Guitar Phasing Issues

[spacerobot]

So I am new to home recording. I am having some phasing issues with my dual tracked guitars. Here is my setup:

LTD MH350 ---> MAudio firewire solo ---> Reaper ---> Amp sims

I don't know if this is supposed to be like this but when I do not pan the dual guitars left / right 100% it sounds phasey to me. 100% sounds fine, but I would like to pan them around 70 LR. The more I go towards center though the phasey sound increases. Is it supposed to be like this? I have posted MP3's of just the guitars below panned at all 3 spots. If there is something wrong what can be done to resolve the issue? Any ideas or feedback is appreciated. The song is not a metal song but a punkish descendents style song.

40%

70%

100%

 

[vespiz]

Not too phasey to me, just sounds like two guitar tracks getting on top of each other.
You could try flipping the polarity on one side and/or change .. something in the signal chain for the other take; different settings on the amp, another guitar (if possible), different playing style, etc.

 

[nezvers]

Ordinary you can hear phasey sound when sum track to mono, but is phase-ing because those are same noter/ fequencies and different phase alignment and that cause partian phase cancelation. It's natural thing.
Different amp setting would create subttle difference in sound = less phase cancellation, but that drop to your taste (for my taste it sound too weird if same riff got different amp setting).
Dual tracking has purpose to get more stereo spread that why you should pan 100%, if you pan less than each channel bleed into another and create phasing already in stereo field.
What about feedback - I hear guitar track so I can only give only feedback based on my taste to guitar tone -> it is bit piercing for me (bit Low Pass around 12k and that could reduce phasing because phase issues is more frequent in higher Hz).

 

[spacerobot]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I have been messing around with this all morning. I think I have solution in place to resolve the phasing but I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about it. When I am recording through the firewire solo I am selecting a mono input on channel 2 since that is the channel I have my guitar plugged into with a 1/4" jack. Once I record the guitar I think Reaper sort of stereoizes it? I can see the wave on both the left and right channels in the track view. I was wondering if that could have been the issue if I was doubling up two mono tracks panned left and right. But I'm not sure.

So I created two new tracks and set them up to receive from both guitar tracks pre-fader. I selected to receive signal from Audio 2 on guitar track 1 and set it to receive on track 2 on the new track. I did the same for the other track too. Now these tracks are panned left / right at 40% and sound much better. The phasing is pretty much gone. I don't really know why though, I am just tweaking settings to see what made it go away. Check out the new 40% pan. Compare it to the old one back to back and see how crazy the difference is.

40% New

Also thanks for the feedback on the guitar tone. I agree it is a bit piercing right now. I actually do have a low pass at 11.1K already. I will be doing a lot of tweaking and EQing as I get going. I was just trying to set up some basic sounds to record with.

 

[BLUElightCory]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I have been messing around with this all morning. I think I have solution in place to resolve the phasing but I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about it. When I am recording through the firewire solo I am selecting a mono input on channel 2 since that is the channel I have my guitar plugged into with a 1/4" jack. Once I record the guitar I think Reaper sort of stereoizes it? I can see the wave on both the left and right channels in the track view. I was wondering if that could have been the issue if I was doubling up two mono tracks panned left and right. But I'm not sure.

So I created two new tracks and set them up to receive from both guitar tracks pre-fader. I selected to receive signal from Audio 2 on guitar track 1 and set it to receive on track 2 on the new track. I did the same for the other track too. Now these tracks are panned left / right at 40% and sound much better. The phasing is pretty much gone. I don't really know why though, I am just tweaking settings to see what made it go away. Check out the new 40% pan. Compare it to the old one back to back and see how crazy the difference is.

40% New

Also thanks for the feedback on the guitar tone. I agree it is a bit piercing right now. I actually do have a low pass at 11.1K already. I will be doing a lot of tweaking and EQing as I get going. I was just trying to set up some basic sounds to record with.

What you should be doing is recording individual mono tracks for each take. So if your guitar is plugged into input 2:
1st track (mono) - signal from input 2 - panned to the left
2nd track (mono) - signal from input 2 - panned to the right

If you're tracking in mono and you're looking at a stereo waveform, that most likely means 2 things:
1. You created a stereo track in Reaper instead of a mono one.
2. Both "sides" of the stereo track are identical, which makes it a mono signal.

Generally when you hear phasing in a situation like this it's because the signals on each side are very similar to each other sonically, but not aligned in time. This creates phase cancellation unless you pan the two signals 100% left / 100% right. Hard panning keeps the signals completely separate so that you don't run into phasing when they sum together.

So to minimize phase issues:
1. Hard pan the two takes 100% left/right.
2. Use different sounds/tones on each side (this has the added benefit of sounding "wider").

 

[spacerobot]

Dude!

#1 was the problem. I'm new to Reaper and didn't there were options to set the track format. I had it set to force stereo. I changed it to force mono and did a little sound test. Everything sounds great now!

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

This thread made me realize I've been recording in stereo the whole time by accident. I feel like an idiot but I'm grateful haha

 

[BLUElightCory]

Glad it helped.