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Hello all,

A while back I'd asked a question on how to record vocals using monitors instead of cans, and have the bleed from the monitors be as quiet as possible.

One of the answers I received told me to do this:

-make a pass, recording the bed tracks you're going to follow
-make a 2nd pass, recording the bed tracks along with the vocal you're adding
(make sure you don't move the mic in any way between them)
-flip the phase on the first track and, in theory, if mixed together, that track should disappear because the phase on it will cancel, leaving just the vocal track audible.

It sounded like a good theory, so I tried it, and it didn't work at all. Even after I flipped the phase there was simply a second set of bed tracks there, which, instead of cancelling the same in the vocal track, just made things worse as I brought up the level of it.

Did I miss something major in the program? I definitely made no adjustments whatsoever between recordings, except that in the first pass I wasn't in the room. Could my body have made that much difference to the Wavesbouncing around the room that it killed the effect?

Hmmm...

If it matters: Cubase SL3 running through a Delta 1010 with 6 MS of latency. As far as I understand, Cubase automatically backs up tracks to compensate for the latency. It certainly should have backed both tracks up equally, I would think anyway.

Thanks for any ideas
Keith

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RemyRAD Tue, 07/25/2006 - 01:45

I have frequently done what I and others have described to do. Let's see if we can find where your error occurred?

1) mix your cue tracks as you will be using them and playing them back for you are singers through the studio speakers.

2) feed that mix to your studio monitors as nearly as loud as you like.

3) set up the microphones for your singers and assign those microphones to individual tracks.

4) without moving any of the speakers, microphones or other equipment, merely remove the singers from the room making sure not to move or touch any of the microphones!

5) you will now do another pass of the same music cue feed, through the studio loudspeakers. Making sure that all of the original singer microphones are still in the exact same place and are assigned to the same number of record tracks.

6) you will now take the first single vocal track and combine that with the first single vocal track microphone track, without the singer, flipping the phase of only 1 of the 2 tracks. You should find that the recorded cue speakers, will virtually cancel out. (small adjustments of your fader might be necessary to achieve the best null)

7) now repeat that same process for each individual singers microphone tracks.

8) if you had 4 separate vocal microphone tracks, you will also have 4 separate nonvocal microphone tracks and once you transfer them so as to create the phase cancellation, you'll have an additional 4 vocal tracks, now without the studio speaker sound.

9) It's important that you process each track individually, adjusting any volume necessary for as complete a cancellation as possible for each track. After you have done that you should end up with numerous clean vocal tracks without the background studio speaker feeds. Since those tracks are now clean, you should be able to mix them back into your overall mix without the background Studios speaker feed ever being heard.

The process will not work if you are mixing all of the vocal tracks together while trying to mix that with the single studio speaker feed as the phase shifts between the microphones will not be able to cancel out the speaker feed in the background as a whole. That is why it all must be done one for one. So I think you have attempted to do it as a whole? In another reason why it is so important to leave the vocal microphones in the same place as when you recorded the vocal. No phase shifts can be tolerated other than the ones that we are trying to manipulate.

I think you'll have no problems making the music go away now? Don't go away mad. Just go away, please.
Ms. Remy Ann David the real Ms. Phases Shift

took-the-red-pill Tue, 07/25/2006 - 20:02

Hmmm, I haven't been asked to go away in quite a while. :shock:

The method all checks out, in theory anyway.

Incidentally, to listen, I soloed the vocal track(I was only doing one) and the phase reversed track to hear their results only in relation to each other, and the results were terrible, so I must have done something wrong.

I'll go back and try it again.

Thanks
Keith