Mid-Side examples?

[jgimbel]

Everyone's examples here have been so great, awesome to hear real world stuff. I've long been interested in doing midside, but I have a problem with it every time I try it. I've real examples to show it now. Basically when I do it, it sounds very, very heavy on whatever side I pan the side to that is NOT phase flipped. IE if I duplicate the side mic, pan one right, one left, and I flip the phase on the one, it will be way louder on the right side when it's all together with the mid mic. Here's an example I did. Excuse my playing:

http://jessegimbel.com/midside.wav

Does it sound as off to you as it does to me in my recording software?

What I did:
AT3035 as mid mic, 4050 as side in figure 8. Recorded each to its own track, duplicated the side mic, panned one right and one left, and flipped the phase on the left channel. When I play it back, I can hear the side mic MUCH more on the right side than the left, only when it's all together. When I solo just the mid mic, or the two sides together, they're both perfectly balanced as they should be, but all together, it's weighted to the right. If I flipped the phase on the right side, then it was the left that was louder. It showed this in my meters, but I could also definitely hear it. Listening back on headphones on the laptop I'm now on, I'm not sure if I'm hearing it as dramatically as I do in the software before mixdown, but it might just be the crappy headphones I'm using. But maybe not, perhaps it's just a monitoring thing? I've got a zip of my files so you if any of you have done midside and happen to be in front of your recording software, feel free to take my files and see if the same thing happens with you. Included are:

Mid alone
Side alone (panned center)
Two sides together, panned, phase on the left side flipped
Mid and side together.

http://jessegimbel.com/midsidefiles.zip

I've got a session with an acoustic artist tomorrow and it'd be awesome to be able to use mid-side for once. I'll be playing some cajon too, which I haven't recorded much, and it'd be cool to try adding a variable amount of stereo width.

[vvv]

Aiight, inspired by alla the M/S talk, I recorded us Sunday with the drums in M/S, the bass DI'd, then OD'd guitars and vox, here 'tis:
Wheels.

[jhharvest]

http://jessegimbel.com/midside.wav

Does it sound as off to you as it does to me in my recording software?

Yeah, it does sound a bit funny. Usually you'd invert the side channel panned right, or your stereo image gets inverted. I think I can hear your fret noise from the left.

Could you post a picture of your mic setup? To me the weighting sounds like it's just an acoustic phenomenon. Are your microphones very close to the sound source? Especially with an acoustic guitar you need to watch out for the cone of bass frequencies coming from the sound hole.

I have a couple of suggestions for you to try that your mic setup works right. First put your mics as usual. Then do a test recording of you circling them at 6 feet away and talking. Then turn your mid microphone 180?. Do the same circling test recording. For the first invert your right side channel. For the second invert your left side channel. They should be pretty much the same. If they aren't then there might be an issue with your figure of eight pattern.

[jgimbel]

http://jessegimbel.com/midside.wav

Does it sound as off to you as it does to me in my recording software?

Yeah, it does sound a bit funny. Usually you'd invert the side channel panned right, or your stereo image gets inverted. I think I can hear your fret noise from the left.

Could you post a picture of your mic setup? To me the weighting sounds like it's just an acoustic phenomenon. Are your microphones very close to the sound source? Especially with an acoustic guitar you need to watch out for the cone of bass frequencies coming from the sound hole.

I have a couple of suggestions for you to try that your mic setup works right. First put your mics as usual. Then do a test recording of you circling them at 6 feet away and talking. Then turn your mid microphone 180?. Do the same circling test recording. For the first invert your right side channel. For the second invert your left side channel. They should be pretty much the same. If they aren't then there might be an issue with your figure of eight pattern.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but I've had them the same as I've always seen everyone else doing midside. I've done the test you're talking about, and every time I've tried it it's been the same way. I'd think that it's something about the figure 8 pattern of the 4050, but I believe I had tried using my Nady RSM-4 one time for it and still had the same issue. For this sample I was relatively close the setup, yeah, but I've done tests that weren't as close that had the same issue if I'm remembering correctly. But then again I've heard many example of midside, including one posted int his thread, where the guitar sounds like it's pretty close to the mics, so I don't know. Hm.

[mscottweber]

Jesse-

If you can, maybe try recording into another DAW/Interface and see if the problem persists. It seems unlikely, but maybe your DAW was screwing up the files somehow?

Dunno, just a thought...

[plurgid]

Yeah I don't know, man, it sounds fairly even to me.
Perhaps a bit "denser" on the left channel and a bit "brighter" on the right.

Could that just be mic placement?
Like the soundhole (i.e. the boomier frequences) of the guitar was on one side of the mid-mic and the fretboard on the other?

[vvv]

Y'all might find this interesting.

I put together a sax line from samples (cut-n-paste) and "re-amped" it in M/S.

I can't believe it worked!

Clutch

[chconnor]

Fun/educational to listen to all the examples. I think concrete examples are the manna of online sound discussion. Pictures, too.

I love the sax re-amp-m/s effect... kinda eerie.

This track:

http://www.caseyconnor.org/audio/ggggho ... uaword.mp3

...is recorded all m/s... everything except bass (DI), keys (VST), and maybe the cajon (can't recall)... but the vocals, harmonies, other percussion elements, guitars, flutes, accordion, etc, are all m/s. Did it as an experiment. CAD VX-2 fig-8 as sides, AKG C-535-EB as mid. About 50% through the track is a breakdown with a lot of percussive stuff that spreads out L/R, and there's an instrumental breakdown for the last 25% of the song.

I found it interesting/challenging to mix with a bunch of m/s tracks: since, when they sum, the sides cancel out, the slight left/right cancellation that can happen when a track goes through a boombox or laptop speakers, etc, can have a dramatic effect on the overall level of a track if you are using varying amounts of mid vs. side... e.g. a track with more side than mid, when summed to mono, gets a lot quieter than a track with more mid than side would. Not really an issue unless it's played on a stereo with very little stereo separation, but i definitely noticed the shift when i started the mixing on speakers. It was interesting/fun/hard to come up with a mix that sounded OK on headphones and on a little stereo... the end result was a compromise, but not too much more drastic than usual. I don't reckon this would be an issue if you just had one or two tracks m/s.

-c

[vvv]

Damn! That's really effective on the vocals especially, and the accordion ...

Reminds me, BTW, of Fairport Convention, some, until the jam, what is fun and big-sounding; the M/S works real well!

[chconnor]

Ooops, now that I think about it, i'm pretty sure the accordion was doubled and split left/right, as in two tracks of accordion, so that's probably giving a sense of space that the m/s isn't responsible for. (But it may have been two tracks of m/s accordion, that i don't recall!)

Generally I thought it worked well, too, but I haven't done it since just 'cause of the mixing issues and because it requires 2x the disk i/o and more processing power in the DAW to handle all the tracks... That song nearly burned up my li'l laptop. Maybe just on voice again some day, though.

-c

[recordinghacks]

Thanks for the link, mrclean!

I also did a drum overhead comparison that includes mid-side, xy, ortf, spaced pair, and recorderman. Audio and photos are included. There were a couple of surprising takeaways, e.g. recorderman is really dry and probably a great choice if the room isn't great-sounding.

Anyway, you be the judge:
http://recordinghacks.com/2010/04/03/dr ... omparison/

[plurgid]

HOLY SHIT.
I've bookmarked that recordinghacks article.

crazy good stuff.

Tape-Op = greatest community ever. I've learned so much from this thread.

wow, thanks everyone!

[jgimbel]

Speaking of drum recording technique examples, I'll shamelessly plug a video I did about a year ago about them on Youtube. It's long and rambling, and I don't sound too intelligent (and I had the most dead, ugly-sounding drum heads on my drums at the time) but the video has gotten quite a decent response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1MlV_-MLWk

Plus I didn't show them against each other. The Recording Hacks article is much better (though it's one of my favorite sites of all time, not surprising).

[Gebo]

I bought a pair of c414s (b-uls) a few months back, but I'm between spaces to I only had a few quick chances to use them. I finally got some time to set my stuff up and mess around with them in an m/s pattern. I recorded brushed snare, ukelele, and melodica. It sounds so good! I can't wait to be back in my own spot so I can try a full kit! It's easily the best stereo imaging I've ever achieved.

[???????]

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