Automatic Mid/Side processing?

[QuemGrava]

In all the tutorials I've seen about mid/side recording, we are told to make two mono tracks, one for the mid and the other for the side (figure 8 perpendicular to source). Next, we are to duplicate the side track, invert one of the copies, and then pan one copy hard left and the other hard right.

For some reason, I started by creating a single stereo track, instead. One channel for the mid and the other for the side. When I converted that stereo track to mono, I got 3 tracks! One for the mid and the other two for the side, and they were already panned left and right!

Is this a new feature? Is anyone familiar with this? I'd like to know if it did the invert too. From the shape of the sound waves, they look different, but not necessarily inverted.

Thank you

[albee1952]

What you're saying is confusing to me and I would not do a stereo track at all. My own experience recording M/S was done with 3 mono tracks(2 AUDIO and 1 AUX). The Mid mic(cardioid pattern Miktek C7) aims at the source center. The SIDE mic(figure 8) was a ribbon(Cascade DR-2) gets place directly above the MID mic and aimed left/right(as you said). The MID mic stays panned dead center. The SIDE mic gets recorded to a MONO track panned hard left, and also gets a send to the AUX track(panned hard right) and the AUX track gets any plugin that allows polarity reverse(EQ III one-band works fine). By using a Post-Fade send to the AUX, adjusting the side AUDIO tracks' volume will adjust both sides by virtue of the POST-fade send(so the AUX track fader can stay at the nominal, or -0 mark). Adjusting the balance between the MID and SIDE audio tracks will adjust how much stereo spread is heard. For me, recording a stereo guitar amp with stereo chorus, stereo reverb and ping-pong delay sounded exactly the same(on playback thru monitors) as what I heard when standing in front of the amp. Now none of this is automatic, but its 100% free and 100% accurate(as long as the 2 mic capsules are placed directly above/below so there's no time smear)

Of course, you could skip the send and AUX track and simply duplicate the original SIDE audio track, pan the other way and polarity reverse(either with a plugin or via an AudioSuite plugin). The end result will be the same, sonically).