It’s amazing how much control you can have of the stereo image in mastering, even with quite simple tools. In this show we explore:
- What is stereo ? The simplest and most sophisticated types
- Ian's new favourite mixing plugin for creating stereo from a mono sound
- How to measure stereo width and control it
- How to influence reverb levels in mastering
- What is M/S processing - and why it's probably not exactly what you think
- The power & problems of M/S processing
- Recommended stereo processing plugins
Our guest this week is mastering and mixing engineer Ian Stewart
Links
Jerobeam Fenderson - music made for oscilloscope
Voxengo MSED - mid/side plugin
Klanghelm VUMT - VU meter emulation (new version)
Fabfilter Pro Q 2 - EQ plugin with excellent M/S functionality
Stereo width in mastering – how to measure, monitor and modify it
(Video includes demos of a simple correlator and the Nugen Visualizer 2 with 'correlation by frequency' display)
thanks for this episode, glad i listened all the way to the end (hah.)
since i mostly do masters for vinyl, i was wondering if you could give me some more information about that m/s processing ableton plugin rack you built. i got some pretty wild live recordings in lately, bass all over the place, recorded with a stereo mic setup without regard to phase issues.. and i lost quite some bass just lowering the stereo spread. converting side signal to mid and vice versa could've really helped, i guess. not sure if that is possible in ozone.
mostly use ozone in logic x, by the way.
cheers!
Hi Kris,
I actually made a video about how I built the effects rack a while back. Since the original build I've updated it to use linear phase crossovers, but this should still give you the general idea.
https://youtu.be/79PjYl-hQfU?t=16m36s
If you're not familiar with the Ableton effect rack, you can think of the chains as parallel channels. To implement in another DAW you would basically make a channel for each chain, route the output of your source track to say Bus 1-2, and the input of your parallel chains also to Bus 1-2. You also may be able to forgo the mid chains given the latency compensation in Logic these days and just use the Side - Low, and Side - High chains. Let me know if any of that is still unclear after watching the video.
I believe the Matthew Lan DrMS plugin operates on a similar principle, although I'm not sure if the filters are linear phase: http://www.mathewlane.com/DrMS.html
Hope that's helpful! Best,
Ian S.