Mike Rivers
November 11th 03, 09:10 PM
In article > writes:
> Here's one situation I came across.
> A drum kit was recorded to 8 tracks of ProTools.
> The snare mic was simultaneously recorded to a DAT recorder via its analog
> input which was wired reversed polarity.
> The snare DAT was sent to an outside house for processing.
> The processed snare is returned on a DAT.
> No polarity error was added in the processing.
> The processed snare track is transferred back to the full kit ProTools
> session via AES.
> The snare track is out of phase.
So? That's why it's easy to invert it and make it right again.
The $64 question is - did it sound wrong (remember, it was "processed
outside" so you would expect it to sound different from the original)
or did someone just notice that it looked wrong?
In the case of a drum kit with multiple mics, it's important to
preserve polarity (and get it right in the first place) because you
don't have complete isolation between the mics and you'll be mixing
the snare on the snare track with the snare on the overhead track, and
maybe on the tom and kick track too. When the mics are mixed, if
something is inverted, it will be pretty easy to hear (but also easy
to correct). But if you listened to the snare track by itself, as
Scott suggested, it might be difficult to identify which polarity was
correct. Sometimes inverting the polarity (intentionally making it
"wrong") sounds better.
Of course you carefully positioned the mics when you were tracking so
that things were as close in phase as possible didn't you?
--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo
> Here's one situation I came across.
> A drum kit was recorded to 8 tracks of ProTools.
> The snare mic was simultaneously recorded to a DAT recorder via its analog
> input which was wired reversed polarity.
> The snare DAT was sent to an outside house for processing.
> The processed snare is returned on a DAT.
> No polarity error was added in the processing.
> The processed snare track is transferred back to the full kit ProTools
> session via AES.
> The snare track is out of phase.
So? That's why it's easy to invert it and make it right again.
The $64 question is - did it sound wrong (remember, it was "processed
outside" so you would expect it to sound different from the original)
or did someone just notice that it looked wrong?
In the case of a drum kit with multiple mics, it's important to
preserve polarity (and get it right in the first place) because you
don't have complete isolation between the mics and you'll be mixing
the snare on the snare track with the snare on the overhead track, and
maybe on the tom and kick track too. When the mics are mixed, if
something is inverted, it will be pretty easy to hear (but also easy
to correct). But if you listened to the snare track by itself, as
Scott suggested, it might be difficult to identify which polarity was
correct. Sometimes inverting the polarity (intentionally making it
"wrong") sounds better.
Of course you carefully positioned the mics when you were tracking so
that things were as close in phase as possible didn't you?
--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo