This is hands down some of the most informative audio engineering content on RUclips. It's college level thinking for free... Electrical Audio ladies and gentlemen
Holy shit, me from seven months ago, maybe you should've been learning instead of giggling. Future you nearly just purchased TWO identical figure 8 mics for no good reason! 🤦♂️ ...and hey, while I'm here: DON'T LIFT AND TWIST!!!! Guess who has no insurance and ends up looking like an asshole every day at work hobbling around on a cane?!? 🤬
@@Rompler_Rocco damn! really sorry to hear that. wish the u.s. healthcare system wasn't completely fucked all to shit… i did a number on my back through poor lifting form some years ago (luckily not _too_ severe, and i got access to physiotherapy and meds on the nhs, because britbong. just as well, bc there's no way i would have been able to afford treatment on my warehouse worker wage otherwise). take care, and i hope you're on the mend (or at least have found a use for that spare fig-8!)
I've been recently exploring mid-side recording with outboard hardware stuff and this is the most practical and informative context I've yet encountered after slamming through tons of other videos. Thank you very much, you've grown my knowledge by tons.
I'm gonna send RUclips a Christmas card for putting this video in my recommendations. What a great technique and demo. Thanks for the video and the laughs.
I’m here for this - you just made my year! 2020 was worth it! - in all seriousness- good to see you guys back at it! Much love and good vibes (phase corrected of course)
Thank you for explaining about the "right/left-leaning" effect. I was hearing that in my recordings and could tell why it was happening. This is the first place I've seen it explained. Thanks!
Man I've been testing consoles for a while now and to test the phase switch I do the same thing to cancel one channel out when they are at equal attenuation but never thought of using it to get my side mics equal like that Great Tip!
You dudes rock. This is only the 2nd vid I've seen so far ( I just subscribed about 45 mins ago after seeing the 1st vid.) You guys are great instructors & I love the content. That opening tho...🤘😂🤣😂❗
Sweet pole dancing Christ, I am so glad Greg Norman finally gave up the golf and wine bullshit and started fucking around with ribbon mics. It's a much better Greg Norman than the previous one.
That's very interesting. I like recording my drums with a single SM57 between the bass and the snare drum. It gives me a great sound for those 2 main drums and the hihat, but my crash cymbal and the low mounted tom are to the right, so they sound very quiet. Adding a microphone to pic them up really balanced the sound of the kit, but I wish there was more stereo (I don't really wanna put my kick and snare on a single side lol). Just reading the title of this video gave an idea to try and use mid side, with the main mic as the mid and the auxiliar one as the side, I'm hoping it will sound great (I guess it makes sense the crash and the tom to the side to have the most width, in my head). Gonna try that next time I record!
The “cardiod dingleberry” bwahahhha!!!! Love it. You know, I’ve been thinking, all this M/S talk about “if for some reason you need to sum in mono”… like…. When? When do consumers ever listen to music in mono?? Earbuds, cans and car speakers are 99% playback formats Love the neotek btw. Got some racked channel strips of that console and they slay
In mixing. If you've recorded an instrument like a piano, or guitar in stereo, then need to pan it like a mono track for the mix, the two channels sum together perfectly, eliminating the "side" mic.
@@gregnorman1489 of course. This is obvious and even many plugins force a stereo field on mono tracks but I meant specifically those who mix entire final mixes in Mono. Electrical Audio Official's answer is a great one though. Good points all around. Thanks
The Zoom H6 field recorder contains a capsule with the mid side mic in a small capsule with very close orientation for very little time delay phase shifting. The side mic is bi-polar for excellent stereo pickup. The recorder has the processing matrix for generating stereo, or mid side channels. This is excellent for stereo for video or FM broadcast as Mono and L-R side is direct from the recorder.
Same for the Shure MV88+. You can choose to record the raw MS signal and decode it yourself or have the DSP take care of it, and you get to set some parameters.
Thank you, this was great. I learned something new. Can you make a video comparing Mid-Side to other stereo mic techniques like XY? I'd love to hear the difference in how the drums sound.
It would be tricky to compare mid-side to XY because mid-side inherently leaves some decisions up to the engineer, namely, how wide to make the stereo image (the balance between the "mid" and the "side").
Thanks for such a useful video! One thing I was considering for my next project: using mid-side on the drums for the room sound and using the Recorderman setup for the drum overheads. The idea being that the overheads will get more of the character of the kit as the mics are behind the drums picking up the skins and the mid-side mics will pick up more of the stereo image and give a better impression of the room character (it's a pretty big, untreated room I'm recording in). Is this something that might work, or am I likely to cause all kinds of phase issues?
Try it! Recording multiple mics on any sound source will involve some compromise on the phase relationship between the mics, especially a drum kit where there are 5-20 "sources" (each drum, even each head on a drum, the cymbals, the beater/ stick, etc etc etc). Just be mindful of this and, as always, try reversing polarity on each signal to see how it affects the sound, and you can experiment with delaying signals or aligning waveforms in the DAW to get a more ideal phase relationship between signals.
Again, awesome video and tips. A tape machine comparision would be great. Otari mx5050 vs Studer A820 24trk vs 16trk vs Tascam vs MCI? I think I saw a Tascam ms-16 in another video from you and a couple years ago you also offer recording on MCI 8 Track. Hearing the difference, hiss, thickness etc. would be very interesting, also facts like spooling time, effort to maintain... thank you and stay healthy
We borrowed the 16-track Tascam for transfers, and the MCI we sold a few years ago. We've standardized on Studet A820s because they're incredibly well-engineered, sound neutral, are great on tape, and have auto-calibration, so they allow us to maintain the standard of calibrating for every session while requiring way less time to do so. Those are the criteria one should consider when choosing a machine. The MX5050 8-track we also just use for transfers.
Don't *need* headphones, it sounds fine in monitors. How much effort would you put into the positioning of the side mic - for example getting the kick or snare deep in the null?
Thank you so much!! I am curious about how such stereo image would differ from having two cardioids panned hard L and R, pointed at the drums, one slightly to the R and the other to the L - similar to how we typically set up overheads but from the front? I am suspecting I wouldn't get as much of the ambience of the room coming from behind the mics, which I assume is a great use for this technique to begin with... thanks so much again and please please keep posting. Cheers
this would work, but you're locked into the stereo width you effectively "chose" with your mic placement. the nice thing about the m-s technique (apart from having a nice mono, if you need it) is you can create the appearance of reducing or increasing the stereo width just by changing the ratio of the levels from the mid channel and the stereo pair-i guess you could have a similar kind of control if you added another central mic to the set-up you mentioned, but then you're setting up three mics instead of just two.
(ofc you'll have a slightly different effect from setting up a separate "left" and "right" directional mic pointed directly at the source, compared to the "virtual" cardioid or subcardioid from using a central bidirectional or omni "side" mic, which-depending on their level relative to the "mid" mic-will also report more of the room sound as they're effectively angled away from the source)
I hear the sereo effect just fine using either headphones or my regular system. I tried both and although different as I'd expect, I couldn't say that using headphones made the effect more noticeable or that the speakers made it more noticeable. Either way it was very noticeable, just different. Why would I notice he effect more in my headphones?
Not to be 'that guy', especially as this has been really well done here, but the original technique states an omni for the mid mic. While you can absolutely use a cardioid, it's not quite the same effect - particularly as omnis do not produce proximity effect. The frequency response remains flat at any distance. - why they're so popular in field and large scale ensemble recording. To add to the conversation.
“Alright dip shit start playing” pan to Steve Albini playing drums🤣🤣🤣. This is my new favorite audio channel🤘
The ending as well.. xD
I came to say the same thing
He totally nailed being a drummer by playing while someone's trying to talk
Same (just subbed)
P.S. Thanks RUclips algorithm! 🎯
@@RanceChampion 🤣😂🤣 🤘🥁🤘
This is hands down some of the most informative audio engineering content on RUclips. It's college level thinking for free... Electrical Audio ladies and gentlemen
Holy shit, it's only when these guys post tutorials that I realize nothing else on RUclips is _actually_ funny.
Holy shit, me from seven months ago, maybe you should've been learning instead of giggling. Future you nearly just purchased TWO identical figure 8 mics for no good reason! 🤦♂️
...and hey, while I'm here: DON'T LIFT AND TWIST!!!! Guess who has no insurance and ends up looking like an asshole every day at work hobbling around on a cane?!? 🤬
@@Rompler_Rocco damn! really sorry to hear that. wish the u.s. healthcare system wasn't completely fucked all to shit… i did a number on my back through poor lifting form some years ago (luckily not _too_ severe, and i got access to physiotherapy and meds on the nhs, because britbong. just as well, bc there's no way i would have been able to afford treatment on my warehouse worker wage otherwise). take care, and i hope you're on the mend (or at least have found a use for that spare fig-8!)
I always appreciate the passionate stoicism in these instructionals.
Greg's spirit animal is the EA carpeted brick.
Man, that drummer is AWESOME. What feel. What a sound. Heck, you don't even need mics to record this guy. He just sounds that great
I've been recently exploring mid-side recording with outboard hardware stuff and this is the most practical and informative context I've yet encountered after slamming through tons of other videos. Thank you very much, you've grown my knowledge by tons.
R.I.P. Steve Albini. This video in particular helped me, and his music inspired me.
I'm gonna send RUclips a Christmas card for putting this video in my recommendations. What a great technique and demo. Thanks for the video and the laughs.
This guy must be a blast to record with 😂
greg norman is the fucking man.
Anyone who doesnt wanna record with Greg should be glad they'll never get the chance
Greg is a great engineer and a terrific hang. Always my first choice.
actually, he is.
The 2 of them! 😂❗
Evil Steve banging away at the drums during the intro was the highlight of my day today.
“Dingleberry.” This guy knows his audio terminology.
These are getting better and better each time, but I would appreciate it if you set the dry sarcasm pot all the way to 'arid Sahara' please.
It wasn't already?
Oh my, I did not expect that exit!
This kind of How-To video is the exact style the world needs.
Ok, we're loving your tutorials guys. Much love.
i feel like i learned more about mic technique from this video than i did a whole semester of recording class at community college. neat.
I am soo happy to see you uploading. Please keep them coming, love you guys.
I’m here for this - you just made my year! 2020 was worth it! - in all seriousness- good to see you guys back at it! Much love and good vibes (phase corrected of course)
Exactly what I needed to learn about for my next home recording project - thanks!
I love this funny style of how to videos, thank you! Keep em coming!
That drum kit is gorgeous.
This is the best channel about audio recording that I ever saw!!
This is one of my favorite channels on recording, and this particular episode was. Super- informative and entertaining.
Greg builds my favorite MIc Pre.
I am so glad I found you guys.🧡
Thanks for sharing your knowledge! This is accessible and informative! Much appreciated!
3:41 - I like the way people from Electrical Audio look at things, and also what they explain about them. Thank you!! 🍀
Thank you for explaining about the "right/left-leaning" effect. I was hearing that in my recordings and could tell why it was happening. This is the first place I've seen it explained. Thanks!
You guys did it again...immensely educational and had me also fall off my chair laughing my ass off. Electrical Audio Rules!
Finally just tried this and it sounded amazing. It was a very accurate stereo image. Thanks again to all at EA for these.
Yes sir this is my new favorite technique. As he says, "very natural" and makes my untreated room sound fairly okay.
This is the guy who recorded the wedding present album take fountain. Fantastic record. Great engineer. No phase issues. 👍👍
Love you guys!! Only found you recently but you delivery style & info are awesome 👌🏼😂 thank you!
Good, great, grand!! This is awesome. Learned something, I did. Now to see if my room cooperates with this sorcery!!
thanks! i've always had trouble understanding this until now
Love this channel, keep them coming!
Beautifully explained.
Thanks for the video!! Super helpful and fun to watch!
It's so exciting to get these videos from the owner of Studio Greg Studios!
Not to mention Studio Greg Studios 2, and Studio Greg Studios: The Ride
Second place coment, "the guy who ruined fire"
I was on loan.
@@ElectricalAudioOfficial The Novelization Of The Movie Adaptation Of Studio Greg Studios!
@@realSethMeyers Someone get Simon and Schuster on the horn.
I love the Jumpman Jr sounds efx while switching mics.
Man I've been testing consoles for a while now and to test the phase switch I do the same thing to cancel one channel out when they are at equal attenuation but never thought of using it to get my side mics equal like that Great Tip!
I loved this. Please do more!!
Super informative and well made video. This rules.
This is the funniest mic positioning video ever and really informational
You dudes rock. This is only the 2nd vid I've seen so far ( I just subscribed about 45 mins ago after seeing the 1st vid.)
You guys are great instructors & I love the content. That opening tho...🤘😂🤣😂❗
Thanks for reading my mind when deciding what videos to make
this might be the best channel ever
Beautiful explanation!
These videos are amazing
Thanks a lot for this very usefull course. Could we have a full gig video of this great drummer of yours ??!
This is the funniest shit. I’ve learned so much. I’m going to go listen to Make Believe’s Of Course now. Thanks Greg and Steve!
Great video guys! cheers
Sweet pole dancing Christ, I am so glad Greg Norman finally gave up the golf and wine bullshit and started fucking around with ribbon mics. It's a much better Greg Norman than the previous one.
best ms tutorial in the history of humanity
Super videos and explanation
Excellent content. Thank you!!
Wonderfully awkward. Surprisingly insightful.
Thanks guys.
Great video!
Lots of valuable info here, gents. Thanks for sharing.
😆😆😆😆😆 brilliant explanation with hilarious comedy, what more can you ask for....
This was awesome thank you
excellente gentlemen
Hahahaha, that intro! Love you guys - thanks for doing this!
Nice info. And nice weird humor. I loved it!
Thanks a lot from Brasil. Have no idea if it was the case or not but love the sound of "title tk drums"
Awesome! I need to do more m/s room miking. Maybe a blumlein vs m/s coming up 😲
Came here for the info, subscribed for the humor. Love it lmao
Hell yes! Albini on the cymbal catches!
Awesome. Thank you!
That's very interesting. I like recording my drums with a single SM57 between the bass and the snare drum. It gives me a great sound for those 2 main drums and the hihat, but my crash cymbal and the low mounted tom are to the right, so they sound very quiet. Adding a microphone to pic them up really balanced the sound of the kit, but I wish there was more stereo (I don't really wanna put my kick and snare on a single side lol). Just reading the title of this video gave an idea to try and use mid side, with the main mic as the mid and the auxiliar one as the side, I'm hoping it will sound great (I guess it makes sense the crash and the tom to the side to have the most width, in my head). Gonna try that next time I record!
The “cardiod dingleberry” bwahahhha!!!! Love it.
You know, I’ve been thinking, all this M/S talk about “if for some reason you need to sum in mono”… like…. When? When do consumers ever listen to music in mono?? Earbuds, cans and car speakers are 99% playback formats
Love the neotek btw. Got some racked channel strips of that console and they slay
A lot of cell phones, alarm clock radio, broadcast radio with poor reception, some streaming situations...
In mixing. If you've recorded an instrument like a piano, or guitar in stereo, then need to pan it like a mono track for the mix, the two channels sum together perfectly, eliminating the "side" mic.
@@gregnorman1489 of course. This is obvious and even many plugins force a stereo field on mono tracks but I meant specifically those who mix entire final mixes in Mono. Electrical Audio Official's answer is a great one though. Good points all around. Thanks
The Zoom H6 field recorder contains a capsule with the mid side mic in a small capsule with very close orientation for very little time delay phase shifting. The side mic is bi-polar for excellent stereo pickup. The recorder has the processing matrix for generating stereo, or mid side channels. This is excellent for stereo for video or FM broadcast as Mono and L-R side is direct from the recorder.
Same for the Shure MV88+. You can choose to record the raw MS signal and decode it yourself or have the DSP take care of it, and you get to set some parameters.
My audio professor in college used to say "M-S" stood for "Maybe Stereo" hahaha
Definitely gonna try this on drums in the Daw.
Fantastic
Thank you, this was great. I learned something new. Can you make a video comparing Mid-Side to other stereo mic techniques like XY? I'd love to hear the difference in how the drums sound.
It would be tricky to compare mid-side to XY because mid-side inherently leaves some decisions up to the engineer, namely, how wide to make the stereo image (the balance between the "mid" and the "side").
@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Good point. You're right, they're two completely different techniques. Do you have a preference?
Thanks for such a useful video! One thing I was considering for my next project: using mid-side on the drums for the room sound and using the Recorderman setup for the drum overheads. The idea being that the overheads will get more of the character of the kit as the mics are behind the drums picking up the skins and the mid-side mics will pick up more of the stereo image and give a better impression of the room character (it's a pretty big, untreated room I'm recording in). Is this something that might work, or am I likely to cause all kinds of phase issues?
Try it! Recording multiple mics on any sound source will involve some compromise on the phase relationship between the mics, especially a drum kit where there are 5-20 "sources" (each drum, even each head on a drum, the cymbals, the beater/ stick, etc etc etc). Just be mindful of this and, as always, try reversing polarity on each signal to see how it affects the sound, and you can experiment with delaying signals or aligning waveforms in the DAW to get a more ideal phase relationship between signals.
@@ElectricalAudioOfficial thanks for the tip :)
amazing!
Again, awesome video and tips. A tape machine comparision would be great. Otari mx5050 vs Studer A820 24trk vs 16trk vs Tascam vs MCI? I think I saw a Tascam ms-16 in another video from you and a couple years ago you also offer recording on MCI 8 Track. Hearing the difference, hiss, thickness etc. would be very interesting, also facts like spooling time, effort to maintain... thank you and stay healthy
We borrowed the 16-track Tascam for transfers, and the MCI we sold a few years ago. We've standardized on Studet A820s because they're incredibly well-engineered, sound neutral, are great on tape, and have auto-calibration, so they allow us to maintain the standard of calibrating for every session while requiring way less time to do so. Those are the criteria one should consider when choosing a machine. The MX5050 8-track we also just use for transfers.
😂 Great video as always! Keep em coming!
The intro 😂😂. Immediately Subscribed!
Very good
Informative and droll. HOO YEAH.
OMG this is the best
Nice videos 👌👌
Don't *need* headphones, it sounds fine in monitors.
How much effort would you put into the positioning of the side mic - for example getting the kick or snare deep in the null?
The very last scene of this video was Twin Peaks- like! The Alchemy, Transformation. Great!
Go Greg!
"Alight dipshit, start playing." Best moment
Wwwaaaaooooooohhhhh!!! Mind blown. I need a figure 8 mic.
AKG P420 does Omni and figure 8 at $150! Sounds great!
I was waiting for you to remove Steve't kit piece by piece while he's still playing at the end.
i’m furious he did this editing style before i could think of it lol
More Please!!
Thank you so much!! I am curious about how such stereo image would differ from having two cardioids panned hard L and R, pointed at the drums, one slightly to the R and the other to the L - similar to how we typically set up overheads but from the front? I am suspecting I wouldn't get as much of the ambience of the room coming from behind the mics, which I assume is a great use for this technique to begin with... thanks so much again and please please keep posting. Cheers
this would work, but you're locked into the stereo width you effectively "chose" with your mic placement. the nice thing about the m-s technique (apart from having a nice mono, if you need it) is you can create the appearance of reducing or increasing the stereo width just by changing the ratio of the levels from the mid channel and the stereo pair-i guess you could have a similar kind of control if you added another central mic to the set-up you mentioned, but then you're setting up three mics instead of just two.
(ofc you'll have a slightly different effect from setting up a separate "left" and "right" directional mic pointed directly at the source, compared to the "virtual" cardioid or subcardioid from using a central bidirectional or omni "side" mic, which-depending on their level relative to the "mid" mic-will also report more of the room sound as they're effectively angled away from the source)
@@soupalex Thank you so much!
@@ivanphoto44 yw! glad my comment was of some use… i'm not very good at explaining things
I love how after being drowned out by Steve’s drumming, he is staring directly into the bass drum hole 😂 hahaha
I hear the sereo effect just fine using either headphones or my regular system. I tried both and although different as I'd expect, I couldn't say that using headphones made the effect more noticeable or that the speakers made it more noticeable. Either way it was very noticeable, just different. Why would I notice he effect more in my headphones?
Because there's no phantom center with headphones.
@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Makes sense. Aftert your pointing it out.. yep, that's the difference alright.
Not to be 'that guy', especially as this has been really well done here, but the original technique states an omni for the mid mic. While you can absolutely use a cardioid, it's not quite the same effect - particularly as omnis do not produce proximity effect. The frequency response remains flat at any distance. - why they're so popular in field and large scale ensemble recording. To add to the conversation.
well it looks like someone got a new camera for Christmas!
Jeff Perlman has all that gear and has shot and edited the last handful of videos we've made. He's fantastic. Also responsible for a lot of the humor.
awesome
More of this content!