MS for Mastering

[Lee]

After seeing David Briggs's MS presentation I became curious about what the preferred choice of equipment for decoding is (hardware of software)? Assuming there was a need to use this method.

[stosostu]

I've always used hardware for this, either on the console, M+S, M-S, or using an external summing box.

[Ben M]

I didn't see David Briggs talking MS unfortunately. Wish I had.
However, ms is something I use only when needed.... bringing a track's image in or ... pushing it out to be more in line with the other track's spread. A lot of mixes can be wide enough these days and sometimes I find too much width can bring out those hard panned reverbs/efx and miss the meat of the track. Something to watch maybe.
Do you use anything atm Lee?

Just some observations...
Hardware: I noticed Rob had a MS box at integrate. Would probably be a really good box to have... no doubt.

Software: For rough masters the Tracks 3 Deluxe package have MS on nearly all of their processors. I quite like that package for giving rough mixes to clients. I'm sure there's many more soft options...

For MS during mixing I just copy the figure 8/ omni track and then process all three ms tracks with the same plug (something simple like a 1 band eq with a phase button on it) and put the copied track out of phase. Or multi it on the patchbay.

cheers
Ben

[Sammas]

I just encode & decode digitally, generally. I don't really see much advantage of doing it in analogue, in terms of sound quality at least.

One thing to be wary of, any processing applied independently to either the mid or side signal ultimately effects the sonics of its counterpart when it comes to decoding it back to a stereo signal.

[rob]

indeed I have a custom made MS encoder / decoder with variable width control. If anyone wants to do MS in hardware it could be yours for a good price.

[DrAlienSmith]

not sure how other software handles it but Samplitude can encode and decode just by selecting an option straight from its mixer. Very easy.

[Ben M]

indeed I have a custom made MS encoder / decoder with variable width control. If anyone wants to do MS in hardware it could be yours for a good price.

There you go Lee. Grab a cool ms box for a good price.