Phase problems; what's stopping you from manually aligning the track after the fact?

[Tommy Evans]

Bored and thought of this little for instance/question. Say you've got two mics on a cab (or even an elaborate drum mic set up) and phase problems are happening. What's the harm in zooming in on the 2nd track and aligning it to match the 1st track after you've recorded?


Sure you should check for this before any legit tracking happens but what if you miss it or what if the out of phase mic is actually picking up the best possible tones and moving it into phase would altar the sound it picked up thusly fucking up your desired tone...

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

Nothing is stopping anyone apart from being "bad engineering". Sometimes you may even want something to be a bit out of phase, depends on what you're after really...

But there's nothing wrong with shifting tracks in time to get them in phase... Only problem there is having to do it for every single, let's say, "guitar track" for every single song on an album... it's a bit tedious... Just get it right in the first place

 

[crillemannen]

Yeah when it comes to micing up a cab it is better to get it right from the start, so if the phase issue isn't intentional then correct it.

 

[Jordon]

I would worry less about the mics on one cab being "perfectly in phase" and worry more about them sounding as badass as possible.

 

[Uros]

Yeah, definitely. Since you are just thinking about this (you don't have an actual problem which needs to be solved) If you worry about that out-of-phase mic giving awesome sound, why don't you leave it and move the other mic around?
This shit is typical when you just throw a mic or two in front of a cab, and mix and match afterwards, which is not what you should be after IMO. Use your ears, match two mics, print them together (don't leave it for mix time), in other words - just commit. If you keep that choice for latter, you find yourself forever dwelling on nudging waveform around, and their overall level.

There is this little trick where you use one mic, sweep it around in order to find as good as possible tone, then get another mic, flip phase on it, and just try to get the sum of both mics to sound as fizzy as possible (while monitor in real time through good isolated cans), and then just flip the phase back on that 2nd mic.

 

[chrisrivalry]

For guitar I tend to leave it alone unless it sounds like garbage, but for drums and bass it's important to move everything in line.

 

[Pinebox]

The only issue is that it will alter the already bad ass tone you (should) have already dialed in.

 

[JakeAC5253]

For two mics on the same source honestly it comes down to style I guess, though I do recommend that you take the time to align them prior to tracking which I always do myself. Probably more a paranoid obsession, but I do consider it to be better engineering to do so.

There is one exception though, and that has to do with electric/acoustic guitars if you plan on blending direct pickup tone with dynamic miked tone. Problem is that you can't do it because the built in pickup is sensitive to side to side movement of the string, while the mic is sensitive to forward and back excursions from the guitar body, which results in a hard wired 90º phase difference between them. As far as the actual science of it, my understanding of it is that the pickup has a position characteristic, while a dynamic mic has a velocity characteristic, and if you are familiar with physics concepts, these graphs are out of phase by 90º when the position graph is a sine wave. You can get them in time and you can get them in phase, but not both at the same time... I think you might be able to get away with using a condenser mic though.. as condenser mics have a position characteristic as well, so that would result in a 0º or 180º phase relationship and now you are back on track.

 

[xTomx]

There's nothing really wrong with it (other than you can't get the clearest picture of if the tone is any good til they're aligned).

But the beauty of DAW's is you can just put the mics where they sound best and not have to worry about phase until later on. Beforehand you had to adjust the mics to where the phase matched (e.g having to put a ribbon closer to the grill than a dynamic because of the varying transient reponse).

 

[JeffTD]

For guitar I tend to leave it alone unless it sounds like garbage, but for drums and bass it's important to move everything in line.

You're definitely killing the 'bigness' of your drum tracks by phase aligning the tracks, if that's what you're doing. The sound hits different microphones at different times naturally - that's the whole point of using multiple mics and room mics in general.

 

[vespiz]

^ +1

 

[amarshism]

Phase aligning left and right to eachother can be beneficial however eg. ohs and st rooms

 

[amarshism]

You can also try putting a sample delay on one mic when multi micing guitars and play around with that to see how it alters the sound.

 

[LeSedna]

Ill add that aligning the phase is not directly equivalent to setting the first attack to he same point of time.

So I just thought about something :

With room tracks which are naturally "late" you can experiment by moving them so that the attack of the snare gets in phase (at least with the fundamentals and the waves you can recognize) with the direct snare track.

I mean, if its late by 2.2 times the lengths of the biggest waves you can recognize in the snare track, you move it forward to be at 2 times the wave length. So you keep the bigness of the information for your brain that is the natural delay of a room track, and you make the snare/Tom/whatever information in this room track in phase with the direct track.

Is there improvement possible this way or is the big mess of information that is a far/room track insensible to phase aligning ?

I've always thought aligning waves perfectly to each other for guitar editing super important because one can hear the difference that is slip editing a part without caring, and slip editing so that the second waves merges with the end of the first one to make the transition impossible to notice.

 

[Zozobra]

Ill add that aligning the phase is not directly equivalent to setting the first attack to he same point of time.

So I just thought about something :

With room tracks which are naturally "late" you can experiment by moving them so that the attack of the snare gets in phase (at least with the fundamentals and the waves you can recognize) with the direct snare track.

I mean, if its late by 2.2 times the lengths of the biggest waves you can recognize in the snare track, you move it forward to be at 2 times the wave length. So you keep the bigness of the information for your brain that is the natural delay of a room track, and you make the snare/Tom/whatever information in this room track in phase with the direct track.

Is there improvement possible this way or is the big mess of information that is a far/room track insensible to phase aligning ?

I've always thought aligning waves perfectly to each other for guitar editing super important because one can hear the difference that is slip editing a part without caring, and slip editing so that the second waves merges with the end of the first one to make the transition impossible to notice.

Yup. This is what I do. Move tracks around so theres still a time differential, as there should be, but waveforms are in phase.

When I feel the need to/feel like it that is. Seems to be the best of both worlds.

It can have trade offs though. There could well have been phase cancellations in higher ranges that were actually doing the sound good. Extremely easy to destroy those moving tracks round even a tiny amount.

Phase differential as intentional EQ is often really, really cool. I'll sometimes move one guitar mic around tiny amounts, not enough to affect low end, to try and smooth out high end. Its a kind of EQ I dont find you can get with an actual EQ.

As I understand it, this is not novel, and lots of big-boys do it at the micing stage. A part of Hetfields sound/s, for example, is mics placed so there are intentional buildups and cancellations between them.

Either way, I'm not maniacal personally about maintaining phase coherence. Some phase differentials can be a really useful tool, if youre careful. Its not something to always be afraid of.

 

[if6was9]

I used to do this but now I just get everything sounding as good as possible on the way in. I find phase aligning the tracks changes the sound so much from the original sound I had monitoring on the way in thats it's no longer the sound I want. For example, with bass I find there's too much low end when I "correct" them and it gets muddier in the mix.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I never mess with phase beyond flipping the polarity on the way in (if it sounds better).

 

[Finsmi]

Yeah, definitely. Since you are just thinking about this (you don't have an actual problem which needs to be solved) If you worry about that out-of-phase mic giving awesome sound, why don't you leave it and move the other mic around?
This shit is typical when you just throw a mic or two in front of a cab, and mix and match afterwards, which is not what you should be after IMO. Use your ears, match two mics, print them together (don't leave it for mix time), in other words - just commit. If you keep that choice for latter, you find yourself forever dwelling on nudging waveform around, and their overall level.

There is this little trick where you use one mic, sweep it around in order to find as good as possible tone, then get another mic, flip phase on it, and just try to get the sum of both mics to sound as fizzy as possible (while monitor in real time through good isolated cans), and then just flip the phase back on that 2nd mic.

This!

 

[egan.]

You're definitely killing the 'bigness' of your drum tracks by phase aligning the tracks, if that's what you're doing. The sound hits different microphones at different times naturally - that's the whole point of using multiple mics and room mics in general.

Also, if you are using actual tracks with bleed you are causing as many problems as you solve. For guitar it makes a lot more sense than for drums.