Mastering // Mid-Side

Mid-side mastering is about the process of splitting the data that is coming down the centre of the mix, the mid, and the data that has been pushed out to the side of the mix via panning, and processing these differently. The idea is to process the middle of the mix which usually contains your bass, kick and rhythm sections to keep them together and tighten them up and to process the side of the mix to gain stereo with and add spectral processing.

A new ProTools session was opened, and the bounced Pre-Master mix of one of my pre recorded tracks was imported on the a new stereo audio track. Two stereo auxiliary tracks and a stereo master faded were added to the track list. The output from the audio track containing the pre-master mix was sent to bus 1-2, and the inputs of both aux tracks was set to receive from bus 1-2.

A plug-in called 'Mid-Side' was added to both aux tracks. This plug-in lets you turn down or silence the data being received from the mid of the track or the data from the sides of the track.

On one of the mid-side plug-ins I silenced the side completely, and the other I silenced the mid completely. I make sure the audio track is solo safe, and when I solo each of the aux tracks separately I can hear either the mid or side data separately.

First I processed the mid of the track. I added an EQ and first decided to focus on clearing out the muddy mid frequencies just above 100hZ, which really cleared up the annoying 'rumble' in the mix. At the mastering stage I must be careful when using EQ as you are applying to a whole mix and should just be used to fine touching up. I also added a long Q shallow boost at 3kHz as I feel this added clarity and punch to the rhythm sections.

I then moved on to processing the side image of the track. I used EQ to take out all of the low end from the side of the track as all of the data should be well brought forward from the centre of the mix. I then added a high frequency boost to add 'air' to the likes of the cymbals of the drum kit and clarity to the vocals.

I then used Air Stereo Width to really push out the mix far out to the sides and spread out the wall of sound effect I was trying to achieve.

A limiter was then added just as a precautionary measure, to keep the side image tamed.

I then sent the outputs from the aux tracks to a new stereo aux track that I had created and then used Oxford Compressor / Limiter to secure both the mid and the side together.

TTDynamic plug-in was used on the master track to keep and eye on the loudness and the dynamic range of the track.

Fades in and out at the very start and very end of the track using automation on the volume level of the master fader.

I bounced out 3 separate final files. One 24bit WAV file, a 16bit WAV file and a 16but mp3 file. Dither was added to the final mix before bouncing out the 16bit files.

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