps DMS for M/S just to see how that works.

Using KC5's I have just tiny Mk4 caps up which interfere with little. Downside: regardless of mic size the audience is attracted to mic stands by some sixth sense.  Bumping into and kicking stands is the indoor sport of bars and halfway through a long gig, woohoo, it is World Cup time for kicks.  I use a high-pass filter in post to fix it.  I like doing it all in post as I can hear what I have and fix it accordingly.  On-the-fly high-pass works, but I have no "before and after" to compare.

As usual, YMMV


Cheers


GB - I would ask Schoeps about the DMS plugin you did not get.  They may have dropped the ball.  They cannot know every owner as so much moves around the used market.

[John Willett]

I don't own any Schoeps but I did read up on their plug-in when they first released it.  I registered but never got a download link via e-mail. [shrug] I could be mistaken but I believe theirs also incorporates built-in eq to adjust for the frequency response of of the mics, tailored specifically to the Schweps caps of course.  That probably means a low freq boost for the Side signal that is an inverse curve of the MK8 roll-off.  It might also incorporate less boosty curves for whichever Mid cap you choose, and perhaps adjust for the Side high frequency eq too. 

That bonus feature may or may not play well with other manufacturer's microphone response curves.  Of course I could also be totally wrong.

It *does* have an EQ for Schoeps mics - but Hugh Robjohns, in his review, said it worked well with his MKH mics. and he did not have to EQ it much to compensate.

You can see Hugh's review HERE - click on the link and then download the pdf of the review (No. 09).

[hummat]

WiFiJeff - Thanks for starting this thread.

Reading it caused me to go back to a seemingly botched recording from a few months back.  The left and right of my LSD2 had major differences in tonal quality, and I chalked it up to set-up error (once I ran some test to make sure it was not mechanical).  Spent a while trying to manipulate the recording to get something at least listenable. . .  no dice. 

I thought I might go the L/R > M/S > L/R route to see if that could help.  Turns out that M/S > L/R made everything better.  I must have bumped the polarity switch on the mic (Duh).  Needless to say, my orientation was WAY wrong for M/S technique, but with a little tweaking of the channel balance/gain after decoding, the recording sounds very nice now.

Would not have gone back to it if not for reading this thread.

-jay

[page]

I like MS and use it whenever I am not sure of the venue.  I use it in these instances because I can fiddle with the sound in post. 

QFT. I also use it when I'm not sure of the venue, and/or when I'm rather far off center or in a strange place. I did an stage lip/onstage tape couple of weekends ago and ran M/S just so I could swing the image around if one amp was louder then the other or something went wrong.

What you trade in localization or other factors, I think you make up for in spades with the versatility it provides. I personally do mine by hand in audacity for a couple of reasons. 1) I'm too poor to have a good sound editor that handles VST plugins on a Mac, and 2) I decode the channels independently, so if there is a balance problem, I can "swing" the image around easier.

[Gutbucket]

I don't own any Schoeps but I did read up on their plug-in when they first released it.  I registered but never got a download link via e-mail. [shrug] I could be mistaken but I believe theirs also incorporates built-in eq to adjust for the frequency response of of the mics, tailored specifically to the Schweps caps of course.  That probably means a low freq boost for the Side signal that is an inverse curve of the MK8 roll-off.  It might also incorporate less boosty curves for whichever Mid cap you choose, and perhaps adjust for the Side high frequency eq too. 

That bonus feature may or may not play well with other manufacturer's microphone response curves.  Of course I could also be totally wrong.

It *does* have an EQ for Schoeps mics - but Hugh Robjohns, in his review, said it worked well with his MKH mics. and he did not have to EQ it much to compensate.

You can see Hugh's review HERE - click on the link and then download the pdf of the review (No. 09).

Thanks for the link.  What really struck me in his review was Hugh's statement that:

One of the trade-offs with normal MS decoding is the interaction between mutual angle and polar pattern in the virtual mic pairs.  However, this sofware compensates automatically, allowing the mutual angles and patterns to be changed with complete independence.  This not only improves the usability for surround applications, but for stereo MS as well.

Perhaps I overlooked that aspect blinded by the routing and eq, but that seems a very useful approach a powerful contribution of the plugin. I'll have to register again and play around with it.  I already find myself wishing I could use it to extend the stereo mastering trick by encoding 4.0 or 5.0 to double MS do some manipulation and decode back gain for surround work.

I also really enjoyed your report on Recording Sessions in The Menuhin Hall with the KM 183-Ds (No. 03 at the link you posted above).  I'd like to thank you for sharing your expertice with us here John, we are really lucky to have your great contibutions on this site.

[BayTaynt3d]

Waves S1 Imager M/S VST is awesome for this kind of thing.