Converting audio to mid/side stereo with Audacity

Short how-to video showing how to generate the mid and side signals from a stereo track using Audacity.

For everyone who is confused about this video:
Mid-side (also called M/S or Mid/Side Stereophony) is originally a stereo microphone recording technique from the 1930's. It is still in use today as a tool for audio analysis and controlling stereo width in mastering. If you are not an experienced audio engineer and are not familiar with the concept of mid/side stereo this video will probably be meaningless to you.

It only explains how to convert a classic left/right stereo track into a mid/side stereo track, not what you can do with it, or how you can convert it back to left/right stereo. This resulting audio can not be played back in stereo in a normal DAW setup, you need to set up a mid/side to left/right converter by splitting the side band onto two channels, and reverting the phase of the right one. I can make a video showing how to do this if people are interested.

This video is so brief because it was made to quickly illustrate a forum post:
http://www.drumnbass.be/forum/thread.php?threadid=17006

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Audacity

[kaluanda75]

No it cannot be! Why recording something already in stereo, split it in to two and than convert it to MONO! This so dumb!!! Also this is not MIDI, it is MID, what ever this may be MIDI stand for Musical Istrument Digital Interface and it it is a set of computer instructions for a MIDI processor to produce sounds. It is npot a sound file. Some of you guys need to do research and get informed on what you read on this subject!

[dnbbe]

@kaluanda75 Mid-side is an alternative representation of a stereo signal, it is definitely not mono. This is exactly the point, you get a different way of working with stereo than the usual left-right channels. You can do very interesting things with it.

[dnbbe]

@backdoorkain yes it certainly is. Mid-side has already been discovered in the 1930's by Alan Blumlein.

[BaCkDoOrKaiN]

good tutorial but... this is technicaly possible? is a real result?

[james0tucson]

@1mashoman It is important in production. There are many effects and other processing that are done very effectively in mid/side rather than left/right stereo. Probably the most common one is applying eq to reverb. If you put the reverb only on the side and leave the mid alone, you can work with the room and not the instruments, or vice versa. M/S is extremely common in mastering.

[dorkwin]

this is mid-side stereo micing technique and not mid side mastering.

[xroni]

@mcYunBaconBitz Tracks > Stereo Track to Mono

[mcYunBaconBitz]

how do you make a stereo mono?

[xroni]

@1mashoman It is an alternative representation of a stereo signal, as opposed to the commonly used left / right channels. It has a lot of uses, from analyzing mixing techniques to mastering and stereo width control.

[1mashoman]

for what i can use this conwerted audio. Why this is so important?