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Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
In this article I’ll explain how I use Mid-Side processing on stereo sources for practical or creative effects.
Mid-Side?
Two channels of audio can be combined in a way that gives us control over what is the same in each signal, the middle, and what is different, the sides. The middle is where the kick drum, snare, bass, vocals and a lot of other instruments are, the sides have any hard-panned instruments and spatial effects like reverb. It can be pretty interesting to listen to music like this, there can be a lot hidden in the side channel.
MS is also a stereo microphone technique using a cardioid microphone facing the source and a bidirectional mic turned 90 degrees away just picking up ambience. In this situation the two signals would need to be decoded into stereo. The side mic signal is duplicated, polarity inverted and the two side signals are then panned hard left and right. This is not a true stereo mic technique but can sound very nice. The balance of mid and side signals can be adjusted as needed by changing the level of the 3 tracks.
You can manually encode and decode stereo files to MS and use mono plugins to process mid or side individually. A lot more plugins have an MS mode now. Many of the modules in the T-Racks suite allow mid side processing, as does Ozone, a few compressors and equalizers and a distortion also come to mind.
You can do this for subtle or crazy effects, its a fun way to experiment with plugins and get some unique sounds.
Loud and wide
For a recent mastering job I used a Fairchild compressor plugin in MS mode (Lat/Vert) to compress the middle and increase the level of the sides. I did this in parallel so I could blend the effect in easily. I was also using this to get a lot of extra loudness. You can call this parallel MS Compression.
Compare the master without the parallel MS compression, then with, then the parallel compression soloed.
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Parallel Mid-Side Compression with Fairchild
No more messy verb
I had someone ask about clearing up the middle of a mix when using a lot of reverb. Using Mid-Side Compression on the reverb return can work well. Compress the middle more than the sides and increase the side volume if you want more width.
Here is an example of that on some drums. The drums are Steven Slate playing in KONTAKT. The whole kit is sent into Valhalla Room. With the Fairchild after the reverb I’m lowering the middle by 2dB and raising the sides by 2.
Here you can listen to this effect with lots of reverb on the drums.
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An now with MS compression on just the reverb bus.
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There is NO compression on the drums themselves, I’m only compressing the reverb return and widening it.
Wacky effects
Here is an example of what you can do with a stereo loop and any plugin. This is a little more complicated, and only works if there are hard panned sounds. The loop I started out with had a hihat that wasn’t panned very hard, I copied it to a new track, filtered out all the lows, boosted some highs and then panned it hard left. I recorded the combined original and panned track to a new file.
Here is what I’m starting out with
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Now that I had something on the sides I could mess around with Mid Side Processing.
The first thing you have to do is convert Left – Right to Mid and side. I use the free +matrix MS decoder from SoundHack.com. After that I used a delay plugin to add some filtered echoes just to the middle by disabling the right side input.
In the next insert I used a distortion on just the right side. This brought out a lot more of the reverb than was heard in the original loop. Lastly, second MS decoder was used to bring it back to stereo.
Soundhack +matrix MS encoder/decoder
Here is how the loop sounds now with delay in the middle and distortion on the sides.
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Pretty cool right!? I hope you have found these tricks useful.
Posted in Mixing, Techniques, Tutorial | 7 Comments »
Monday, April 18th, 2011
I wrote this article for the latest Revolution Audio newsletter. Check them out if you’re looking for recording gear in Canada.
Vocal Processing And Mixing Tips
Last time I shared some tips for recording great vocals, now lets get them sitting right with the rest of the track.
Cleanup – Before anything, clean up the vocal tracks. Go through and trim the silence around each phrase. Remove any noise, thumps, clicks, pops and gasps. Fade in or out on each edit.
Pitch Correction – Gentle pitch correction with software like Melodyne is a big part in getting that professional sounding vocal we all strive for in our home studio productions. Be careful with this! Doing it right takes time and practice. Over tuned vocals are about as bad as out of tune vocals (you can hear both on American Idol).
EQ – There are no rules and every voice is different but here are some starting points. A high-pass filter (low cut) can be used to clean up the very lows (below 100Hz). 200-600Hz can be gently boosted or cut depending on the voice to add thickness or compensate for proximity. 1kHz-3kHz is usually where the clarity of the vocals is. Above that is brightness, bite, air but look out for sibilance. How much you can boost here depends on the song.
Compression – When it comes to controlling vocal dynamics, using two compressors doing less individually often yields the most transparent result. Use a compressor with fast attack and high ratio (10:1) working just on the peaks, ignoring everything else. The second compressor is set with a 4:1 ratio, a slower attack and release and threshold set so it is always compressing about 2-4dB.
Reverb – Reverb is an effect you’ll want on a separate channel (aux track in Pro Tools, FX Channel in Cubase) rather than having it right on the vocal track. Use a send to add the reverb to the vocals. The reverb time should be related to the tempo of the song, it can really clutter the mix if it’s not. Hall and Plate are the most common types of reverb for vocals. Shaping the reverb sound with EQ is recommended.
Automation – Automating the volume level of the vocals is absolutely essential to getting the vocal to sit right where you want it throughout the song. Automating the reverb send for the vocal will allow you to have just the right amount at any time. You can also automate effects like chorus and delays for the vocals to keep things interesting through the song.
iZotope Nectar – A great all-in-one tool for vocal processing is iZotope Nectar. Eleven effects in one plugin including EQ, Compression, Auto and Manual Pitch Correction, reverb, delay and more.
Posted in Mixing, Plugins, Techniques, Virtual Effect | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
A while ago I found this page on the Waves site explaining the concept of the Chris Lord-Alge Signature series effects. On that page there are some signal chain diagrams showing what’s going on, if you can’t afford the collection, these may come in handy coming up with similar results. In any event, you may find them interesting. Because I’m feeling lazy today, I’m going to paste his comments on each plugin too.
Click to enlarge images.
Let’s talk about each plugin, starting with CLA Guitars.
The unique thing about CLA Guitars is that I made it for the guitar player that wants to sit late at night, plug in his direct box, and instantly have three choices of sound. Especially with so many people recording DI signals now, there’s that instant gratification, to take a DI signal and automatically get a sound. And the re-amping makes it completely unique, and the EQ I picked is really conducive to guitar. The EQ, compression, and the way the delays are setup, it’s like, the perfect guitar setup.
read a whole lot more inside
Posted in Mixing, Plugins, Techniques, Virtual Effect | 3 Comments »
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
On the REAPER forum a new user was asking how you could split the audio into various bands and process each independently. Here is a project I’ve set up to do just that.
The source audio track is sent (master send disabled) to 6 other tracks, each with a ReaFIR plugin to define the bands. Subs, Lows, Low Mids, High Mids, Highs and Ultra Highs. After that is a simple compressor for each band. You can insert any other plugins you want for each band: Saturation, stereo width etc. You may find this to be a good starting point for mastering.
Here’s the Project File: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1053122/multiband%20template.RPP
Let me know if you find this useful or have any problems with it.
Posted in Mastering, Mixing, Reaper, Software, Template, Tutorial | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
Mixing is not easy, using the right eq, the right compression and other effects isn’t enough. It needs to be exciting. Here’s 3 ways you can add excitement and take the mix to the next level.
(more…)
Posted in Software, Tutorial | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
The other day I was browsing and I was quite surprised by the amount of audio related projects there were. Here are just a few of the cool ones I saw.
Check them out!
Posted in Gear, Tutorial | No Comments »
