More mid/side adventures

[Bryan T]

A friend and I worked on a new track last night. We've been trying to do more live recording of basic tracks instead of the layer-by-layer approach we've done in the past. This track called for two strumming acoustics and we initially started to place individual mics on each of the guitars and baffles between them for a bit of isolation. After thinking about the sound we were shooting for, we decided that it was worth trying a mid/side pair with the guitars positioned on the left and right of the mid mic. It worked really well. The guitars balanced well, we got a nice stereo image with no phasing weirdness, we could see each other well (which helped the performance), and the guitars form a really nice bed for the vocals.

We've also used mid/side on a few other recent projects. One situation that I really liked it was on a solo singer/guitarist, though I'll also add a third mic for the vocals. The end result is a wide bed for the guitar with a clear spot for the vocals. Very intimate and 'real.'

Bryan

[GP_Hawk]

What mic's did you use, just out of curiousity? I've done something similar with a female vocalist/guitar player and the results came out sounding so natural, with a really well balanced spacial texture to it. Was using a precision 8 with mid/side encoder on the first 2 channels where you can dial in the amount of spread. Can't remember exactly what mics but there was an E300 cad I had that worked well with the singers voice.

[kludge]

I've done M/S with a cheap ribbon and an EV RE16 dynamic, plus a free VST plug-in I found somewhere to do the M/S processing. Works great for both acoustic guitars and vocals - it's a great way to do background harmony vocals! Just make sure you don't make the stereo field too wide. It's very tempting, when things sound so lush.

[Bryan T]

What mic's did you use, just out of curiousity?

This was with an AKG 451 as the mid mic and an AKG 414 as the side mic. For the sessions with the singer/songwriter it was the same setup, but we added an SM7 as the vocal mic.

Bryan

[Greggy]

I've used M/S on acoustic guitar with success. Mics are a KM184 as mid, and a Studio Projects C3 in figure of 8. By itself I do not care too much for the C3 on acoustic guitar, but it really works well with the 184 in M/S.

[xk49w]

I wonder what the off-axis coloration characteristic is of the virtual hypercardioid mics in the mid-side? Another technique that gets a good stereo image is the jecklin disk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jecklin_Disk). It uses omnis, so there is less coloration but it also picks up stuff behind the mics as well as in front. I made one using a pair of AT3032s.

[MattHahn]

i have used m/s on drums with a supporting third microphone about 3/4 the height of the bass drum and half a meter in distance.
i used a pair of 414´s for the m/s arrangement and beyer m260 as supporting mic.

what i got that way is big and natural sounding drums.

all you need is an outstanding drummer with a good kit in a nice room... and thats where the problems are.

anyways, technics like m/s and blumlein are fun to do and truly rewarding in most cases..