phase

I posted recently about a job coming up where I was going to use a condenser mid mic, and a ribbon side mic, and useful piece of information emerged. There was some evidence that as ribbons use a different operational mode there would be a 45 degree phase shift, and this could wreck M/S recordings which use combining channels to produce the stereo channel that can then be adjusted in width after the recording - a useful technique.

Are there phase issues when tracking acoustic direct in and mic at same time?

Polarity and Phase are 2 things that anyone who does music production needs to master.
Even if you only have a home studio, as soon as you start to use more than one microphone to record or if you are doing a lot of overdubs with the same instrument and mic.

Knowing what phase and polarity is will help to avoid mistakes that can diminish the sound quality of your music.

Also many engineer use the term phase to designate polarity. This mistake can lead to misunderstanding when discussing audio with other engineers.

Let me know what you think ! ;)

Hi,

I lurked on this site a lot some years ago, and may never have posted. Posting now, though, made me think of the joke about the parents who were worried because their 5 year old boy never spoke. Then one day at breakfast, he said, "The toast is burned." The parents were thrilled, but then asked why he'd not spoken all this time. He said, "Up until now, everything's been OK."

So for years now, at least since DAWs have given us the ability to move audio files around by infinitesimal amounts within a time line, I've both read and talked to other engineers about time aligning the overhead drum mics to the Snare and Kick...
I know there's also software available that can apparently time align those mics/tracks, although I've never used it.