ogpuprison wrote:Could i get a mid-side recording using one cardioid mic and a stereo mic? No ribbon figure of 8 mics here. The stereo mic has two outputs so I could invert one of the two signals. Any advice would be appreciated.I dont want to use the MS setting on the channel mixer of my DAW, I'm sure it wouldn't acheive muchNope.Need to have a fig 8.= Justin

Could i get a mid-side recording using one cardioid mic and a stereo mic? No ribbon figure of 8 mics here. The stereo mic has two outputs so I could invert one of the two signals. Any advice would be appreciated.I dont want to use the MS setting on the channel mixer of my DAW, I'm sure it wouldn't acheive much

greg wrote:TheMilford wrote:Justin, I'm not certain this is true. I think it depends on the stereo mic's pattern.What do you mean by stereo mic? The side mic always has to have a fig 8 pattern for the setup to work properly...IANTM but I think the question is whether you could use two separate outputs from a stereo mic, with polarity inverted on one of them, in place of a figure-8 mic in a M-S set-up.I'm thinking the answer is still no but I'm interested to hear more about it.I'm in the same boat as ogpuprison; No figure-8 mic at my disposal, but I could do this other thing.- Robin

Justin, I'm not certain this is true. I think it depends on the stereo mic's pattern.

greg wrote:ImportantThe two side channels must be at exactly the same level for this to work right. You can crudely confirm this by listening to the side channels, with the mid muted, pan them to the center, and trim the fader levels until the signal completely disappears. Remember, the two side channels are opposite polarity, and should cancel completely out if summed together at the same level.Thanks for this greg!I tried your "crude confirm" technique on something I recorded today. It worked. Very neat.

I'm asking this because I don't know. Are there stereo mics that have a 180 degree angle difference and a null at the 90 degree point? That would be a very weird microphone. What use would it be?The stereo mics that I can think of have an effective capsule difference of something in 90 to 150 range. (I say effective, because the actual angle difference of an ambisonic mic isn't even on the same plane.) So if you use that with a unidirectional mic for the 'mid', you're just effectively decreasing the angle of those capsules. This is all in the theoretical world, where things like different frequency response and physical placements of the capsules don't matter. My guess of what you find with your experiment, ogpup, is something that sounds like not-so-wide a stereo image of just the stereo mics alone. = Justin

Well since everyone's gone to the trouble of thinking about using a stereo mic as the side mic, I'm gonna get down to business and try it out today. I'll try it into a computer first, then to a revox machine. I'll try the same piece of music recorded x-y, then stereo, then mono, then mid-side. Thanks for the advice

TheMilford wrote:I only say this because there are M/S mic designs that have two separate capsules for the "side" pair.... isn't this essentially the same thing?Ideally, the side mic (or any fig. of 8 mic) should have a single transducer, but it's obviously do-able with a mic that uses separate capsules. It's preferable to keep the overall dimensions of the transducer down keep the frequency response across the polar pattern consistent. If the distance were really far then you'd start to run into phase issues, and it would affect your null at 90 degrees.

I only say this because there are M/S mic designs that have two separate capsules for the "side" pair.... isn't this essentially the same thing?

Teacher's Pet wrote:My mixer doesn't have a phase-invert switch.Can I just make a custom T-S cable (flipping the + and - conductors) and use it to bring signal out from one channel and back into another?Inverting the polarity of a balanced line will work. But I assume that your connection is unbalanced (you wrote T-S instead of TRS), which won't allow you to flip the wires.What mixer do you use?