MAutoAlign on Drums 

You're welcome! Happy to help.

@@GreenLightSound I'm 3 years late lol but I have one probably dumb question: what's the reasoning behind aligning the kick & snare tracks separately first, instead of just aligning all drum tracks at once?

Hi David, thanks for watching! The Spectral Phase Compensation is indeed causing the squeaks, as I've confirmed by using it in other mixes. I've since moved away from engaging it at all on drums.

@@GreenLightSound I've been a Melda user since 2011 and can 100% confirm that the spectral phase compensation is not beneficial for drums. I think we'd all appreciate it if the developers were able to shine some light on it's intended use!

Definitely.

I know, the distances make no sense. I usually just ignore them and check by ear.

CPU hit is negligible, especially because you won't need it on every element in the mix. You could render the tracks, but I prefer to leave them on as a reminder of the processing. You could also manually move the tracks to align them with the values given by the plugin.

At 12:37 you adjust the close mics group track, and then you get that squeek sound. But afterwards you adjust (click the analyze button) on the OHs channel. These are 2 different things, or am I going in the wrong direction?

And isn''t that "squeak" the kick drum pedal? Do you remember if it was that loud on the recording? I must say, as much as I love the idea of phase-alignment, these plugins can be, well, weird.

Possibly, and it's annoying. I still get this artifact whenever I use Spectral Phase Compensation, especially noticeable on transient-heavy sources like drums. I almost never engage it because of this.

Mostly because I want any individual kit elements that are multi-miced to be in phase with each other before I align them to anything else. Aligning everything at once will yield different results, especially in the low end, so this work flow has yielded the best results for me. I would be creating the bus channels for later processing anyway, so it's not really an extra step.

Green Light Sound Hmm okay.. Thank you for your reply. I only just downloaded the demo a few of days ago but have so far attained some really good results by just simply adding the plugin to each individual track and aligning them all that way. I'll experiment with the plugin tomorrow using your method to see what results are yielded and how it compares!

Interesting stuff. I'm just trying the demo on some multi-track live gig recordings. Good results just dropping the plugin on every track and running it, but I think I'll try out some different approaches having read this. It hadn't occured to me either to leave some tracks unaligned. Shall experiment with that.

Looks like a great workflow. Thanks for watching!

Sometimes I print them, sometimes I leave the plugins on. Depends on how many tracks there are in the mix. The plugin is not CPU intensive, so you won't run out of processing power if you leave them on projects with smaller track counts.

I don't really find it easier - it's just that Melda's Auto Align is much more affordable, particularly when it's on sale. The "Mix Better Now" workflow is a great one, but is only possible because Sound Radix's Auto Align handles routing internally (each instance of the plug can send and receive on different channels), so there's no need for creating busses to align groups. I assume the creation of busses are the "unecessary" steps you're referring to. I would eventually create kick, snare, and OH busses anyway in order to process each as a unified sound. Other than that, the workflow is very similar in that you align the overheads, top and bottom snare, and in and out kick to each other, then align those close mics to the OH. But whatever works for you is cool - it's all about a comfortable workflow! Thanks for watching!

@@GreenLightSound Have you tried simply running MAudioAlign a single time with all drum tracks engaged, rather than grouping and bussing?

Definitely align before any other processing. The phase issues created by processors later in the chain are minimal compared to the comb filtering of two mics that are out of phase. I usually leave the alignment plugins on the track just to remember they've been aligned, plus I can easily get back to the original tracks.

No need to nudge anything else. This fixes the phase problem for the tracks you need it to without changing the timing relationship of any other tracks.

Wouldn't call it a rip off. It's just their take on a useful tool.

Nope, no chorus on the voice.

He is naturally raspy

It is a drum kit recording in the video. No need to do this on a drum loop since it's usually just a single stereo file.

It's not really that complicated once you get used to it. Maybe 5 minutes of work, and certainly faster than aligning each waveform manually.