Hi David,
I'd suggest finding that sweet spot and knowing when you have it are not
trivial skills and do require a pretty good setup in a well treated
room!
I expect most of us find M-S just a bit exotic, partly because there
seems to be a dearth of hard information on how to do it correctly. At
the outset, the math is simple enough; you record a couple of tracks,
build the de-matrix and voila, you have stereo. Building a sense of
what's really going on in there and choosing levels takes a little more
effort.
I was very pleased to find some really good stuff about it last night,
and right here. I posted it in a reply to Curt's last, but it seems to
have gone astray (I'm a yahoo groups newbie) so, at the risk of
repeating it, I'll add it to this.
I'd be very curious to read your reflections on the polar plots (same
pages I indicate to Curt), as I was very much thinking of your comments
when I saw them, and when I wrote the following:
"You're most welcome, Curt --and glad to be here!
Having just signed up last evening, I spent some time browsing through
the group's Files section. There's a real gem in there that I suspect
is right on topic for this thread. It's "masters_thesis.pdf A More
Realistic View of Mid/Side Stereophony by Trevor Owen de Clercq ". It
will take me longer than you to absorb it all, but I have a pretty
strong suspicion that the potential for 'wavy', 'swimmy' and even
'splashy' effects might be well illustrated. Still, it leaves me with
no doubt that results are very much 'in the hands of the operator'.
Have a look at the SM69 series starting at (pdf) page 55 through 61.
(Handy, since it's germane to the Crown quote.) There's some rather
wobbly looking stuff there. Oops, did it again ;)
I've had an interest in mid-side from the beginning of my recording
activities, about 10 years ago. Until I found NR, the only really solid
info I had seen was in Bruce Bartlett's 'On-Location Recording
Techniques', which still avoided saying much about implementation and
'mix ratios' in particular. Yes. If it sounds right it probably is, but
as a freelance musician with a few thousand gigs under my belt, I find
my ears to be suspect and thus prefer to have a little theoretical
underpinning for some decisions.
This thesis fills in a lot of blanks for me. Thanks to Trevor for
uploading it. It appears to have been there for quite some time but
sadly, I don't see any subsequent discussion."
I should have said "I think this thesis fills in..." ;)
Also, since we arrived here through the SASS array, I'm wont to inquire
if anyone has experimented with absorbent baffles behind M-S arrays?
Cheers,
Keith
--- In "Avocet" <> wrote:
>
> > "Tim Guhl, Cultural Resources Council, Syracuse, NY, says:
> > ...Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and the Opera Theatre of Syracuse...
> > Formerly, we used a Neumann SM 69 FET in a `midside" setup. With
> > this we employed a woodwind sweetener mike, this to cover the swimmy
> > image right at the center of the mid-side configuration.
>
> Keith,
>
> I've found this thread very interesting and am now convinced that
> "wavy" and "swimmy" sound involves out of phase effects such as you
> get at the rear of an M-S setup.
>
> A little bit of out-of-phase can enhance an acoustic, but it can
> rapidly become too much and sound "swimmy". In particular this happens
> with M-S because, as soon as you get wider that the "sweet area" where
> M<S, the stereo image goes out of phase.
>
> The "sweetener mic" in the quote above restores M>S especially when
> delays on digital mixers can make the sounds coincident.
>
> David
>
> David Brinicombe
> North Devon, UK
> Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
>
"While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie Krause.
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