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.