I'm going to be recording a choir in a church tonight with direct to
stereo DAT via an Apogee rosetta using the Amek 9098 mic preamp. This
unit has a MS matrix built in. I've never really understood how to use
it correctly as the manual is very poorly written and hard to
understand. I want to try an MS technique with the fig 8 mic being a
Coles 4038, u87 or 414EB.

There are buttons on the pre for MS in, MS out and width. I'm going to
leave the width at "normal" stereo to avoid phase issues. If the output
of the pre is going to be direct to stereo DAT, should I press both the
MS in and out? It says in the manual to have output MS set to ON if the
output is to be MS and leave the output MS off if the output is to be L-R.
--
--
John Noll
Retromedia Sound Studios
Red Bank, NJ 07701

Phone: 732-842-3853 Fax: 732-842-5631

http://www.retromedia.net

John Noll wrote:

I want to try an MS technique with the fig 8 mic being a Coles 4038,
u87 or 414EB.

John,

The major point of M/S recording is that you can record the M and S signals
directly, and matrix them to L and R stereo in post-production. That lets
you defer all decisions regarding stereo width until a less hectic time,
when you already have the recording "in the can."

I don't know how the Amek unit is arranged for M/S. But to me, the most
useful way would be to monitor the various possible L/R stereo renderings
through headphones or speakers while passing the M and S signals directly
on to the tape (or hard drive, etc.).

David Satz wrote:
John Noll wrote:


I want to try an MS technique with the fig 8 mic being a Coles 4038,
u87 or 414EB.


John,

The major point of M/S recording is that you can record the M and S signals
directly, and matrix them to L and R stereo in post-production. That lets
you defer all decisions regarding stereo width until a less hectic time,
when you already have the recording "in the can."

I don't know how the Amek unit is arranged for M/S. But to me, the most
useful way would be to monitor the various possible L/R stereo renderings
through headphones or speakers while passing the M and S signals directly
on to the tape (or hard drive, etc.).

I'll be passing the tape on to someone else for post production so I'd
like to have the stereo image "set" while recording live.


--
--
John Noll
Retromedia Sound Studios
Red Bank, NJ 07701

Phone: 732-842-3853 Fax: 732-842-5631

http://www.retromedia.net

In article writes:

There are buttons on the pre for MS in, MS out and width. I'm going to
leave the width at "normal" stereo to avoid phase issues. If the output
of the pre is going to be direct to stereo DAT, should I press both the
MS in and out? It says in the manual to have output MS set to ON if the
output is to be MS and leave the output MS off if the output is to be L-R.

It's probably too late now, but by all means, plug some headphones
into the recorder and listen to what's going to it. If that's what the
manual says, try it first. My great user interface intuition would be
that if MS was ON, you'd get a decoded (L/R) output to the recorder,
but that's because I think of "MS" in this context as being a
function. If you think of it as being "Mid and Side", then the manual
makes sense.

I'd record left and right (decoded). That way, you can tell what it is
that you're recording. You'd darn well better be able to tell if you're
sending the mid mic to one channel of the recorder and side mic to the
other channel.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:


There are buttons on the pre for MS in, MS out and width. I'm going to
leave the width at "normal" stereo to avoid phase issues. If the output
of the pre is going to be direct to stereo DAT, should I press both the
MS in and out? It says in the manual to have output MS set to ON if the
output is to be MS and leave the output MS off if the output is to be L-R.


It's probably too late now, but by all means, plug some headphones
into the recorder and listen to what's going to it. If that's what the
manual says, try it first. My great user interface intuition would be
that if MS was ON, you'd get a decoded (L/R) output to the recorder,
but that's because I think of "MS" in this context as being a
function. If you think of it as being "Mid and Side", then the manual
makes sense.

I'd record left and right (decoded). That way, you can tell what it is
that you're recording. You'd darn well better be able to tell if you're
sending the mid mic to one channel of the recorder and side mic to the
other channel.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )


I used the 414EB in cardioid as the M and the 4038 as the S and set the
9098 matrix to input M-S ON and the M-S output OFF. We had two pairs of
headphones plugged into the DAT recorder. The weakest link in the chain
was the output converters and headphone amp on the Teac DA-P20 recorder.
It was hard to tell what we were really capturing on tape with the
limitations of the playback electronics.

The results were pretty good. The room church itself had decent
acoustics but not spectacular. The resulting recording has minimal
stereo imaging of the singers, but the ambience has some nice stereo
dimension with excellent mono compatibility. The ambience is a too bit
dense in the the low mids, a result I think, of the room's acoustics.

In retrospect, I think I would have prefered to use an X-Y configuration
to get better imaging on the singers with a little less room ambience.
--
--
John Noll
Retromedia Sound Studios
Red Bank, NJ 07701

Phone: 732-842-3853 Fax: 732-842-5631

http://www.retromedia.net