Fake mid-side

[vomitHatSteve]

So we were talking in another thread about using the studio trickery of mid-side recording on a non-mid-side recorded signal chain.

I threw a LDC in front of my cheapest acoustic and then daisy-chained the piezo out through a couple of DI chains (one "clean", one distorted)

Just treating the LDC and DI as mono chains on top of each other, obviously yielded a narrow recording

Mid side - mono clean.mp3

Applying the MS technique with the clean DI as the sides and the LDC yielded a much-wider sounding recording, but it ended up peaking in wildly different ways

Mid side - stereo clean.mp3

Using the dirty DI signal instead of the clean was much more dramatic (tho obviously lower-fi)

Mid side - stereo dirty.mp3

And the technique even kind of worked using just the DI channels together

Mid side - stereo DI only.mp3

So as a widening technique, I think you could get some very interesting results. For this context, I think it's good for adding a bit of life to a super-lo-fi acoustic guitar. I wouldn't recommend it as a go-to per se, but I think it's definitely a fun experiment to try

[Tadpui]

That worked much better than I thought that it would. Nice experiment!

[Greg_L]

It does give you....something. Is it good? That's up to the user I guess.

[vomitHatSteve]

Yeah, it'd be a real "your mileage may vary" technique. By the time you get around to using a better guitar and putting some effort into the mic positioning, you might as well just use real mid-side.

But, especially with the double DI version, I could see some random uses for it. Kinda like the When the Levee Breaks drums, all it takes is one iconic track for everyone and their dog to want to do it.

[Lt. Bob]

I liked the 'mid-side mono clean' a lot

But for most of my recordings I don't like instruments to be stereo ...... I prefer them to be specific points I can pan.
To me lots of stereo sources all just mush together because they're all occupying all the space ..... but I rarely do recordings with just a few things in them.

I absolutely would use this if I were doing a recording with just a couple of acoustic instruments though ..... sounds much better than the DIs on top of each other to me

[Greg_L]

IMO there aren't many things we as hack home recorders should record in stereo.

Real drums - sure
An actual piano - sure
A choir - sure

But anything else? Probably best to do it mono. If you're one person playing one instrument that makes sound from one source then it's mono. Record it that way. If you think your room sounds good, then record the room in stereo in addition to recording your mono source....which is what true mid-side miking tries to do.

[vomitHatSteve]

Yeah, mono is gonna remain my go-to for most things.

Heck, I think the last real stereo tracking I did was a piano in 2017. I do a lot of multiple channels of the same instrument, but that's all for the mix and still treated as mono.

[Greg_L]

Yeah, mono is gonna remain my go-to for most things.

Heck, I think the last real stereo tracking I did was a piano in 2017. I do a lot of multiple channels of the same instrument, but that's all for the mix and still treated as mono.

Yup. Track in mono and mix for stereo (if you want) which consists of a bunch of mono tracks panned around for a stereo image on the whole mix.

[Lt. Bob]

Yeah, mono is gonna remain my go-to for most things.

Heck, I think the last real stereo tracking I did was a piano in 2017. I do a lot of multiple channels of the same instrument, but that's all for the mix and still treated as mono.

Yup. Track in mono and mix for stereo (if you want) which consists of a bunch of mono tracks panned around for a stereo image on the whole mix.

yep ..... that's what I do.
I like to be able to spot each instrument and voice on it's own in that mix and panning helps to do that. If you're recording tracks iun stereo then panning's out the window

[JD01]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

[Greg_L]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

That's been one of my biggest gripes about drum programmers since day one - shit is too wide. Non-drummers and people that don't record drums don't have a clue as to what drums actually sound like.

[Tadpui]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

In Reaper there's a cool way to do that without having to split the channels. If you right-click on the pan knob and select "Stereo Pan" it adds a Width knob in addition to the pan knob. You can dial it all the way down to mono or up to 100% left/right. I tend to use that on my overheads to narrow them down to 75% or so. That keeps the drum set from sounding like it's a mile wide, which I agree can be annoying when a tom fill sounds like it's happening across an entire room.

[vomitHatSteve]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

In Reaper there's a cool way to do that without having to split the channels. If you right-click on the pan knob and select "Stereo Pan" it adds a Width knob in addition to the pan knob. You can dial it all the way down to mono or up to 100% left/right. I tend to use that on my overheads to narrow them down to 75% or so. That keeps the drum set from sounding like it's a mile wide, which I agree can be annoying when a tom fill sounds like it's happening across an entire room.

I've used that automation a number of times to make the first verse or the down chorus or whatever of a song really narrow and constrained. It's a good tool!

[Lt. Bob]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

That's been one of my biggest gripes about drum programmers since day one - shit is too wide. Non-drummers and people that don't record drums don't have a clue as to what drums actually sound like.

well .... and guys that have stood next to and in front of them for years

[JD01]

Years ago, I sent bubba a drum track where the overheads were in stereo but he thought they were panned a bit wide. He rendered the left channel and right channel separately as mono and then panned them how he wanted them.

That's been one of my biggest gripes about drum programmers since day one - shit is too wide. Non-drummers and people that don't record drums don't have a clue as to what drums actually sound like.

That's how the panning is set by default. It takes a while to learn to listen to stuff critically and work out what needs changing. After Bubba pointed that out, I started listening for it an narrowed my panning.

[Greg_L]

There are no rules, you can do whatever you want. But if you're looking for natural instrument sounds then some things do sort of have "rules".

Things like drums and pianos are tricky because you have to decide where do you want the listener to listen from? If you're at a concert watching a band the drums are usually in the middle and they're pretty much mono. There is no spread. The sound of drums comes from one spot in the sound field. Toms, hats, kick, and snare all come right at you. You don't hear hats on one side of the room and toms on the other. So it's reasonable to mix drums pretty narrow in a stereo mix because that's what they sound like to a listener. This is how it was done for decades. I don't know where super wide isolated hard panned drums came from, but I bet it had something to do with heavy metal. Metal ruined lots of things in recording. That and people having access to drum programs with no actual drum playing or recording skills. Errors stacked on top of errors and they became terrible norms.

If you want to put the listener on stage with the band then pan the drum pieces a little wider. Or give them the "drummer's perspective". Honestly it doesn't matter because when music is heard through actual speakers it all comes out okay if the mix is good. It only gets weird when you listen through earbuds/headphones.

Same principles apply to piano. I personally like a little width on a piano because they're beautiful sounding instruments when played well. It's cool to have the bass keys and treble keys with a little tiny bit of spread. But again...where are you listening from? Are you laying across the piano with a rose in your teeth or are you standing out in the audience? That determines how you hear it.

And all this goes back to real true mid-side miking. MS is supposed to take care of all this stuff. The problem is for MS to sound good you need a good room and most home recorders do not have one of those.

[JD01]

There are no rules, you can do whatever you want. But if you're looking for natural instrument sounds then some things do sort of have "rules".

Things like drums and pianos are tricky because you have to decide where do you want the listener to listen from? If you're at a concert watching a band the drums are usually in the middle and they're pretty much mono. There is no spread. The sound of drums comes from one spot in the sound field. Toms, hats, kick, and snare all come right at you. You don't hear hats on one side of the room and toms on the other. So it's reasonable to mix drums pretty narrow in a stereo mix because that's what they sound like to a listener. This is how it was done for decades. I don't know where super wide isolated hard panned drums came from, but I bet it had something to do with heavy metal. Metal ruined lots of things in recording. That and people having access to drum programs with no actual drum playing or recording skills. Errors stacked on top of errors and they became terrible norms.

If you want to put the listener on stage with the band then pan the drum pieces a little wider. Or give them the "drummer's perspective". Honestly it doesn't matter because when music is heard through actual speakers it all comes out okay if the mix is good. It only gets weird when you listen through earbuds/headphones.

Same principles apply to piano. I personally like a little width on a piano because they're beautiful sounding instruments when played well. It's cool to have the bass keys and treble keys with a little tiny bit of spread. But again...where are you listening from? Are you laying across the piano with a rose in your teeth or are you standing out in the audience? That determines how you hear it.

And all this goes back to real true mid-side miking. MS is supposed to take care of all this stuff. The problem is for MS to sound good you need a good room and most home recorders do not have one of those.

When I started actually thinking about how wide drums should be panned I just listened to a few of my favourite recordings on headphone and monitors and listened to how I thought they were panned. I also kind of imagine that I'm sitting behind a kit and how I have things in front of me and pan the kit accordingly.

The fuck up I made when I first got a drum programme is just not realising (or even really listening for) just how wide the overheads were panned as default. It was easier with Superior Drummer 'cos you get more options with this sort of thing... but then its also such a complex programme that I would probably have found it impossible to use if I hadn't first used EZ Drummer for a few years.

[vomitHatSteve]

So the idea of realism is always kind of an interesting question. Greg, your comment on lying directly on the piano vs being in the audience really cuts to the heart of it.

Each instrument has a range it can occupy within a stereo field where it sounds realistic as interpreted by an audience member or a player of the instrument. Drifting outside of that range or having too many instruments too broadly in that range will start to distract some listeners.
But as you also said, "There are no rules". The real goal is to make enjoyable sounds come out of people's speakers and headphones. For some listeners that lack of realism will be an annoying distraction; for others it can be the unique twist that makes the song interesting.

Now I'm pondering how one would go about making a fully-realistic recording...
I guess your best option would be to find a room that sounds good. Set up a stereo mic where an audience member might be. Then create impulses representing where everyone's speakers would be (including mains and sub)
That... actually sounds really fun, and I kind of want to figure it out at some point.

[Greg_L]

Yeah realism is subjective anyway. How real do you want it? Some people don't want real at all. I'm of the opinion that if you're going through the trouble of stereo miking an instrument and the room then you want it to sound authentic. That goes for anything. You want to capture the real sound as best you can. That's what I try to do. I'm not interested in reinventing the wheel. I just wanna make good mixes.

Making an acoustically realistic recording isn't that difficult though....in theory. Again it depends on where you want to put the listener. To me, my first idea would be to mix the whole thing mono and send the mono mix to a stereo reverb. That would simulate a "band in a room" fairly well for starters.

[vomitHatSteve]

That's certainly simpler and less prone to weird phase and mud issues than the idea of half a dozen similar reverbs

But we don't do weird recording techniques because they're the best plan, do we?