Mid Side Miking Technique

[Frank Kruse]

I think they're quite viable when mono compatibility is an issue yet they don't sound so boring and sterile in stereo.

I never heard of a criteria called "serile stereo". Also what does "boring" mean in terms of stereo width, depth of field, localization capabilities.

please specify.

frank.

[Monte McGuire]

I never heard of a criteria called "serile stereo". Also what does "boring" mean in terms of stereo width, depth of field, localization capabilities.

please specify.

frank.

Where I live, "boring" means uninteresting, not exciting. "Sterile" I mean lifeless, lacking dimension and depth. It's sort of hard to use words to describe audio, but I'm surprised you've never heard the words "boring" or "sterile" used to describe audio!

Spaced mikes give you time differences as well as amplitude differences in each channel. Coincident techniques do not. ORTF gives you time differences that approximate what happens when you hear using two ears spaced about the width of the human head. For humans, this sort of makes sense - why not try to capture time differences between channels that the listener's ear would also hear? Dummy head recordings take this a step further and use the refractive properties of the ear's pinnae to color the signal going into the two mikes. I have heard some very realistic sounding recordings done with dummy heads.

Does anyone remember Holophonics? It was a particularly good dummy head that got used heavily on Pink Floyd's The Wall for a lot of the SFX and I thought it was very realistic sounding. At an AES long ago, they gave out a test disc of someone pretending to cut hair around the dummy head. It was possible to locate the shears as they pretended to cut not only left and right, but up and down and front and back due to the pinnae refraction. Cool demo...

-monte-

[Howardk]

Anyone know of a company making a dual opposing element condenser that has a separate output for each diaphram? This would let us decide if we want Fiqure 8, omni or Cardiod later. . . as well as provide a version of stereo that mono sums to Omni. Anyone see a mic like this or try anything like this?

[RobMacki]

ORTF
(for my own selfish purpose since I've saved this thread as a favorite)

[RobMacki]

ORTF seems to make much more sense in terms of realism. However there are times when it just is not practical.
I am getting ready to mix location sound for a feature and my boom op will be using a M/S mic primarily to gather ambience for some EXT MOS scenes. The mic will have to be on a boom and there is no practical way to do ORTF. There are scenes where I will use ORTF technique.
Thanks Monte.

[RobMacki]

wow I take back what I said after I found this

too bad I won't have one in time.

[Frank Kruse]

Monte,
thanks for explaining the term sterile and boring to me. I learn every day.

I was simply wondering what you mean speciffically when you talk about sterile sounding stereo. What would be the oposite? Dirty organic stereo? Would that information would be any different from describing stereo as "silky" "fractal" "extremely LA" or "more spicy" ? Hm....not sure.



frank.

[Howardk]

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.

There is a lot to be said to support this statement. It is often too hectic, and time consuming, to have a good listen and make the perfect mic position choices, when there are a bunch of people around chomping at the bit to get started recording. I have learnt a lot about mic placement later, when listening to tracks after everyone has left, or at mix time, especially these days when there is rarely an AE around to help out during setup.

Here is another post with more info on this topic: MS Techniques

[Monte McGuire]

[QUOTE]
Monte,
thanks for explaining the term sterile and boring to me. I learn every day.
{/quote}

I know you're from a different country and perhaps English isn't your native language, so I'm pleased that you stayed with me so long. I'm not trying to be cryptic, but it might happen now and then by accident....

I was simply wondering what you mean speciffically when you talk about sterile sounding stereo. What would be the oposite? Dirty organic stereo? Would that information would be any different from describing stereo as "silky" "fractal" "extremely LA" or "more spicy" ? Hm....not sure.

Great question. I used to use coincident techniques quite frequently to mike things like drum overheads and various area miked situations, but I found the results to be only sort of OK... not obviously wrong, but not totally satisfying either.

I experimented with spaced mike tchniques such as ORTF, and found that the resulting recordings had a lot more depth and detail than my previous recordings, so I decided to abandon coincident techniques.

Yes, I think mono compatibility is a worthwhile thing, but at the same time, spaced mikes can give such a larger sense of space and dimension, so I feel that they're worth using.

So, to answer your direct question, I think that coincident techniques rob the listener of information that could have been recorded by a spaced mike technique. I know that not every engineer will hear things the way I do or strive for results that I feel are worthwhile, so I don't want to say that my way is the only way.

But, having used all of these methods for some time, I find I'm most happy with spaced mike techniues and not coincident techniques.


Regards,

-monte-

[Frank Kruse]

[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
Monte,
thanks for explaining the term sterile and boring to me. I learn every day.
{/quote}

I know you're from a different country and perhaps English isn't your native language, so I'm pleased that you stayed with me so long. I'm not trying to be cryptic, but it might happen now and then by accident....

[QUOTE]



now this is funny...the world of text communication is full of misunderstandings