Is it possible, or does it needs reinventing of physics? Support me by becoming a Patron: / whiteseastudio Check the studio here: whiteseastudio.com Follow me on Twitter @whiteseastudio
Hey man, you make great vids but you didn’t use the plugin right, you have to align all the other mics to one reference track, like an over head or hi hat/ride mic. I have used this plugin a lot and it definitely works. Thanks man.
Hi, I hope you're doing great. Your video appeared as suggested viewing. Thank you for taking your time to upload the video and do some tests. Indeed it's a good way to learn and share opinions on the matter. However, I'm afraid that as you may have noticed from previous comments, the plug in wasn't set up correctly. To minimise any phase issues, since eliminating them a 100% it's impossible to so many variables such as the mics placement and frequency response, you need to use your ears and one of the mics as a reference. For instance the top snare mic versus the other microphones it's a good reference as there is snare bleed on basically all the microphones. Align the kick drum snare bleed with the snare top mic and check which sounds better. You'll notice that sometimes a kick might sound great on its own but once you start balancing it with the snare, it might lose a bit of low end or other information. After you find out if the kick and the snare sounds better with the kick delayed, then you raise the other close mics and repeat the process. Your ears will be the judge. Sometimes delaying the overhead a bit more might sound fuller, or not, as well as the room mics. Reversing polarity can be considered the first line of defence against phase issues, yet it might not work against more complex signals as we know that the phase is not a simply matter of flipping polarity to 0º to 180º, You need to experiment and yet again, let your ears be the judge of what sounds good. Cheers for taking your time to upload these videos. All the best.
I have used this plugin extensively. I do a lot of live capture recording and I find that it's quite effective for clean up of the stage leakage problems. The results are similar to using one microphone to record the band while having properly placed accent microphones on the instruments. Typically both live and in the studio, I use the overhead as my reference. For that overhead I typically use a M/S microphone, I doubt that split overheads would give the proper phase reference. Also, back in the 70's and 80's we did worry about phase relationships in multi-mic setups like drums and sometimes spent hours adjusting mics to get the phase relationships correct by ear. And no, you couldn't "correct" bad phase relationships on tape, it's only now in DAWs that we can adjust those relationships so it's an issue. The more mics, the more complicated the phase relationships of the overall sound, which is why there is logic to a 3 mic drum setup such as the Earthworks system. Very often live, I use a modified 4 point micing technique, kick, snr and M/S overhead. Not for everyone, but it works well for me.
Coming from a background in film, I learned that picking up sound from a LAV mic and a Boom mic should have a ratio so that there isn't phase cancellation. I believe the ratio is 3:1. So if the lav is 2 feet away from the source, the boom should be 6 feet, although I don't see how that would work with drums. You can't put the overheard a foot and a half away from the kit if the snare mic is, say six inches from the snare.
On your kick alignment problem, it's simple. You leave the kick alone and high pass the snare/overhead higher than the fundamental note of the kick. Sure you lose phase coherency when you use a filter, but, it'll fix the phase on the input sources which is usually a much more noticeable effect.
The plugin works best as some have said if you align to one of the overhead mics. But also the problems it could introduce based on your argument could be easily taken care of by gating your kick and snare so that only when they are hit the sound will time align with the always open overheads. True this will change the overall sound of the recording but that’s what some people prefer. I also think the plugin is meant to be used as a “fix” for a badly recorded drum set. Usually flipping the phase and listening can eliminate most problems. Anyway, decent argument but not entirely accurate.
So would you say that the teeny tiny delay between say the snare mic and the overhead is beneficial to the overall drum sound? Would you say that still holds up if I want to do a little bit of quantizing? I bet you already have a great in depth video on this but it might take me a good while to find lol
I don't think you used the plugin correctly. You must set one element of the (drum set) to be the main timing element on say send 1, Then set all the other tracks to receive on 1. Go through the detection process on "all" the tracks and that's it they all align to the sending track. Usually the kick or overhead closest to the snare. I've had some great results with it.
Yep! Lots of people want to do this manually, dunno, "value added services". I'd rather let the plugin do the tedious work then focus on creative additions of my own.
yes. he is using it wrong. the correct form would be: snare send 1 ... over head L receive 1 / send 2 ... over head R receive 2 ...... and now everything else aligned to the over head L (receive 2) . the purpose of this is to align everything to the over heads
Isn't the problem that even when you would use it the right way - according to you - that a perfect phase isn't always the result that you want? All the small differences in phase, isn't that something that makes the sound that you want to get, when positioning the mikes for the drumkit? And when aligning the phase of all mikes, you get a sound that is not the same as the sound that you decided that you liked. Just imagine using this plugin on a stereo phaser effect sound for your guitar, that would undo the effect, less or more..... Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I think that is happening on the physics part of the sound (and then translated back into sound language, lol)
Would you reckon that a drumkit is one the harder instruments to record? It seems quite complicated to get it right. I have tried to record my drumkit in my room with single microphone (a blue yeti) put on the floor and set to stereo mode (it has a switch with four different modes). I know it sounds crude but what would be the best way to record it on the most low-tech way possible and still get a usuable result? Also the room has a concrete floor and walls to compicate matters.
I recorded a live band, both with multitrack recording in the mixer on stage and ambience mics, about 10 meters from FoH (outdoors) using a Zoom H5. What should I align the zoom recording to? I can see matching waveforms and nudging it just 0.1 ms changes the hollowness/phase. I tried by trial and error until it sounded good but still sounds weird, phasing issues.
you said you gained the kickdrummike.. meaning you boosted the bleed of the snare through the kick mike(not advisable), meaning more phase cancellation when there is any.. and i don't think that the plugin was designed for phase aligning the bleeds. it's probably quite usefull when using it to phase correct sources you DO want to use in the production, like for instance on a kickdrum with a mike to the mallet, the head and a recordingspeaker.. i bet you can sync up these sources very rapidly using this plugin.. just my two cents..
I'd really like to see a snake oil on the SoundRadix Pi. Maybe it could be demystified, because my current understanding of it is that it's trying to be a summing mixer, while still summing through the DAWs track summing afterwards, but also rotating the phase of individual tracks to each other in real time. Seems like a lot could go wrong. Maybe I'm missing something. Would love to get the White Sea Studio perspective on it though.
Its not a myth, it can be very handy to align different mics within the drum park. We’re mainly selling the snare so I move everything a bit to support the snare, and also of course looking that the kick is in phase aswell. Theres a compromise but its well worth it unless you want a hollow thin drum sound.
I love your videos and I nearly always refer to them when I'm thinking about a new plugin. But I think you got this one wrong. As several people pointed out, the plugin is meant to be used in a different way from how you did it, and it makes a huge difference. I used to always align drums by ear/eye and got an improvement over the non-aligned result, but I've found that this plugin can get an even better result than manual. And it's much faster. My drum mics stay where they are, so I can use the same correction every time. It really sounds better!
One time I aligned the 2 overheads with the snare and kept working with the song I was mixing . After a minute or two I couldn't stand the boring sound of the kit . I had spent a bit of time making the kit sound pretty good while tracking and attack point alignment was a fucking stupid idea . White Sea Studio , keep up the entertainment / education vids , you rock ..... subscribed
You can have multiple mics at multiple distances record a specific single source (snare). Then you can absolutely phase align all of these mics to that one source of sound (snare) however, isn't it impossible for that alignment to work on other sources at different distances recorded from the same mics? When you do it manually its about compromise right? What parts do you want in phase.....don't think we can have it all....yet.
Matt O, to my mind, the only way that would be possible to align 3 or more mics would be to gate the shit out of everything - so there’s no bleed or so that you can align say some of the snare bleed in the kick mic with the snare in the snare mic - and then have some sort of variable time alignment (or chop the regions up and align them by hand, so basically a sampled kit) but as soon as you have overlapping sustains you’d be back to square one. If that makes any sense?
Hey Wyste, I love your videos but and I know this is very old but you aren't using the plugin properly. I use this tool every day and it just makes things better! I believe if you would have used the tool properly you would have had a different opinion.
this is an obvious example of why you can't really review a product without knowing anything about it. you didn't even have a track sending signal. you had no idea what you were doing, failed to use the plugin correctly, called it snake oil, and then collected money for it.
A very interesting video. It would be interesting to see you interact with/try out the Waves InPhase-plugin (if you haven't already). It's the same concept, but more in-depth and you have to do the phase-adjustment manually. + You can phase invert set frequencies! :D
Possibly.. You're the expert! But would it still be the same thing if you did it manually? Wouldn't it be possible to adjust the close snare to the snare-hit in the overhead and then the close kick to the kick-hit in the overhead? With InPhase you can also choose where to put the sound-wave, so if one spot doesn't match/sound good you can move it even further back or forward. It pretty much work as aligning it manually in the DAW, but just a bit easier I think.. The plugin also shows how much of the signal is in phase. Just speculating, not questioning. Again, you're the expert here, not me. :)
+Cornelis Fordell purely from a theoretical physics standpoint it is not possible to allign everything 😉 but I will try the InPhase someday. Theory and practise doesn't always line up
I see. You're the expert here ;) Yeah, that would be awesome! :D Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! I like your videos and I'm looking forward to your next! :)
I honestly wonder if anyone ever gave a shit to phase align in the golden age of music with tape machines and analog gear. Seems like we only care so much for it because we are able to visualize our waveforms.
They could move microphones and use a console phase scope. Steve Albini used to time delay room mics in the analog domain. Wave form aligning is a bad idea compared to moving a microphone in real space. However it is a godsend for mix engineers like myself when you get a badly recorded drum kit to mix...
Good Point. Obviously one of the first things that one notices clearly, is the sound of cancel and boost when layering and nudging stuff... Even different instruments, say kick and bass, sound stronger/weaker depending on the phase alignment... right?. To reduce that static or cancel effect with the alignment, try some pitch mod with a noise shape lfo at a high freq, on some of the sources, , or pitch them down a semitone or so. It will make the phase shift and move constantly!! This instead of aligning the close mics can make a subtle but awesome flanger/phasor effect. Perfect for that "popping out the speaker" chorus or buildup.
Hey! This video was more to highlight the issue that to really dive into all the plugins.. It was a bit to simple to do a snake-oil episode of this one
I use Melda production and I align my drums to the left overhead. It works great for me also. They have dials if you need to tweak. Once in a while I will run again if I don't like the results. You can also just try flipping the polarity against the overheads and see if that is better. I don't know it works pretty great for me! $50 I believe. Another great plugin that sounds better than some expensive verbs is Vahalla vintage. I love that verb $50
You have to set a main sound (usually the Overheads) as the send 1 and then set all the other sounds to receive 1 and hit the detection button on all the tracks individually.
Understood... The point I'm trying to make is that the individual channels still won't be able to line up. they will only align to 1 thing (in this case the overheads) and disalign to the rest...
...But the overheads carry all of the information of the kit so wouldn't having everything align to the overheads be the optimal source to align them all to? And of course, since it is a plugin nothing states that you can't-do alignment of other sounds beforehand if you so desire.
Watching this one back; Indeed their new PI plugin is way better and solves these issues. The rocket science comment is indeed a bit harsh :D It's a Dutch thing :P
You haven't done it right sir. I have passed a lot of time experimenting with auto-align and i can say it's a pretty terrific plugin if you use it right. 1st: You have to do the alignment by hand inside the daw and phase flip if it's needed so auto-align doesn't have to search weird stuff. 2nd: Do a simple mix (just faders) between the tracks 3rd: Think a lot the methodology, which track should be as a reference etc. Disable the phase flip from auto-align. Apply the auto-align at the post fader and do experiments with before and after. To see which one fits best. It can be a super useful plugin for multimic recordings, if you use it right. I never use it for projects that everything is recorded separetly. I record and mix only acoustic music. jazz, world music bands or classical stuff a lot. All musicians play together, with great mics and nice space. Since i have started to use auto-align my mixing became super easy after. I nearly forgot the eq and compression and let the band play. Most of the problems are phase alignment between many mics and people try to solve them with eq. If you ever have doubts i can send you samples to check it out. You're gonna be blown away. P.S.: By the way, I'm paid or working for sound radix! Just a guy like you
you're setting the idea for the plugin up wrongly and hence the issues you are having. I use it and never suffer from thinner results they always sound better, and it creates some fantastic results, it saves me a ton of time at the mixing stage as well.
Great video. I was thinking the same thing. That it’s really not that time consuming to align and check phase manually. I’d never pay a single dime for an auto align plug. Let alone $149!!
