Make Wider Mixes With Mid-Side (M/S) Technique

The mid-side technique is one of the most used tricks that helps correct the stereo sound image of the whole song or individual elements. It introduces wideness; you can find it in most compressor units within equalizers.   These days, many plugins can take an L/R signal and encode it to a Mid-Side (M/S) signal. As a result, this opens up different helpful possibilities, especially in the mastering process. The Mid signal is the sum of the left and right channels summed to Mono, while the Side signal is the difference between the Left and Right channels. In other words, everything is different between the left and right channels.  

Master Bus

In most cases, the right place for you to put your equalizer, exciter, or compressor, which allows Mid-Side (M/S) processing, is the master bus. That is that, all of your audio signals are summed together into the master bus. It goes without saying that in most cases, you will have some instruments like bass, kick drum, and snare positioned in the center. Instruments like guitar or synth leads are on the sides. To start with the demonstration and present the changes in the overall stereo image, I will apply this technique to the track previously made in SoundBridge.  

The plugin unit I chose for this demonstration is Bx_Control by Brainworx. It is a relatively simple plugin in which I can show you the difference between the mid, side, and full stereo signals. Let's begin by placing it on the master bus channel rack within SoundBridge.

 

Stereo Widening

You will notice the red arrow pointing to the Stereo width knob. This knob controls how much of stereo widening will be applied to the overall signal. Of course, if it remains unchanged, it doesn't affect the signal. But moving it to the right, you will start hearing the effect mentioned. I believe the sweet spot, in this case, would be around 200 %. Pushing it more could ruin the mix by bringing some of the instruments' side signals to the extreme. This is something that I certainly don't want to happen.  

Conclusion

Let us listen to how the track sounds with the Bx_control bypassed, Mid-signal soloed, Side signal soloed, and in Full stereo. So try the Mid-Side technique for yourself; it helps a lot!  

~ Bx_control bypassed

~ Mid-signal soloed

~ Side signal soloed

~ Full mix