So so far we've seen that that's with the two stereo techniques that we've discussed, we saw that that both were a bit of a compromise, we saw that with the A, B, it doesn't quite work because we having to place one microphone in in a less than ideal spot, and because it can still exaggerate the size of the instrument, and also, we saw that x y doesn't quite work because we're dealing with cardioids where there might be a certain amount of proximity effects. So now I want to talk about another method which is also a coincidental microphone technique like x y. It uses two microphones that have to die from very, very close together. But this time, it is this technique is called ms ms. sights is what it stands for. And it's a it's an unusual stereo microphone technique. Because unlike AB and unlike x, y and all the others, it uses two completely different microphones.

The cool thing about Ms is that that's essentially, our starting off point is the same high quality mono microphone that we early discussed. And we sold it with a with a with an omni directional pressure operated microphone, you can have the perfect mono sound. Now, the cool thing with MS is we're going to have that same microphone in the same place. But we're going to ask a completely different microphone. This is a figure of eight microphone, and we're going to put that coincidental so close it as closely together as possible with with with the Omni. Now the job of the figure of eight, right is to were to, to to look left and right.

Yeah. So so we're going to mix this together in what's called a D chord. matrix. So what we'll have to do them surface we'll talk about it a little bit later. But essentially, what you need to imagine here is that the only directional microphone is going to pick up the sound of the guitar, as we already know it and already have heard it. And we're going to add this microphone to it.

Yeah, but but by means of the decoding matrix, we're going to set it up. So this microphone is just going to register the difference between the left hand right hand and the left hand side of the stereo image. And it's going to pass that on to a mixing desk and the loudspeakers so that we hear essentially, the beautiful sound of the mono omnidirectional microphone, and this microphone here is going to fold it into stereo. Okay, so here's the Omni. Here's my figure of eight. I just want to briefly show you if you if you ever listened to the microphones, so the figure of eight Yes, a microphone will by the sound wave has free access to the front as well as the rear of the diaphragm.

It's not so easy to see what they say. With this small shelf space, it has two little dots on it, telling me what the front and the back is. And I just want you to listen. So now I'm talking into the front of the microphone, and you should be able to hear me. And as I now turn the microphone phone around here, you start to hear that you hear less and less and less and less and less and less and less of my voice. And here I am, more or less in the rejection feels and my voice almost completely drops away.

It's only the room reflections that you still hear. And if I continue moving the microphone now you start to pick it up again. So you see a very directional microphone because the sound has access to both sides of the diaphragm. So we need to be very careful with setting up Ms. First of all diaphragms need to be very close together. And it is also very important that that's that the microphone is registering exactly the left to right image. So the diaphragm is going to be exactly under a 90 degree angle with the diaphragm of the of the omnidirectional but as much as possible in the same place.

Okay, so here i foot my m s set up together. So at the bottom, the same good old only, we always have in the same spot, doing the same, exactly the same thing, this microphone is going to be bends to the middle in mono. And so what advantage of that is that we can retain that starting off points that we have earlier. And then we've added the secret eight, which which lies on top. And whereby it is very important to realize that to the finger of a diaphragm is not at all looking at the guitar, but it's looking sideways, it's looking at this part and a dead part of the space. And the dividing line is right here.

So the diaphragm of the only is here where my hand is more or less, and then what his other hand is like so under a 90 degree angle, there's the the diaphragm of the figure of eight microphone. Now, like I said, the mono microphone the N right we're going to bend it in the middle. We need to think of this microphone as the M is the most important component here. It is giving us The sound of the guitar. Yeah, the s, of course also gives you the sound but the job of the S is to, to just to, to register the difference between left and right. Because think about it, if you have a diaphragm in this angle, yeah, you see that that's a debtor, there's only ever going to be a reason for it to move.

Yeah, is there is a difference between left and right. And clearly on the left, we have more low end. So the lower frequencies are going to cause a little bit of movement, but it also sounds from over there. Yeah. And then this figure of eight microphone, it is important that this comes into our mixing desk twice. So the sum total channels that Ms gives us is three which is a bit confusing because it's the stereo microphone technique.

All other techniques only use two channels, one left and right here we have the M in the middle. Yeah, mono. And then we have the sides. Yeah, spread over two channels, but coming from one microphone. So however you do it, you need to ensure that in your mixing console In here, you have the figure of eight on two separate channels. Or if you're working with with a digital audio workstation, you have to create two tracks here that have the same figure of eight microphones output, then it is important that's one of the tracks is going to depend to the left.

And that channel is going to be in face with the Omni that's below it. Whereas the other channel, the channel that we're going to append to the right hand side, so the second s channel, we're going to switch the polarity on the channel. So today here we do not impro tools by by introducing a plug in EQ, one the most simple EQ plug in that comes with with edit protocol system, and there's a polarity switch on and that that basically flips the polarity of that channel by 180 degrees. So that's what you have is two channels coming from the figure of eight microphone, left and right, yeah, pens the opposite way, but only one of them has the polarity. reversed and the other one doesn't. A small little thing, if you're gonna do this in Pro Tools, you need to make sure that your delay compensation is on.

And this is because the EQ plugin will provide a little bit of latency. And that would cause timing issues again, between those two sides channels. Yeah, in the analog world, you don't have to do this. But but but in order to make this work in Pro Tools, or logic or something like that, we need to delay compensation. So then we have a situation whereby with m s, and this is how you should think of it it's still the M Mike is the most important so you should start with the M. Yeah. And then but once you have that sound, that you can mix the two side microphones at the same level with it.

And you'll hear that said that you The more you increase the level of the two s gels coming from the figure of eight microphone, the more stereophonic your image becomes. And the really cool thing is that that with with this recording technique, you can decide yourself how narrow or how long you want it with Without having to move the microphones. Yeah, so so does even the mix engineer that that ultimately decides what the stereo image is. So this is very powerful tool. And as I remind you, it is coincidental. So there's no phasing, no issues, no comb filtering.

So there's no no no word, no coloration in terms of Tambora. Have a listen. Unless you have a listen. You start with the M at unity gain, and you bring the S microphones up or down or up or down. And you put it wherever you like. Yeah, and you can make the acoustic guitar as narrow or as wide as you'd like.

Or when you think about this, in a mix, you could have this even automated you had to have the guitar sound wider or narrower in different parts of the song. It's all up to you have a listen. So that was pretty cool I thought now I want to explain to you another advantage of MS which I think is really cool so so sometimes when you recording Yeah, you don't know what's going to happen later on in the production process. It's happened to me on one occasion where whereby I recorded acoustic guitar and then thinking that was going to be the lead instrument and the one and only guitar but then later on, the producer told me we were going to double these guitars. So So what had originally been in stereo format recording then had to be turned into a mono recording band to the left, and we then added a separate overdub recording, which was going to be pen to the right, yeah.

Now of course the cool thing about Ms is if that happens to you, yeah, if suddenly you find out Oh, this my stereophonic recording is going to be used in mono. It's perfectly mono competitive. Because Because at the end of the day, we can just simply throw away the channels that contain the figure of eight the s and we're just left over with a single mono microphone still at the same high quality that we started off with earlier.