Are my Ears in Phase?

[AudioWarehouse]

Greetings from Ireland, Brothers ....

How do you measure and adjust time-delay compensation/phase, specifically regarding Drum Micing?

1. Do you make the Snare the 'Phase Centre' or the Kick.

2. Do you do all the tracks?

3. Is "In phase" anything that isn't "Out of Phase" i.e. no negative at all swing on the phase metre .

4. What tools/plugins do you use?

I'd be interested in technical answers as opposed to "Hey man I use my ears'. That's no use to me as I don't have your ears!!

Thanks to all who take the trouble to reply.

[deve]

I listen to the low end. I pick the polarity with more bass. Trying to get a perfectly constructive phase relationship from two mics that are not the same distance from the source is not realistic in my opinion. Some people try to get close to that with nudging the waveforms in their DAW's. I am not a big fan of that either. It sometimes works, sometimes fails. Still, it doesn't hurt to give it a try if you are after that.
I said this before, Sound takes it's time to travel, who am I to **** with that?

[AudioWarehouse]

Originally Posted by deve

I listen to the low end. I pick the polarity with more bass. Trying to get a perfectly constructive phase relationship from two mics that are not the same distance from the source is not realistic in my opinion. Some people try to get close to that with nudging the waveforms in their DAW's. I am not a big fan of that either. It sometimes works, sometimes fails. Still, it doesn't hurt to give it a try if you are after that.
I said this before, Sound takes it's time to travel, who am I to **** with that?

Cheers Deve, I've been experimenting with the DAW method with pretty good results, however it is quite time consuming!

[Ryan Earnhardt]

One thing I do is measure the distance from the snare to both of the overheads. you want the two distances to be equal, that way the snare is perfectly centered between the two. Now your snare will be in phase, and all other mics should be facing down and phasing shouldn't be an issue if your using dynamic for close micing. If you point a mic on the bottom of the snare point up, then you will need to flip the phase on it. Otherwise you'll loose all the meat of the snare. Mix the overheads first, then add the close mics to taste to help fill in the meat of the toms and snare, kick.

[joeq]

Originally Posted by AudioWarehouse

Greetings from Ireland, Brothers ....

Are my Ears in Phase?

I dunno. Post a clip from your ears so we can tell.

How do you measure and adjust time-delay compensation/phase, specifically regarding Drum Micing?

Pro Tools has no phase-reverse in the mixer. In PT I put a trim plug (or one band EQ or similar 'small' plug in" and use the phase reversal ø button on the plug-in.

I use the overheads as my reference usually, bring up the close mics and flip them to hear if they sound better. Usually this is clear from listening to the bass component of the sound, which will get bigger or punchier one side or the other. You may also hear an increase in volume in phase, or notice a hollow sound out of phase. It should only take a minute.

sometimes the difference is big, sometimes it is subtle. As others have said, perfect phase relationships are a chimera. You may simply notice a slight improvement one way or another. On some rare occasions I have experienced a phase "puzzle" where an improvement here makes something worse somewhere else.

sometimes for the song, I may actually prefer the 'wrong' side because different bass frequencies are canceled with different phase relationships. Sorry to say that it really is 'use your ears' but only in the sense that you have to listen for which one sounds better - which should be within everyone's grasp.

I don't even own a meter for phase.


you might be interested in the IBP which allows you to tune the phase, not simply flip it.

If no mics need to be reversed, which happens, I take all the trim plugs off.