Question about M/S mic technique decoding regarding digital or analog domains.

Brento

Brento

New member
I have heard from a few people that the M/S stereo recording technique does not encode/decode "properly" in the digital domain. On the face of it, this could make sense as the technique was developed prior to the proliferation of digital recoding technology. Most people are happy to record an M/S pair, then duplicate the side mic in post, flipping one channel of this digitally. However, I know people who say you have to do it with three channels of an analog desk, or similar.
There seems to be a fair amount of misinformation about this and it is difficult to know who to believe. Can anyone answer this question with some level of authority borne from experience?
Cheers,
Brento
 
Sounds like BS. Analog or digital shouldn't matter to MS. I use it a lot. I have a good AEA harware MS box if I need it.
 
Sometimes its done with an ms box that decodes it internally and has a knob to adjust the stereo field.

I can not understand is what possible difference there could be between a y cable and a phase reversed channel and a duplicated and phase reversed track.
 
I've done it. Don't know what they are talking about as far as it not working. Recorded mid cardioid mic to a track in the daw, and the side figure-eight mic to a track in the daw. then, after tracking, copied the side mic WAV file to a new track and reversed the phase on it and panned it hard right and panned the original track hard left.

Maybe i'm missing something but it worked like a charm and I can see no reason why it wouldn't or why anybody would say it wouldn't. :???:
 
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have been around a long time and who do good work that don't necessarily know why things work or don't work. Any negative past experience could have been misdiagnosed and turned into an anecdotal story like this one.

Some people insist that there is some sort of magic that happens in an analog mixer that just completely falls apart in digital summing. While there is a sonic difference between the two, the concepts of signal flow still work the same way. Reversing polarity in the analog world is exactly the same in the digital world. Any sonic difference will be the product of the limitations of either medium and not the way things are summed.
 
miroslav said:
Yeah....I would like to hear from the OP what exactly he heard about it....and who from.
Click to expand...

Hi,

To clarify, I have used M/S many times in the digital domain (ie. duplicating the side mic track and flipping it with a real-time plug-in, or via off-line process). I achieved results that varied from excellent to a bit messy, but I think this was due to application rather than technique.

I asked the question because the subject came up in another thread, off topic. My confusion stems from an off-hand comment by a bloke who ran a live sound company I worked for over a 15 year period from around the mid-nineties. We were talking M/S as we were busy preparing a system for a gig the next day, and when the subject of flipping the phase of the side channel came up he made an off-hand comment that went something like this: "you know you can't do it digitally, right?" - I said "no, what do you mean?". Then he must have gone off to do something else like answer his phone and the question was never resolved. Never came up again. We were pretty busy. Thing is, this guy (I am not going to name him without his permission) has about 45 years experience in audio (he's semi-retired now). I am no longer in regular contact with him, but I think I'm going to look him up after the silly season and try and find out just what he was talking about.

Sorry to be so vague about this. I was basically just asking if anyone had ever heard anything like this about decoding M/S before.

Cheers,
Brent
 
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