Kurt, can you help me?

[white swan]

Sorry to be annoying, but...

There was this thread where we were discussing the phase issue on the back side of figure-eight patterned mics.

You said you were moving it to Alan's forum, but now I can't find it anywhere. Maybe I'm blind!

 

[Kurt Foster]

I haven't moved it yet. I have been asking around about this and the consensus so far is that you are correct mon frer'...It still seems wacky to me but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. Kurt

 

[tmix]

If you are referring to the thread about singing on the back side of a fig 8 mic, I'd like to follow as well. If not just ignore me. But I have found that when I was having people sing around a fig 8 or omni set up when you got around one side either the voice went away in the headphones or changed drastically in sound (again in the persons own ears and headphones).
I thought at first there was something wrong with my mics but I realized after experimenting that it was a phase issue. When I snapped my fingers at different positions around the mics it sounded fine, when I sang and moved around the capsule, it definitely changed dependant on what side I was on.

Forgive my ramblings.

 

[Alécio Costa - Brazil]

wow! for omni it is really strange. If it were in cardioid or hyper, of course it should reject...
I have never seen this trouble with my At4050´s when recording multiple voices at the same time in omni .

 

[white swan]

I'm not sure about omni, Alecio. But my experience exactly duplicates Tom's when trying to use two singers on opposite sides of a figure-eight patterned mic.

 

[Kurt Foster]

Davedog and I talked about this the other day and he pointed out that somthing creates the nulls in a fig 8 pattern. We came to the conclusion that there must be some phase cancellation causing this but it probably isn't 180 shift as this would result in nothing being reproduced. It is most likely somthing more like 90 degrees out or somthing like that. I feel kinda stupid not knowing the answer to this question. Good subject, kudos to White Swan for bringing this up initially ...

 

[white swan]

Thanks Kurt!

I'm just guessing here, as I don't really know what really goes on under the hood of these things. (I know how to plug them in, and sometimes even where to put them, but that's about it.)

But wouldn't it make sense that if you sing on the back side of the mic, the initial wave pressure would make the diaphragm move in the exact opposite direction than if you sang from the front? Or is that just way too simple to have anything to do with reality?

But aren't a lot of you guys close friends with Brent, Stephen, Klaus, or some other gen-u-wine mic designer? Can't we just ask someone who knows rather than guess?

 

[RecorderMan]

Originally posted by white swan:
But wouldn't it make sense that if you sing on the back side of the mic, the initial wave pressure would make the diaphragm move in the exact opposite direction than if you sang from the front? Or is that just way too simple to have anything to do with reality?

1.Lots of people many times are working with mics/pres/etc that are absolutley out ofphase and do not enev know it...whatr with the pin3/pin2 paradox (i.e. until recently they're wasn't an agreed upon standard).
2. Polarity and how it interacts with the cue mix and our own voice through bone conduction is one reason to perposefully switch absolute polarity to the cues if the singer has trouble hearing themelves.
3. The human voice creates asymetrical waveforms...more energy on one side than the other.
4. You can hear a differrence eben soloing a vocal track and flipping polarity.

You serve phase until you master it.