M-S Question

Hi there! The right way to do this is by spliting the figure 8 mic signal to 2 mic preamps invert the phase of one, and then pan hard left and right then place the cardoid. As about placement try chest hight with the drummer sitting position The distance however, experiment with it maybe a bit closer, its a question of taste. You are using this as a room mic cause if you want a stereo image of the kit you will have to mic from above to get a proper balance of the kit. You could try m-s from above and see how it sounds.

You'll need two copies of the middle. One should be panned hard left with the figure 8 (M+S=L); the other should be panned hard right with the inverted figure 8 (M-S=R). That's four tracks. There isn't really a huge advantage to M/S encoding unless you plan to EQ or otherwise process the middle and sides differently. You might try going X/Y instead, or even using a spaced pair. Or both. Try using X/Y overheads and a spaced pair for the room. Ten feet from the kit should work but it really depends on the dimensions of the room. The last time I recorded drums I had a spaced pair in what would have been an equalateral triangle at 18 feet. You could actually see the delay from snare hits with the timeline stretched out! The kit sounded HUGE with those roomies. It was definitely the big kaboom I'd been looking for.

You can do it with three tracks just the way he mentioned...just leave the M mic panned center.

If you leave the mid in the center, you'll have HALF the energy. This will equate to .5 mid + 1 sides and .5 mid + 1 inverted phase sides. I may be mistaken, but as I understand it this will NOT produce a proper L/R signal. At least if my Waves manual is correct: "The MS matrix process may be applied again to the M and S signals to recover the original left and right, although additional gain of 2 (+6dB) is needed to get the original gain. Mathematically L = M+S and R = M-S i.e. Left is the sum of the M and S signals and Right is the difference of the M and S signals."

Translated into simpler terms, your center panned M should be 6 dB higher than you S channels to get a 1:1 translation b/w M/S and X/Y mic techniques using the 3 channel method...nothing more than that. You can boos the M channel 6dB by adding it twice (as in your example), or by simply adjusting the fader. It's that simple. 2M = (M + M) = M + 6dB (what can be tricky is factoring pan law...which is different for every mixer...but as a tracking tool, such direct 1:1 relationships aren't even the intention of using MS in the first place. If you're using summ and difference matrixing for other purposes and intentionally maintaining the width relationships...like ms noise reduction...then you may wish to concern yourself with the direct translation...but in general, it isn't important, just adjust the levels until it sounds best, period.)

MissHiss, All that math flies out the window the instant you start to take in the different pan law used from one system/board to the next (as I mentioned in my post).