Hi all. I’ve found quite a lot of people on the internet asking about the same problem that I’m having but so far I haven’t seen any definitive answers, so i thought I’d do some serious testing and provide screen shots to hopefully find an answer for myself and others.
The problem is when recording with the Mid side technique, I get an unbalanced result. My recording ends up either leaning to the right or Left.
I recently started using M/S a lot and did a heap of recording with a client on acoustic gtr as well as lots of upright piano. It sounded great, but afterwards I noticed that they were heavily leaning to either L or R.
I’ve read various theories about one side of the fig8 mic being closer to the gtr hole, or to the bass end of the piano, but I was fairly certain that was not it. So I did some controlled tests.
The problem occurred when I was using my two vintage Neumann mics: a U87 in cardioid and a Km86 in fig8. So i recreated this setup, but focused directly in front of a monitor (the other monitor turned off) with a constant mono signal playing. This setup means that other than a bit of back ground noise, everything should be balanced. Here are the results.
NEUMANN KM86 (Fig8) + NEUMANN U87 (Cardioid)
I was recording with a KM86 in fig8 and U87 cardioid, with capsules as close as possible, (KM86 on top and U87 below). I then duplicated the Km86 file, panned hard L/R and flipped the phase on one KM86 channel (with Logics gain plugin) while keeping the U87 (cardioid) centred.
1. When just the two Fig8 channels are playing (panned hard L/R, phase flipped on left channel):
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/64eevk6o7/
2. Swap the phase flip to the other (right) Fig8 Channel:
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/yvb8lmchz/
3. Add cardioid channel (centred):
Balance leans to the right.
https://postimg.org/image/66yaieabr/
4. Swap phase flip to the left fig8 channel:
Balance leans to the left.
https://postimg.org/image/4t6nn3b2f/
5. With all 3 channels playing but no phase flip on any of them:
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/a5vi17yyv/
After all of this, I tried the same thing with my 2 AKG 414s. and they didn’t have this problem! So that tells me that theres a problem with one of the Neumanns. Probably the Km86 capsules are not perfectly in phase? And obviously now I should just use the 414s instead for M/S.
However the sessions I did with the Neumanns are fairly important and I’d like to be able to save them if possible. I’m hoping theres some sort of trick I can do to sort these out. Maybe by some intricate phase shifting or just simply rebalancing things? Maybe I need to bounce the 3 files down to 2 mono files and then balance them from there?
Also hopefully this will help the numerous other people I’ve seen posting about this problem online. If anyone thinks they know what the problem is please chime in!
Thanks!!
The problem is when recording with the Mid side technique, I get an unbalanced result. My recording ends up either leaning to the right or Left.
I recently started using M/S a lot and did a heap of recording with a client on acoustic gtr as well as lots of upright piano. It sounded great, but afterwards I noticed that they were heavily leaning to either L or R.
I’ve read various theories about one side of the fig8 mic being closer to the gtr hole, or to the bass end of the piano, but I was fairly certain that was not it. So I did some controlled tests.
The problem occurred when I was using my two vintage Neumann mics: a U87 in cardioid and a Km86 in fig8. So i recreated this setup, but focused directly in front of a monitor (the other monitor turned off) with a constant mono signal playing. This setup means that other than a bit of back ground noise, everything should be balanced. Here are the results.
NEUMANN KM86 (Fig8) + NEUMANN U87 (Cardioid)
I was recording with a KM86 in fig8 and U87 cardioid, with capsules as close as possible, (KM86 on top and U87 below). I then duplicated the Km86 file, panned hard L/R and flipped the phase on one KM86 channel (with Logics gain plugin) while keeping the U87 (cardioid) centred.
1. When just the two Fig8 channels are playing (panned hard L/R, phase flipped on left channel):
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/64eevk6o7/
2. Swap the phase flip to the other (right) Fig8 Channel:
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/yvb8lmchz/
3. Add cardioid channel (centred):
Balance leans to the right.
https://postimg.org/image/66yaieabr/
4. Swap phase flip to the left fig8 channel:
Balance leans to the left.
https://postimg.org/image/4t6nn3b2f/
5. With all 3 channels playing but no phase flip on any of them:
Perfectly balanced. Exactly equal.
https://postimg.org/image/a5vi17yyv/
After all of this, I tried the same thing with my 2 AKG 414s. and they didn’t have this problem! So that tells me that theres a problem with one of the Neumanns. Probably the Km86 capsules are not perfectly in phase? And obviously now I should just use the 414s instead for M/S.
However the sessions I did with the Neumanns are fairly important and I’d like to be able to save them if possible. I’m hoping theres some sort of trick I can do to sort these out. Maybe by some intricate phase shifting or just simply rebalancing things? Maybe I need to bounce the 3 files down to 2 mono files and then balance them from there?
Also hopefully this will help the numerous other people I’ve seen posting about this problem online. If anyone thinks they know what the problem is please chime in!
Thanks!!
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