Mid-Side Mastering using REAPER

[fabiophonic]

Hi Everyone,

recently I made two Templates for REAPER by the need to do M-S Mastering. Shortly M-S is a technique used in studios for manipulate the middle audio material and the side one differently.
The "middle" is material that is reproduced at same manner by left and right channel. The "side" is material reproduced differently (like stereo effects or by panning techniques).
The advantage of use Mid-Sid Mastering is the possibility to treat differently the mid audio material respect to side for specific purpouse (for example compress the bass, so i act in mid where i can found all bass frequencies in a general mix).

The Track Templates are located in these two links:
1. https://stash.reaper.fm/v/673/Mastering%20Mid-Side.RPP
2. https://stash.reaper.fm/v/672/Masteri...e%20Ok.RPP-bak

They are different; in the first, you need to add left channel and right channel separately into the correct named tracks and make copy of them. So now you can manipulate "Mid" track and "Side" track. You can't add stereo project, in left track the left channel and in right track, the right channel.
If you want to use a stereo rendered project, you need to use the second Template. In this project, you only need to add you stereo project into the track named "Original Track".

So now you can treat the Mid audio material and Side one differently. If you need to use VST for all, the only thing to do is to add the VST in the Master Track (for example add a stereo enhacer VST or multiband compressor/limiter to all entire project).

For questions about the use of tempèlates, ask me.
For "how to do masternig", frequent a sound engineering course ;-)

[bjbaum]

Hello fabiophonic,

neat, I wanted to say!

Those Templates are very great and exactly the things I was looking for.

Thank You very much.

Is the same thing possible to achieve with JS: utility/kanakaMS5 and JS: utility/kanakaMSEncoder1. Maybe a little Template?!

And if I wanto use imager for example, should I use it on side channel and pan the mid manually respectively?

[Chris_P_Critter]

Excellent! This is timely, as I posted a M/S thread a few days ago, just looking for some basic info. Seeing the routing you have going here might help me.

Thanks!

[larrygates]

Something that will shed more light on things. One of the most informative routing know how I've seen on the internet. Seriously.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...light=mid+side

Have fun, nice thread. M/S is a GREAT GREAT technique. Even better is a true M/S recording from the start. Whole diff ball game though.

[nerdfactormax]

Originally Posted by larrygates

Even better is a true M/S recording from the start. Whole diff ball game though.

Do you mean having routing your tracks to seperate 'groups' or 'masters' dedicated to L/M/R?

[larrygates]

nerdfactor I don't mean that, since pretty much all plugs do that for you, and routing in reaper allows you to do that. Not on the master itself, but on sub masters you can.

I mean recording the source files as 3 channels. Err 2 channels, I'm sorry. Cardiod and Figure 8. And using M/S decode plugins, or manually decoding the signal. It's a very very nice sounding thing to do. I've done it on lead vox, background, guitars, you name it. Just for trying out of course. Phase is a problem also setup. There's other micing techniques to use too.

It's just fun to try out.

Originally Posted by nerdfactormax

Do you mean having routing your tracks to seperate 'groups' or 'masters' dedicated to L/M/R?

[Chris_P_Critter]

Thanks Larry!

I've been doing some experimentation on guitar tracks, and it amazes me how much this method opens things up - I have some depth back in the mix that I didn't have before (big problem with D.I. guitarists like myself), and I can get away with more natural sounding reverb buss applications, which enhances the depth overall.

Pretty awesome, and so simple in theory.

I've been experimenting a lot lately - so many routing capabilities that I've not even begun to tap in this application. Truly awesome stuff!!

EDIT - I just checked out that post Larry - Thanks man. I will most definitely need to mess around with this!!!!

[larrygates]

Oh yes also, with Reaper (and a lot of VST plugins by themselves) allow you to only route the side of middle signal to the efx. Or maybe I should say you could use the effect in only Side or Middle mode.

Basically take one of you reverb or delay busses, do the same routing to that bus channel with Kanaka JS plugs and you'll be able to have that efx only work on the middle or sides.

It's GREAT GREAT GREAT on reverbs. Hard to tell at first, but you'll see that you're verb is less in your face and more back in the mix (not volume wise). Have fun, and I suppose I'm the worst person on this forum!!!

[Shredder]

Get iZotope Ozone 4 multiband mastering suite. You can even download the mastering manual for free.

It would be nice if Cockos would build an FX shell that could allow loading separate FX tools for multiband mastering without subing tracks. Such as ReaXcomp, but with features to allow loading FX's for each band. However, I could see where this may be a nightmare, but nevertheless it would be a great tool.

[Chris_P_Critter]

Originally Posted by larrygates

Oh yes also, with Reaper (and a lot of VST plugins by themselves) allow you to only route the side of middle signal to the efx. Or maybe I should say you could use the effect in only Side or Middle mode.

Basically take one of you reverb or delay busses, do the same routing to that bus channel with Kanaka JS plugs and you'll be able to have that efx only work on the middle or sides.

It's GREAT GREAT GREAT on reverbs. Hard to tell at first, but you'll see that you're verb is less in your face and more back in the mix (not volume wise). Have fun, and I suppose I'm the worst person on this forum!!!

Awesome - Thanks again man!

PS - You're not the worst person here.

Originally Posted by Shredder

Get iZotope Ozone 4 multiband mastering suite. You can even download the mastering manual for free.

It would be nice if Cockos would build an FX shell that could allow loading separate FX tools for multiband mastering without subing tracks. Such as ReaXcomp, but with features to allow loading FX's for each band. However, I could see where this may be a nightmare, but nevertheless it would be a great tool.

Shredder man, I hear you. You can do it with channel splitting, routing, etc. etc. but it would be awesome if you had one "magic" plug that could do it all!

[Shredder]

Yup, one magic plug...

[Bubbagump]

Originally Posted by larrygates

Something that will shed more light on things. One of the most informative routing know how I've seen on the internet. Seriously.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...light=mid+side

Have fun, nice thread. M/S is a GREAT GREAT technique. Even better is a true M/S recording from the start. Whole diff ball game though.

Reaper's routing makes this cake... encode to M/S... split that out to other tracks to process M and S separately... maybe run a LR in paralell the M/S processing to mess with. I use this all the time to bring out vocals or add space/thicken in mastering.

[andrea.bernasconi]

Hi, I tried the template (Mastering Mid-Side Ok.RPP-bak ); there is a problem: when I move pan to right into the original track, audio disapper.
Someone can you try it?
thank you

andrea

[Christoph1]

Hi there,

does not have to be "side-information" substracted from the MID-channel
in the project-file post #1 ?
"mid-information" is created by just summing left and right channel.


Yes, you are right this thread is old, but some things last long ;-)

Any comment appreciated...

bye