Mid Side Miracle

[Pronecobra]

I put a Universal Audio Fairchild emulation plug-in on a drum buss last night and began scrolling through some presets. I came upon one of the mid/side, lat-vert settings . . a preset named "drum loop." It made the drums sound amazing. The stereo image was wider, more detailed and full sounding. I can't figure out what the Fairchild is actually doing to make this happen.

I need to understand how it works because otherwise I'm afraid to implement it in a mix since I don't know the implications for the rest of the mix . . . what negative side effects could occur down the road. For example, if I sum to mono what will happen?

Someone show me the way.

P.Cobra
P. Cobra
P. C obra
P . C o bra
P . C o b ra
P . C o b r a

[Kiljoy]

What it's doing is spliting the stereo signal into M/S (Mid/Side) and is then able to compress the centre and/or sides separate to each other. For drums this means that as it compresses (assuming that most of the energy is in the centre of the original image) the centre is compressed more than the sides; which normally hold most of your reverberant field information and thus accentuate it.

Does that help at all?

[Biddle]

Are there any non - UAD plugs that can perform the same function?

I would like to experiment with this...

[AudioWonderland]

Not sure it does what you are looking for but its a possibility

Stereo-widening audio effect plugin - Stereo Touch - Voxengo

[KRStudio]

Be sure to check mono every now and then. Sometimes things get lost in mono but very wide stereo.

[Matti]

T-RackS 3 Singles a good native version of Fairchild

Matti

[Farshad]

I think IK TRacks vintage comp 670 can do it. In fact I have copied the settings from the UAD version into the IK

[soundgeezer]

M/S can be done in any DAW with stereo tools which is free and can be found here : Stereo Tools VST Plug-in for Steinberg Nuendo and Cubase

hope that helps

[soundgeezer]

Well just saw this is Nuendo/Cubase only ...

[_Morph_]

Actually, it can be done in just about any DAW, without any plugin.

Once you know how an MS matrix works, it makes perfect sense. You just reverse the matrix (L+R=C; L-R=S) very carefully and do all the processing you want to do. Then, just decode it once again into stereo (M+S=L; M-S=R). Bonus: the ammount of S you inject in this final combination may be used to widen the stereo image!

[Pronecobra]

Very helpful man, I understand what the Fairchild is doing now. This also helps me to understand how mastering engineers can do so much even with a stereo mix. I can also see how this could be problematic when summed to mono.

There are a few mid/side matrix-decoding plug-ins out there, I know I have seen them. Their function is clearer to me now. However, the Fairchild does that along with high quality compression.

Mid/side definitely seems like something I need to master.

P.Cobra

[fermusic]

Check out for iZotope ozone4...
it comes with ammazing MID/SIDE EQ, MULTIPRESSOR, and 4 Bands widing...
(you can select the frequency range where you need more stereo wide... usually i suggest to avoid stereo widing in the bass and sub-bass frequencies, because many 5:1 speaker system works with MONO subwoofer)

G