Holy shit M/S Mastering is cool

[ahjteam]

I was trying out mid-side mastering on one of my mixes and it's so fucking cool... I only used two plugins (EQ and compressor), but it still makes everything so bad ass!

On the EQ on the Mid Channel I have boosted the low end at 90hz +4dB with a low shelf, cut out some mud at 500hz -3dB boosted the singer and snare presence 2khz +2db and boosted the airyness of the whole thing +4dB with high shelf.

On the side channel I put a highpass filter at 150hz, cut out some resonance at 148hz -6dB, boosted the low mids 500hz +4dB, there was some super fizzy frequency at 4.6khz that I cut out -18dB (probably the Pod Farm btw, so I could've done it in individual tracks, but doesn't really matter at this point) and boosted some presence to the guitars at 6khz +5dB.

After that I used the Rvox on the mid channel to bring up the kick, snare and vocals right in your face.

I tried to put them to unity gain and I turn the plugins on and off bypassed every 3 bars, starts with them on, after 3 bars welcome mud city: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/leftbehind_masteringtest.mp3

I also noticed that I _really_ like SPL Transient Designer when I was doing that mix. Definitely was worth the purchase, makes the drums punch thru like a motherfucker.

 

[Fandus]

How did you go about using rvox in a m/s configuration? I haven't really used m/s before but find it quite interesting. Is there a way to set it up using busses or does the plugin need m/s functions built in?

 

[ahjteam]

I used the mono version and routed it to the left (aka mid) channel in Cubase. In Pro Tools you have to use the multi-mono version, but you can control the left and right channels independently form each other. Don't know about Reaper and others as I don't use them.

 

[Fandus]

Cool. Did you use the waves ms Matrix plugin to set it up? Are there other ways?

Found this on the interwebs for anyone interested (I'm going to try this next week one my MacBook pro and waves gold arrive ) :

*Your source is a stereo audio track;

*Route this track's outputs to <bus 1-2>

*Insert Waves S1 MS Matrix plugin on it (encoding stage)

*Create 2 x mono Aux tracks

*Set the input of the first Aux to <bus 1>

*Route it's output to <bus 3>

*Set the input of the second Aux to <bus 2>

*Route it's output to <bus 4>

*Create a stereo Aux track

*Set it's inputs to <bus 3-4>

*Insert Waves S1 MS Matrix plugin on it (decoding stage)

*Route it's outputs to <bus 5-6>

*Create a stereo audio track

*Set it's inputs to <bus 5-6>

*Set it's outputs to <1-2> for monitoring



This is Protools only! Found over at the avid forums originally posted by tal harzberg

 

[setyouranchor]

I tried out Ozone's mid/side mastering on my latest mix... fucking rules for both EQ and the Harmonic Exciter!

 

[ahjteam]

Cool. Did you use the waves ms Matrix plugin to set it up? Are there other ways?

I use Soundhack +matrix because it has volume sliders. It's free (RTAS, VST, AU)

http://soundhack.henfast.com/freeware/

Also why are you doing it the hard way? I mean, yeah, it's cool to have the mid and side channels on separate tracks, but there must be something totally awfully wrong if you have to use more than 10 plugins when mastering Just put the same plugins on the stereo track, matrix first and last, you still have 8 inserts to use, just use multimono plugins, unset the channel link and put the plugin on bypass (if applies to the plugin in question) or set the settings to neutral on the channel that you don't want to process, also it makes the plugin delay not an issue if you are not using PT9 or PTHD

 

[Fandus]

Touché my good sir.

 

[irakayden]

im a little confused as to how you got the m/s on different tracks. could you explain again please?

 

[ahjteam]

im a little confused as to how you got the m/s on different tracks. could you explain again please?

right click in channel > insert routing