Mid Side Miking Technique

[smrp]

A friend has a finalizer. He tracked an acoustic guitar using the MS technique and used his finalizer to decode it. I tried the same using "S1 MS" and got completely different results. Iwas very impressed with the finalizer and terribly unimpressed with S1.

Did I incorrectly assume that "S1 MS" has something to do with this miking technique? Or did I just do something wrong? I might like to use this in the future if I can get it to do what I want it to.

Please help.

[RMD]

you can also decode the recording yourself in protools. record the wide card/centre information on track one. record the figure 8 pattern on track two. duplicate track two onto track three and place it 180 degrees out of phase with track two. pan track one to centre, 3 & 4 hard left and right. lo and behold...rematrixed MS. season to taste.

cheers,
robert

[TDunn]

What is the Blumlein technique? Could you describe that for me? Thanks!

[smrp]

thanks for the tips! I think I'll try it again and see what happens.

[fab]

Hi,
I'm interested in the MS thing too.
2 questions:

1- can I compress the signals right after the mike pres, (and before decoding) through a stereo only compressor ( That's what I have on my tracking path)?

2-If my pres have a decoder built in (CML) do I need S1 on playback?

Thanks,

fab.

[Natural Sound]

Hi all,
Excuse my potential ignorance here, but I was having an MS discussion with a collegue.
My thought was that MS is fake stereo at best. (there can be no information that is on the left side that is not on the right side) But basically you cover your butt with the center mic should the product ever get put into mono. (in which case the fig8 mic dissapears)
His arugment was that there IS a left and right signal due to certain timing and phase relationships between the center and fig8 mic.
I don't get it though.
clue me in gang.

[Rock_Artist]

It's based on the following data:

The Mono/Mid Microphone gets the "Center/Middle" so it should get a clear straight picture of the sound.

The Side Mic use figure of 8 (the mic is positioned to the sides so it gets the left & right into a single channel)

Now M is the same.
However

M+S = Left
M-S = Right

Because we change the phase we get 2 phase cancelations.
One for left & one for right.

So we actually encode stereo....

[Don Geppert]

TDunn .....

Blumlein Technique is a stereo recording process using 2 coincident bi-directional mics (figure 8 pattern) angled at 90º and as close together as possible. Otherwise stated, it is an X-Y technique using bi-directional mics instead of cardioid mics.

[Frank Kruse]

MS is an *equivalent* to XY stereo. It´s by no means "fake stereo". It offrers very precise localizations and you can control the stereo width *after* recording or during the recording.

XY and MS are directly convertible.

MS was used for ages to cut vinyl records. actually the grove on a record is MS stereo as well.

MS is the only 100% mono compatible mic setup. that´s why it´s very popular in film and tv audio.

the standard chennel setup is
channel 1: M
channel2: S

the figure of eight has to be facing left with the front to make the S1 work. otherwise you will reverse L/R as a result but the S1 offrers a channel flip on the inputs

frank.

Hi all,<BR>Excuse my potential ignorance here, but I was having an MS discussion with a collegue.<BR>My thought was that MS is fake stereo at best. (there can be no information that is on the left side that is not on the right side) But basically you cover your butt with the center mic should the product ever get put into mono. (in which case the fig8 mic dissapears)<BR>His arugment was that there IS a left and right signal due to certain timing and phase relationships between the center and fig8 mic. <BR>I don't get it though.<BR>clue me in gang.

[Monte McGuire]

Yes, it's not "fake" stereo, but the two channels obtained have nothing but amplitude differences to clue the listener into panning. I personally like spaced mike setups, especially something like an ORTF array that spaces the mikes equivalent to the spacing between the human ears. To me, "intensity only" mikings, to which MS, XY and Ambiphonics fall into, sound boring.

Of course, YMMV, and if you absolutely need strict mono compatibility, then intensity stereo is an easy way to guarantee no problems. However, techniques like ORTF don't generally fail miserably when summed to mono either. I think they're quite viable when mono compatibility is an issue yet they don't sound so boring and sterile in stereo.

Sometimes, widely spaced miking setups also work well since the mikes are spaced so widely that cancellations aren't so simple and easy to hear.

As always, do this stuff by ear. If you only have one shot to get it right, then do several mikings at once and sort it out at mixdown. Tracking lots of channels is really cheap today, and there's no rule that says you have to use a track only because you printed it.


Best of luck,

-monte-