to invert OH mic Phase pre or post recording?

stateofflux

hi im just going to record a track with band...recording snare with 2 mics top and bottom & 2 condensor mics(NOT A MATCHING PAIR) L+R for Oheads.

my roland 24 track has a phasing switch on input channel & on track mixing channels....is it necessary to invert one mic phasing WHILE recording...or can any phasing issues be reversed @ mixing stage?

any advice would be great

PMI

Need to look at it in the front end, reverse the bottom snare as the wind/sound is moving away from the top mic and entering the bottom one

as for overheads, there are some good you tube vids of how to align which might make it easier than me typing on here

stateofflux

ok thanks for the advice...so are you saying if forget to invert phase on a pair of mics during recording...if a phasing issue occurs it cannot be reversed @ mixing stage?

pardon my lack of studio savvy

studiorat

They can be reversed at any stage, I often end up reversing them during the mix as the sounds change.

As long as it's not during the recording you'll be grand.

madtheory

+1 After getting basic level and pan the next thing I'd check is polarity of individual mics against the overheads. Just flip each one and go with whatever sounds best (assuming you have accurate monitoring). It's OK to leave it til the mix. I would be inclined to leave the polarity of overheads untouched, unless there was a wiring fault. For example, if one of the overheads had pin 2 wired cold, the drums would sound like they were moving around your head.

PMI wrote: »

Need to look at it in the front end, reverse the bottom snare as the wind/sound is moving away from the top mic and entering the bottom one

Not necessarily. It's not a sine wave, it's a snare. It has harmonics that can have phase differences. The overhead mics will have a lot of snare in them, those mics are further away so there's a delay compared to the close mics. Polarity reversal can't touch that. What you're trying to do is get contructive interference from 3 mics. Easiest thing is to just use your ears, as long as you listen to your mic positions during tracking it will work. Sometimes the combined snare sound is better with the polarity of the top mic reversed.

Incidentally this whole time alignment thing seems silly to me. The picture the DAW gives you is not the whole story. How do you think people managed in the days of tape?

PaulBrewer

I'd suggest checking phase going in and make adjustments then, to get the kit to sound as good as you can.
Then any other processing is in relation to the 'best' combination of raw tracks.

If you can see the waveform I always try and have the OH's first movement a positive one, i.e. above the line, and refer all else to them.

However I've no real science behind that except the idea that maximum impact will be when all instruments are 'pushing' a speaker on a given note (as opposed to some pushing and some pulling)


Also check Phase again AFTER processing - i.e. after you add any eq or compression - they can change the instruments phase relationship to the mix.

Neil, who's Cenzo Townshend's engineer mentioned that one to me - I'd never heard it before til he mentioned it, but it does make sense, especially with EQ.

Good Luck !

Robin Ball

you should deff. do it before as you'll be sure that you are getting the best sound possible... if it isn't working then you can move the mics there and then rather than being stuck with some funny stuff later.

Always track the best possible sound, that's my motto anyway!

pistonsvox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPxxzswyoVg

This video helped alot with polarity setup!