Hey Guys.
I just saw some ads about this cool new MS Plugin.

https://timeoff.audio/products/dime-ms

Waves Studio Rack also has a MS Function, allowing to put the plugins mid or side.

Does anybody use Dime MS and can tell me some experience?
PS, I work in Ableton. I also think there should be a way to get a similar function.

I never worked much with MS and need to learn this technique now.

Thank you

 

I never learned about it properly either and also do not have to now.

 

Yes, a plugin to host plugins inside your DAW just for M/S is overkill and adds more sources of potential crashes and slowdowns. Use a free M/S encoder/decoder pair of plugins/devices/racks/jsfx/scripts/..., and sandwich your plugin(s) of choice in between.

Voxengo MSED if you need GUI and to get started.

If you want to build an encoder/decoder yourself:

// encode, insert before processing
mid = (left + right) * 0.5;
side = left - right;

left = mid;
right = side;

// your plugins go here

// decode, insert after processing
left_new = left + right;
right_new = left - right;

left = left_new;
right = right_new;

 

Thanks for the feedback guys.
But I'm not a developer or coder.
I just want to make music and be creative.

Style is Electronic. So I think my music needs some modern Vodoo technique to sound up2date.

 

for creative purposes within ableton you can create a rack and insert what you want to work on the multiband compressor or the eq3, then you create 3 chains and separate them into low, mid, high, of course you have to insert the same device in each chain and mute according to what you created, after that you apply your effects, but the question is what do you want to do? because the eq8 itself has M / S, the utility can be used in mono or side, but whether you hear the effect or not will depend on the source, you can also use vst like ozone imager from izotope 11 or any other version, of course always speaking creatively you can do this, now if you want to do something like this to mix your music you have to be careful with those crossovers you make when muting each band because it can give you phase problems once you already have your sound. another option is to use waves plugins, which come in mono or mono stereo versions.

 

Agreed on not being a fan of "plugins within plugins" but this looks useful if needed.

You can do some serious M/S processing in Live by creating an audio effect rack with two chains with a Utility device on each. If the Utility says Width, right click the control and set it to Mid/Side Mode. Set the M/S balance on one Utility to 100M the other 100S. Now you can add whatever you want after the utilities to process mid/side independently for any track.

If you're gonna start messing with mid/side I'd suggest getting the free Voxengo Correlometer which allows you to see phase correlation in bands across the whole frequency spectrum, a very useful tool.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2025 at 11:46 PM