Time Alignment test here

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

OK I'll bite.

I recon the drum room isnt that big or there aren't any ambient mic's to make it a PROFOUND difference.

IMHO the kick & snare are perhaps a little tighter.

My engineer Tom prefered the snare sound on the aligned version but likes the hihat sound better on the untouched version! (& hes a drummer)

Whenever I've aligned drums recorded at my studio the difference I far more obvious (better) than evident here... However! My room is awaiting acoustic treatment and realy needs any help it can get whereas YOUR room sounds pretty damned great as it is if I may say so!

Thanks VERY much for posting this interesting 'ear test' I look forward to coments from others!

[imacgreg]

On my Paradigms here at home I hear a couple different things different in the time aligned tracks:

-the snare is tighter
-the kick is maybe a little tighter
-the toms sound much better imo, they have some real oomph behind them.

That said, the differences in the cymbals seemed like they were much less pronounced than the differences in the drum sound. It IS an mp3 so what the hell.

I think Jules is right when he brings up the point about it making a bigger difference with some room mic going on. These are the same things I notice when I time align my own drum tracks. When I'm using room mics, the biggest change is punch in the kick. Pretty cool side by side comparison...


Ian

The room mics are about -7db down from the kick and snare which are at unity. They are a stereo pair of C3000's are 9 feet out from the kick and level with the toms. Ohs are about -9 db down from the kick and snare. The Ohs are 7 feet up from the floor (actually its a drum riser) and are a stereo pair of Rode NT5's.

Its funny but the biggest differences I hear are

1. less boominess in the kick and the whole set.

2. Much improved imaging on the Ohs and HH (less smear)

3. More body and tone to the snare.

So I think so far we have a concensus on the snare. I am suprised about the cymbals and the kick opinions though. That was the most obvious to me.

Thanks for the compliment on the room Jules. It is only 24X18 and 10 feet high. It is pretty well controlled and I have very few nodes despite my dimensions and a square room! I use a variety of materials on the walls and break up the plane with various objects.

pat
mms

[DrFrankencopter]

One problem with the notion of time alignment with regard to drums is that the drums themselves are not a point source instrument. The various drums are all spaced different amounts from each other, and as you tweak with the the track offsets to align say the snare to the overheads you have now introduced a different amount of delay from the bleed in the other mics.

Say for example your overheads are 5 feet above your snare, and your snare is 1.5 feet above your kick, and your toms are 4 feet from your overheads. Aligning everything so that all the snare hits line up exactly means that you push the OH's forward by 5 ms (speed of sound is approx 1 foot/milisecond). Now, the snare hit from the snare close mic and the overheads line up perfectly. The toms will need to be moved by 1 ms because they are closer to the overheads than the snare...and here's where the trouble begins. You have a choice...you can reference the toms to the tom sound in the overhead, or you can align the snare bleed in the tom mics to the snare sound in the overhead. So, in order to align the close mic'd toms with the now moved overheads you would delay them by 1 ms to line up with the tom sound in the OH's. But, the rack tom mics are about 1 foot from the snare mic, so to align the snare bleed they actually need to come closer to the snare by 1 ms...this is the dilemna. As soon as you start messing with the time alignment of the individual drums you are playing with comb filters based on the arrangement of the drums themselves. You will never be able to perfectly time align...

So, what I do is this....if I want to tighten the snare I'll align the OH's to it; alteratively if I want to tighten the kick, I'll align to it. I will only align the room mic tracks initially...(line em up to the snare), and then I insert a delay on the room stereo pair and play with the value until it sounds best. It's like a pre-delay control on your room reverb, and works great. Put a compressor on the room mic tracks to play with your RT60 time, and you're set!

Cheers,

Kris