Mid/Side EQ is a powerful tool for both mixing & master. For this post though, we're going to focus on the benefits of using it for mastering.

We know getting the mix to sound right is more important than the mastering stages, but for a lot of people that engineer at the professional level, you know sometimes you get hired just to do the mastering stages & the song has been mixed by somebody else.

Using tools like Mid/Side EQ can give you more control & better balance.

Mid controls everything that is in the center of the mix. Meaning things that are not panned.

Sides controls everything that is in the stereo field. Meaning the sounds that are being heard out of the left & right channel. Such as things that are panned or things that have a wide sound to them.

When it comes to mastering, we have less control over the overall sound than we would during the mixing stages. What makes this tool so powerful during the mastering stages is that now we can control things like vocals & bass separately from sounds like reverb, hi-hats, wide synths, & other things within the stereo field.

If you're using a plugin like Pro-Q3, you can even control the left channel separately from the right channel!

EQ isn't the only tool that can be used for Mid/Side processing though! We're also big fans of M/S saturation, M/S compression, & M/S multi-band compression!

Mid/Side processing is also effective inside your mix too! Things like pads, background vocal sums, 808s, kicks, & several other instruments can benefit from Mid/Side processing!