I have recently been toying with the idea of time aligning my drum tracks so last night I did a test. I took a 1 minute drum section (compressed and EQd - no verb) and bounced it down with no time alignment and with time alignment. The results I think will speak for themselves.
The time aligned track was aligned in this manner...
The OHs, toms and stereo room mics were aligned to the snare. Everything else (Kick, HH, snare down) checked out OK when checked against the snare. So all tracks were aligned to the snare. The room mics were 9ms off and the Ohs were 5ms off. The toms were 1ms off.
Normally I would simply flip the phase on the Ohs and the Room mics and that is how the non time aligned tracks are done. Once I time aligned the track the invert phase was removed from the OHs and Room mics.
Let me know what you think. The first track is not time aligned followed by a 4 second pause and then the time aligned track
http://www.modernmusicstudios.com/music/Test.mp3
pat
mms