Mid-Side Recording Boston MA

THEORY

A lot of people are hesitant to try M-S recording, maybe because they read about decoders and math formulas and feel overwhelmed. Don’t worry — we’ll keep it simple.

You’ll need two mics: one cardioid, and one bi-directional (“figure 8”). Ideally you want two similar mics, but this isn’t essential; experiment with whatever mics you have that meet the polar pattern requirements.

M-S uses the center or “mid” mic in combination with the bi-directional mic to achieve stereo. As the cardioid mic points right at the sound source, it picks up the direct sound, while the off-axis bi-directional mic picks up the room ambience and reflected sound. M-S stereo “sum and difference” is just the center mic plus the side mic for one channel, and center mic minus the side mic for the second stereo channel, with the center mic being positive polarity and common to both sides. As the left and right sides originate from the same mic, but with the phase inverted, collapsing an M-S recording to mono cancels out the left and right sides from the bi-directional mic, leaving only the positive polarity signal from the center (cardioid) microphone. This significant advantage of M-S recordings insures perfect mono compatibility without any phase issues.

SETTING UP THE MICS

Aim the cardioid mic directly at the sound source. As with normal cardioid mic placement, adjust the “aim” to taste; but if you’re a fan of close miking, try moving back a bit further from the source for M-S recordings.

Next, place the figure 8 mic so that the two lobes of the pattern are set 90° relative to the cardioid microphone. M-S is a coincident microphone technique, so you want to get the diaphragms of the two mics as close together as you can. Figure 1 shows a Soundelux E250 (bottom) and ELUX 251 (top) set up as a M-S pair. The cardioid E250 is pointed at the sound source (in this case, the camera), while the pattern selector on the ELUX is set to bi-directional; it’s picking up to the left and right, and its side null point points directly at the sound source/camera.

SETTING UP THE BOARD AND RECORDING

At your DAW, simply route each mic to its own preamp, and assign the cardioid mic to a single DAW track. You can either record the bi-directional mic to two identical, separate tracks of its own and invert the polarity of one of the two tracks later, or record the bi-directional mic to only one track and use a decoder plug-in, or clone the single bi-directional mic’s track later and invert the clone track’s polarity — your choice. I generally record the bi-directional mic to two tracks simultaneously in Pro Tools, labeled “SIDE+” and “SIDE-,” and insert a Trim plug-in on the “SIDE-” track to invert the phase.

Now group the two “SIDE” tracks and pan them hard left and right. As you raise the level of the side mic tracks, the stereo width will increase; lowering them decreases it. Being able to adjust the amount of stereo information in the recording after the fact is one of the big ...

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