Topic
Mid/side (M/S) is another way to describe a stereo signal: the sum of left and right (mid) and their difference (side). This guide explains the maths in plain words, why everything you do to the side channel vanishes in mono, and the handful of mixing and mastering moves where M/S earns its place.
Workflows
Headphones remove your room from the mix, which is their great strength and their great trap. Here is why headphone stereo sounds wider than speakers, what crossfeed, correction curves and virtual rooms actually do, and the checks that still need a second playback system.
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A reference track only helps if you compare it fairly. A mastered release is louder than your mix, and louder sounds better, so an unmatched A/B pushes you towards more EQ and more compression. Here is how to match levels with a loudness meter, which meter readings to use, how to pick references, and why streaming normalisation changes what "loud enough" means.
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Reverb fakes a room and delay repeats a sound, and both usually sound best on a shared return track rather than stacked on every channel. Here is what early reflections, decay, pre-delay, feedback and ping pong actually do, using the Ableton Live manual as the reference, and when to send instead of insert.
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A sidechain lets one sound control how a processor treats another. Pumping kick-and-bass is the famous use, but the same routing quietly ducks guitars under a vocal, keys a gate from a drum, and, with a multiband compressor, turns down only the frequencies that clash. Here is how each version works, using the Ableton Live manual and FabFilter Pro-MB help as references.
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