anyone have any ideas on this?

no, I don't see this as normal

In my other pre's I get the same charactistics.

seems even stranger

sorry no ideas at all ... :(

There isn't any difference in sound on any of my mic pres when I change polarity. (as long as I only use one mic) I just checked to make sure.

I just had a thought.

this phase switch test ?

The mic is in a different room far enough away as to not be able to hear the original sound and the source is not just your voice but another voice or guitar etc ..
and you can hear a difference as you flick the switch ... in real time.

is this what we are talking about ?

im using a Neumann 103 through a trident s20 with headphones....i wonder if my monitors were on whaile i was doing this...good possibility...ill have to go back to the studio and do a retest , make sure my monitors were not on. yeah it was blowing my mind, there was an obivous difference in the bass response even with a 57. huh thad be funny if thats the case...kick myself in the ass if so hahaha

perfectwave wrote: im using a Neumann 103 through a trident s20 with headphones.

headphones good
not perfect but good

...i wonder if my monitors were on ...

oops ... if the source is your voice then I think you need the monitors off.

.. yeah it was blowing my mind, there was an obivous difference in the bass response ....

yes please do the test again and don't use your voice but something like the fridge or the heater fan. Run a long lead to another room and get set up in front of your speaker ...
AND
be careful of feedback as you can still get into trouble as you will be tempted to run a great deal of gain so as to hear inside the fan.
Double check with headphones.

please do some sort of test just to settle in your own mind what is going on

...kick myself in the ass if so hahaha

yeah funny
don't worry about it
you may have helped someone else learn something
even so we aren't sure yet that we have found the problem

if you have an open mind, then there is never a silly question

let us know how you go !!! ... 8-) 8-)

A 180 degree flip of the phase should not sound any different on a single source, in mono. There should be a difference if you are combining multiple mics on a single pass, especially if you're monitoring in mono.

First, just to be sure, make sure that all the cables from your mic to the pre amp, from the pre to the recorder are all wired and working correctly.

Then check the line level cables to your monitor amp and the speaker cables from it to the monitor speakers to be sure they are wired for correct polarity and that alll conductors (particularly if they're balanced line level) are connected.

This sounds to me like a monitoring issue.

The difference is simply due to the fact that you're creating the sound and wearing the headphones ..... consequently there is phase cancellation going on between the headphones and the your voice through the skull.
If you get someone else to talk into the mics or use a totally external source .... like a fan or whatever .... and remove any possibility of the original leaking into your phones ,,.... that phase switch should not sound sonically different in any position.

Actually if you record yourself as it is , with it sounding different as you change the switch and talk ,, it should sound ok on playback.
The cancellation only happens when you wear the phones and do it live.

Sebatron wrote: The difference is simply due to the fact that you're creating the sound and wearing the headphones ..... consequently there is phase cancellation going on between the headphones and the your voice through the skull.
If you get someone else to talk into the mics or use a totally external source .... like a fan or whatever .... and remove any possibility of the original leaking into your phones ,,.... that phase switch should not sound sonically different in any position.

wow never thought about that ...makes sense though...so the lesson from this is if im tracking a vocalist with one microphone, the phase switch can affect the response of his voice in his headphones but only the headphones , not to tape, possibly causing a problem with how he "feels" his voice? interesting ill have to keep an eye on this one.

Bingo, real nice trick to remember, although to be honest, most people will hear it the same way you do, but it's always worth a flip if the cue mix just isn't cutting it.

The phase switch will affect the sound monitored live in headphones because the sound is either in phase or out of phase on your eardrums. If you record both and play it back they will probably sound exactly the same in the headphones on playback. I have a thread in this forum about AKG 240 headphones being out of absolute phase from the factory. AKG in Germany confirmed it. The do it for "historical" reasons.
The cause of the problem is that when you sing your eardrum resonates with your voice from the inside of your head and if your headphone absolute phase is reversed (flipping the mono input phase) it will start to cancel on the eardrum itself. This is volume dependant. I rewired all my AKG headphones to fix this (flipped both speaker leads) but you always have to check. To check, output a recorded 1K tone from your recorder out to the headphones which has one earpiece cupped over the mic and record the tone, it should be the same phase as the original, i.e. the initial wave form should look the same as the first. I own a Central station and the cue output is out of phase with the input...nice.......so you always have to check.
Another way to check is to record yourself and then quickly play it back thru the headphones, If the sound changes radically, flip the phase and try it again. The "right" phase will be the one that doesn't change.
I first noticed this when a singer was complaining that the headphones sounded crappy, and he was right.

sorry guys

I was trying to be gentle as I had just been accused on another forum of being arrogant and patronising
so I thought I would get into this answer a little more gentle.

The difference is simply due to the fact that you're creating the sound and wearing the headphones ..... consequently there is phase cancellation going on between the headphones and the your voice through the skull.

thanks Seb
for going more direct than I was prepared to go.

Thanks Kev , it's great to see you around here....

... and Dan . K . too ! ....

Legends everywhere. 8-)