Kinda new here… Played around with the left and right phase buttons in the eq panel on the mixer. I used it as an effect on a vocal part in a song. Made it really step out of them mix… However, we noticed in playback on a home stereo that the vocal part went away almost completely!!
I don’t claim to have a complete understanding of what this does… but I’m afraid to experiment with it now.
If you flip the phase of one channel of a monotrack, you’re making it so the left and right sides cancel each other out, so your result on the home stereo was what we’d expect to hear. The earlier result, where it seemed to stand out in the mix more, is a little puzzling but may have been caused by a number of things such as your soundcard slightly delaying one side of the stereo mix, or if you’re using a “stereo enhancement” feature in the soundcard’s controls, maybe you were mixing in headphones.
Hi Karl,
… makes sense.
It was a stereo (in one track) vocal piece recorded using a mixing board to a USB Tascam US122 interface. Didn’t need to be stereo… but I was left and right out of the mixer into the Tascam.
I will avoid doing this… I just found it weird that what I hear in playback on my nearfield monitors wasn’t what I was getting on other equipment… still a bit puzzled.
Yeah, it’s weird, but even the acoustics of the room or your position in relation to the speakers can play tricks when you’re playing with phase. Perhaps something was screwy with the home stereo you used. Chalk it up as an example of why you should always listen to your mixes on more than one system.
The most common use of the phase switch is to correct the thin sound you sometimes get when adding a distant mic to a close mic signal of the same sound source, such as adding the room mics to a drum track.
Thanks for the time here. Just finishing our third album… this one done in our own studio… did the $6,000+ studio thing last time… and of course had great results… time was the enemy and unfortunately some things that should have been fixed… became permanately imulsed.
this time spent money on gear so we won’t have to do that again. It’s sounding great and being able to take our time has made it great AND fun. Learned alot… mostly from forums such as this one.
Using a FirePod, outboard processors, compression, and N… Most of the money is tied up in mics ands plugins that we will be able to use for years to come… What fun!
Thanks again to the whole group.
www.logoseye.com
www.myspace.com/logoseye
Don’t play with “phase” unless you understand what you are doing. It’s not an effect (although it can have some interesting affects) or even a tool like EQ. Think of it more as a “setting” rather than something to be routinely played with. (Caveat: There is an effect called phasing/phaser that makes use of the principle of phase shifting but that is not what we are talking about here).
If I had more time I’d tell you why but I don’t (may have later), but in the meantime a physics primer on waves should tell you all you want to know. You are experiencing the additive affect of two waves out of phase - which is why the vocal disapeared.
X
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The easiest analogy I know of for someone to see and hear is to change the phasing on the speakers by switching the wires to just one of them, then listen to the difference. Then switch the wiring back. Do this a few times. (Can’t do it easily with powered or computer speakers - home stereo usually works fine - BUT flipping the phase button for one side of a mono track played as stereo does the same thing when just that track is playing).
Put your head right in the middle and listen. At first it’s not so obvious what’s wrong, but something doesn’t sound right. It will sort of pull your head apart - flip it back and the sound is in the center. After a few listens “what it sounds like” becomes more an more obvious – your ears and brain are learning.
After a while it’s not too hard to just hear it on most systems. (MANY home stereos are wired wrong and the owner have no clue.)
By the way, it IS an effect used in some recordings when the recording has 3D surround sound encoded into the stereo (this is not 5.1 encoding, bot something like QS or SQ Surround). The end result can cause individual sounds to sound like they are coming from somewhere outside the normal stereo spread or from behind/above, or far far left of right, when using only two speakers a few feet apart or headphones. These recordings are not mono compatible. The effect is used only on specific instruments as a general rule. Those instruments will all but disappear completely when listening in mono.
Hi Gents:
The other day I had a clever reply going to this thread but i lost my Dial-up/Server and the reply and I got ticked-off and just shut it all down…
the idea I have is… to build a Phasing Plug… that is … if I knew anything about software coding… and be able to apply it to a Plugin…
Maybe, this is already a plug… but if it isn’t the concept would be something like the microphone electronics I was developing 10 years ago…
Remove/Take Away the mic cartridge elements and this is what the signal flow-path of the plug-in would look like…
I have photos to post … but for now a text of the flow path looks like…
The signal into the plug is divided into two paths… One path goes into an amp that carries the signal… “IN-PHASE”… The other path goes into an amp that carries the signal 180 Deg. Out-of-Phase…
The two signals are then combined “Into/Through” a Balance control that is continuously adjustable from 100%… IN-Phase to 100% or 180 deg. Out-of-Phase…
The math should be already written into a Plug-in code… But I don’t think it has (concept) been written into a PLUG…
With a bit of organization it could be written into a Mono-or-Stereo plug… But Say… if you want your track to be say less then 180 deg. out of phase, it can be adjusted to whatever phase you want to adjust it too…
PHASE just doesn’t happen at the elemental frequency… IT happens at all the Harmonics of the Root Hz… and interacts with all the other track’s harmonics… depending on the level of the mix… Well…
Is there a plug-in out there that already contains that concept?
I could see that this idea could be applied to the “Track Strips” on n-Track… I could use it, if it was…
Bill…
woxner’s plug idea would be great. I’ve never seen a plug in variable phase device. Little Labs makes a hardware one:
http://www.littlelabs.com/ibp.html
Not cheap, but cool stuff…
Phasing is used in helicopter headsets. There is a mic near the pilots mouth, and another mic away from his mouth. The mouth mic picks up the helicopter noise and his voice. The other mic only picks up the noise. It is out of phase with the mouth mic so the helicopter noise suffers from cancelation and allows the voice to come through clearer.
And of course the famous “airplane” sound caused by shifting phase was used a lot in songs from the 70s and 80s. There was a effx box called a phase shifter that everybody wanted.
Dave T2
| Quote (davet2 @ Nov. 06 2006,10:41) |
| Phasing is used in helicopter headsets. There is a mic near the pilots mouth, and another mic away from his mouth. The mouth mic picks up the helicopter noise and his voice. The other mic only picks up the noise. It is out of phase with the mouth mic so the helicopter noise suffers from cancelation and allows the voice to come through clearer. |
Motorcycle helmet intercoms as well ...
| Quote (Wihan Stemmet @ Nov. 07 2006,13:16) | ||
Motorcycle helmet intercoms as well … |
And balanced cables (sorta)…
As long as we’re on the subject of “phasing”… I have only a slight understanding of “out of phase” and “in phase” signals, how they got that way and the end results. Is there a way one would accidently get tracks that are out of phase? Is it a result of panning? How do I know if tracks are out of phase or just too low in volume?
My setup is all ‘direct-in’ through a Peavey 8 channel mixer…no amps or any other hardware.
This is probably worse than asking ‘how do you make MIDI’. 
Maybe someone can just direct me to the layman’s splanation…
thanx
cliff
If you have two mics looking at the same source, but at different distances (such that it captures the same wave on a ‘up’ in the one mic and a ‘down’ on the other one), you can end up with phasing issues. On drums it is easier to get, as there are lots of mics at different distances from everything else …
or… a two mics with one cabled round the “wrong” way…
or…
Hi g8torcliff and Guys:
This topic could expand into quite a discussion…
phoo eluded to a pair of speakers being “Wired” Out-of-Phase… When you hear a pair of speakers that are out-of-phase you know something’s not right. “No Bottom End”… That’s what I hear…
When you Track and you hear the various tracks on your timeline, every track you hear in your mix has a “Phase” relationship to each-other… Some tracks … to a point that you may not hear the track very well, without some EQ’ing or level adjustment, of some kind…
At that point, some tracks are purposely put Out-of-phase to recover something that is missing altogether… That would mean placing the track 180 deg. “Out-of-Phase” in the electrical sense… “Phasing” in the acoustical sense, is another topic but is the same meaning…
Learjeff, could put that into some “Text” rendering, I know… And make perfect “American”… out of it… That is… if he decides to reply to this thread…
Two tracks repro’ing two different instruments and “In Phase” will eventually be “Out-of-Phase” at some harmonic frequencies… That could be good… but could very well be bad depending upon the other tracks that are placed in the mix…
That’s why I replied to this topic earlier, suggesting a “Variable Phase” Plugin would be a usable effect to have and use when mixing on a DAW… and In-the-Box… In-My-Opinion… That is…
Along with “Time-Align’ing” tracks and a “Variable Phase” plug-in that could become a valuable set of tools when mixing in the digital domain…
Bill…