Thread: Live Studio Takes Time Alignment

interesting approach boulder, i would have most likely left the signals mono, and used artficial efx to create an image. good stuff

Originally Posted by kmetal

interesting approach boulder, i would have most likely left the signals mono, and used artficial efx to create an image. good stuff

Thanks. I won't necessarily leave them panned. I just did that to emphasize precedence. But it gives me more freedom to pan things and retain some mono compatibility. But you have to be careful. There's only so much you can do to address bleed with delay, and even when you can do something it doesn't mean it's better than leaving it alone.

Originally Posted by RemyRAD

In the end, I elected not to go with my time alignment mix. The natural cancellations and timing errors that occur in a real space brings through a more organic and natural sounding recording. But where I think time alignment can play a big factor is when tweaking individual instruments and/or vocalists. With some rock 'n roll that I recorded of local bands, every now and then you get a drummer that likes to rush the beat. I'll stick on a couple milliseconds of delay when I play back the snare drum. I don't change the overheads. Nothing else. Makes it sound like a brand-new song. I stuck 36 ms of delay on a lead pop vocalist. Made all the difference in the world. I like to play with timing in many different ways. Playing phase tricks with both microphone technique and the combination of numerous tracks is playing with time.

You're traveling through another dimension. A dimension of mind. A dimension of time. The signpost up ahead?! Guitar Center?
Mx. Remy Ann David

Excellent post.

I think what the OP means is getting everything "in phase" ( or as close as possible) at the start of a mix.

We used to spend at least 30 minutes or so on the old 636, adding channels one at a time, bringing them up to unity gain and flipping the phase buttons and listening for the strongest low end response. I think it made an enormous difference.

It's to bad not all DAWs have a phase flip function on channel strips instead of thinking the same thing can be achived by sliding a track forward or back. Especially with the Alesis ADATs it was so cool to get everything in phase first and then start slipping tracks to get a "to the bottom" effect.

Thanks Kurt. Yes, I'm sure that's what he was talking about. However phase does change with frequency and just like you indicated, great minds think alike. "Go for the low" has always been in the forefront of my thought process since the get go, you know, Rollo? I've always done exactly what you indicated as a normal course. Getting the bass frequencies to line up is the most important aspect of our timing procedures. I always listen for extreme low-frequency your high frequency cancellation wins simply checking for Mono playback consistency and of course phase problems. And if one only concentrates on the higher frequency content phase, low frequencies can end up canceling. This is actually not too terribly different from when I used to adjust the azimuth on analog tape recorders. Many an inexperienced tape recorder tweaker have made that error when they simply found the peak at 10 kHz, when checking azimuth. Everything else would be wrong LOL. Other folks like myself also utilized other than separate frequency, continuous sinewave calibration tapes, I also utilized pink noise & fast sweep along with my oscilloscope(s). Generally, I employ many of these same concepts in my overall engineering of music... because timing is everything. From soup to nuts lots of nuts, we're all nuts LOL.

The phase flip has always been an integral capability of Sony Vegas software. Whereas with other programs such as Adobe Audition, the phase flip has to be performed as a software function rather than just a click in Vegas channel strip window. Hey, all the controls available to me on the dashboard are different in each one of my vehicles. Software isn't any different. The GUI is the dashboard. And it's customizable in each one of our custom cars. Do you prefer Scully or Ampex? 3M or Studer? Which one of those recorders just looked right? You always knew when you were in a professional studio when all of the adjustment covers were off all the time. This was necessary back in the day of analog, especially when large scale, large budget productions frequently had various parts recorded in various different studios. We always included a set of recorded multiple sine wave tones as if we were creating our own calibration test tape. This would ensure consistency between different studios as each machine would be aligned to the tones on the master multi-track tape before each session. And when we all talk about the way particular microphones, preamps and other signal processing sounds, I could talk about the difference of when you would adjust for peak or over bias on the tape you were recording on. About as big a difference as tubes and transistors, condensers and ribbons, Chevy and Ford. And if you wanted the least amount of bias rocks, of the low-frequency content, you would tweak bias for least modulation noise, at 10 Hz with headphones. Now, now, everybody knows you can't hear 10 Hz. The tape recorder can't even playback 10 Hz. It can hardly record 10 Hz. Trick is, you're not listening for 10 Hz. And if you don't know what modulation noise sounds like, you haven't been listening LOL.


You scream, I scream... we all scream, to live stream.
Mx. Remy Ann David

What I've been doing in my spare time:

cassette.jpg

That jeweler's screwdriver is a critical part of getting the most out of the recordings.

I'm using a lower end Nakamichi deck, from the 1980s, having been utilized as a high-end duplication deck with something like more than 10/20,000 hours on it. I liked my good Technics, Tascam, Sony decks. But I was always amazed with whatever Nakamichi did that made their decks sound more like my professional reel to reel machines did than any other. But you use what you've got. And it's all good. It's a professional quality and engineered by a professional. Who could want anything more? Perfection? What perfection?

I am perfectly humbled
Mx. Remy Ann David

Here's a good trick for getting a great drum track. After recording double all your drumtracks. ie :2 kick track. 2 snares etc.
With the first set, use Drumagog drum replacement with decent samples. Then you just add in your original drum tracks to taste. Usually for me. the overheads are key. Sometimes just the samples and your original overheads will do the trick. It all depends on the sound your going for.

I use a 5pc Pearl Maple Custom drum set so I haven't used samples for a while. The Pearl Maple already has a great sound to it.

Originally Posted by havana

Here's a good trick for getting a great drum track. After recording double all your drumtracks. ie :2 kick track. 2 snares etc.
With the first set, use Drumagog drum replacement with decent samples. Then you just add in your original drum tracks to taste. Usually for me. the overheads are key. Sometimes just the samples and your original overheads will do the trick. It all depends on the sound your going for.

Or you could just record it right the first time.

Seriously, I am sure one of the reasons the quality of recorded music is declining is because someone told us that all this equipment and plug ins and processing / auto tune / time correction / drum sound replacment, makes an improvement to the audio. It's NOT TRUE! Nothing and I mean NOTHING can actually improve an audio signal. Every time you process a signal it is degraded in some fashion. All you have done is modify it.