If you go to school to be an audio engineer, one of the things they’re going to talk to you about is mid-side. There’s a good likelihood you’re going to be confused about it, and the reason why is that you don’t understand stereo as well as you think you do. The terms mid and side are misleading.
That’s because there is no center. It’s an illusion. Anything that appears in both channels is the sum, and it will appear to be coming from the middle.
It’s not. Anything appearing on one side and not the other, that’s difference. And with that comes some challenges, like if you take a signal that’s panned to the center, pan it to one side, you’ve just lost 3 dB.
Your mixer or your DAW probably has something called a pan law to try and compensate for this, but it’s not perfect. And if you have a stereo signal with difference between the sides, instead of pan, you may want something called a stereo balance to move one signal into the other. You could also break an existing stereo signal into its mid and side components.
Where it overlaps, that’s the sum. Where it doesn’t, that’s the difference. It’s kind of like one of those Euler diagrams.
That opens up the door to some real sorcery later on. Music production involves a fair amount of sleight of hand, because remember, this isn’t the last stop in the signal chain. The last stop in the signal chain is perception.
If you have two eyes and you see one of me, stop and think about that for a minute. And if someone who’s ready to join a Beat Kitchen class, share this poster.
