Superior Drummer and Inverting Phase

andrushkiwt

Well-known member
On my current project, I have a bit of the ambient Mid mic in the drum mix (Superior Drummer). I have it compressed pretty hard, about 6-7db GR, but it is rather low in the mix. When I mute it, it's sort of obvious that something is missing that was there before.

Now, there is an"invert phase" button on each channel. When soloed, I guess you can't hear the difference between phases since there's nothing to compare it to. But when I bring in the snare bus, solo it with the ambient mid mic, then switch on/off invert phase on the ambient channel, there is something happening there.

I think it sounds better with the phase inverted - it seems the snare is louder, more centered, and less spaced out. Does that sound about right? I didn't think SD had phase inversion, but I guess I've been overlooking that button. Would there be something "wrong" about inverting the phase on that ambient channel? I mean, if it sounds better then good... but I didn't think phase would come into play in a sampled drum program.

thoughts?

[MENTION=43272]Steenamaroo[/MENTION]; [MENTION=103008]bouldersoundguy[/MENTION]; [MENTION=28025]Farview[/MENTION]; [MENTION=112380]jimmys69[/MENTION]
 
I would think the only thing it could be interacting with is another at the freq/phase. Try delaying the hit just a tad to see if it cleans it up.

I think with just about anything when you shift the phase it has some sort of change. At least when I play with inverting, I can always hear a difference.
 
With phase just use whichever one sounds best. Usually one will sound thicker and beefier and one will sound thin. Waves makes the "in phase" plugin where you might be able to render the drums to audio and then align the signals perfectly, but that sounds like a major headache for limited reward. Sampled drums probably will still have phase issues since there are overheads and multiple mics hitting sources at different times. Just use the best sound, IMO.
 
If the button is on/off then it's polarity; Not phase.

With polarity, assuming all the hardware was wired the same way, all you have to be concerned about is where the microphone is in relation to the source.
Not distance; Direction.

If your overheads point towards the floor and you have a snare top+snare bottom mic, you most likely want the snare bottom mic to have opposite polarity to all the others.
That way the recorded waveforms all push together, and they all pull together.

If you have two mics on the front of an open cabinet and one mic on the back, you'll want to flip polarity of the one on the back (or the two on the front).
Again, all the recorded waveforms push/pull together.

Now, if you have overheads pointing down and a kick drum mic pointing through the drum from the front, that's neither in nor out. It's 90 degrees out from the overheads.
So what do you do? Flip-Listen-Flip-Listen.

The combination might have more attack one way and more beef the other. All you can do is pick your preference.

A room mic is probably the same deal. It's likely to be far away and off axis from all other mics, except maybe the kick mic, that it's not going to be as simple as close mics on either side of a drum, so pick the one that sounds pretty. :)

Compensating for distance/time aligning/phase is a whole different headache.
 
Well, the button says, specifically, "invert phase". And yeah, it's on or off.

Screenshot (7).png

There's a subtle difference when changed. I'm also looking for the same deal with the OH mics...which sounds better and whatnot. Again though, with a vst program like SD, you would think everything is optimized at default. And since it's the same sound for everyone at launch of the program, whichever is meant to be would be.
 
It's a big unknown, unless it's documented somewhere, that can cause a lot of problems.
Arguably a snare top and snare bottom, for example, should either be tracked with opposite polarity, or load in your software with the polarity invert button already clicked for one of them.

It's not like it's some small fussy detail that only sticklers care about. It's often the difference between sounding like ass and sounding like a drum.

I mean, load up a kit with top+bottom snare mics then solo both of them and toggle polarity on one a few times. The difference should be night and day.

If there's any rule with polarity it's probably to assume nothing.
It's not even safe to assume that two microphones, or cables, from the same manufacturer will be wired the same way around. :eek:
 
I may have missed something - but does this sampler have two separate tracks for the two skins of the snare head, that can be blended, or is the three tracks top, bottom left and bottom right an adjustable blend. The sound you describe is very much what happens when you hit the polarity button. Don't worry about using the word phase - some VERY famous mixer brands have used this term incorrectly for years, and it's only in this modern age that people are getting pedantic. This button has NEVER changed the phase, and always changed the polarity and we've just got very comfy using the wrong term. The symbol on these mixers has always been the line through a circle - the phi symbol, which of course is totally wrong too!


Personally speaking - I often find I can do things with eq that are more adjustable than the frequency filtering that happens with a polarity inversion. I rarely use double snare miking in the studio or live. Others swear by it.
 
Yes, there are 3 snare mics for this particular "kit". Top, bottom, and comp. Different recording sessions (expansions) have different setups for mic'ing, but this particular kit (Rock Warehouse) comes with 3 snare mics.

I'll give it a shot as far as trying the phase (um, polarity) button on the top/bottom snares. If it's night/day difference, well, then that's a lot different than the same button on the ambient mics. There's only a small difference there.
 
I'll give it a shot as far as trying the phase (um, polarity) button on the top/bottom snares. If it's night/day difference, well, then that's a lot different than the same button on the ambient mics. There's only a small difference there.

It may be pedantry but in a conversation about polarity, or phase, particularly when advice is being sought, it's a pretty important distinction to make.
People will go on talking about flipping phase and that's cool; We know what they mean, unless they don't! :p

The difference is less pronounced with your room mic because what it hears is very different to any close mic.

The closer you get to all else being equal, the more cancellation there's going to be.
So it's a big deal that should jump out at you with top+bottom mics, but not such a big deal or so obvious with, say, kick + room mic.

If you picture a drum skin in slo-mo it goes up and down, up and down.
A microphone element follows that movement, with a push resulting in positive signal, and a pull resulting in negative.

A top and bottom mic will be pushing+pulling together and 1+ -1 = 0.

In the real world there's never 100% cancellation because the mics can't be 100% identical and occupy the same space, but it can get pretty close!
The more things change, (distance, axis, mic type etc) the less cancellation there is.
 
There is no right and wrong with that switch. Which ever way it sits in the mix best, is the way to have it.

Unless something is 180 degrees out of phase, all you will be doing is playing with the natural comb filtering between the mics. One position will probably sound better in the mix. Use that.

He is correct, you are switching the polarity, but a lot of things are mislabeled 'phase'.

Phase is a function of time, polarity is a function of direction. It just so happens that flipping the polarity will cancel anything 180 degrees out of phase. That's where the confusion comes in.
 
It'm not sure it's ever occurred to me to mess with polarity in SD/EZD. Like, I might flip the kick or even the whole kit to see if helps against everything else (especially the bass), but I just never thought "Maybe this would sound better if I flip the room or overheads." Course, I tend to lean pretty heavily on the room mics to begin with...

It has actually always been a problem for me that those kits are so different in their micing and especially that room mic. When I'm trying to build a kit from pieces of different expansions, and every room mic sounds completely different. Grrr...

Also, I sometimes wish they'd give us an impulse response of those room mics so we could put the whole band in there with them. I've done some things using the kit samples themselves with...interesting results. The initial whack of snare is very close to an impulse, but the decay portion is band limited and worse more or less "in tune" and really just lasts too long. A kick hit tends to be too bassy for what should be ovious reasons.
 
It has actually always been a problem for me that those kits are so different in their micing and especially that room mic. When I'm trying to build a kit from pieces of different expansions, and every room mic sounds completely different. Grrr...

Exactly. If there's a cymbal or two that sound great, and I want to throw them in a certain kit, it doesn't always work so well. The cymbals are the toughest part to mix, in my opinion, within the SD library.
 
It has actually always been a problem for me that those kits are so different in their micing and especially that room mic. When I'm trying to build a kit from pieces of different expansions, and every room mic sounds completely different. Grrr...

I simply avoid using the "expanded" room mics that come with the kits, and I add my room ambience downstream, in the DAW, after I have my drum kit assembled and other tracks recorded. At most...I might on some stuff use one of the basic room/amb mic channels in SD...but it's rare, and I don't even install any of the expanded ambience samples you get with the SD packs, I only install the "Basic" samples...so there are only maybe 1-2 room/amb channels included, and most of the time, I mute them and only the OH channels provide some room. I'll also remove a lot of the Bleed stuff.

It's really not a question of any poor sample recording or programming on the part of Toontrack...the different sample packs were all done in different studios with different mics, etc. That IS the beauty of SD...that you have some many different flavors, plus you can also combine elements from one sample pack with those of another, and build your own custom kit. I'll go through a bunch of sample packs when building a custom kit, because of the more obvious differences between some sample packs...but usually I can find what I want from the library I've accumulated. If you're just picking from 2-3 packs, then it's not as easy to find stuff that blends together.

I just find that adding the room/ambience later on, when I have the rest of my recorded tracks, a much better option than doing it up-front when I'm still in SD, and just focusing on the drum kit. Plus, I always record the SD stuff as pure audio tracks once I've gotten my basic kit set up...so if I were to add a bunch of room/ambience mics...I would be kinda stuck with that sound. It's just much easier to do it later with the whole mix as a reference, and there are other tools to tweak the drums outside of SD...so it's just a better option for me.
 
I generally just don't care for close mic sounds, and adding reverb to a mix of close mics is not at all the same thing as micing the drums from across the room.
 
I generally just don't care for close mic sounds, and adding reverb to a mix of close mics is not at all the same thing as micing the drums from across the room.

For my purpose, the OH mics provide enough of the room sound...after that, the additional ambience is tailored to the kind of "space" "I'm trying to create in the mix.

Often the included distant ambience samples simply don't fit the mix, IMO (mainly why I stopped loading them from the sample packs)... and there is a disconnect between the distant drum room sound and the ambience added to the other tracks...but, it's a per-mix thing.
I'm mainly talking about Rock/Pop kind of mixes, and I generally prefer a tighter drum sound...and if/when I ever need more deeper/distant ambience, it's not going to be all that obvious if added during the mix.
Maybe for Post Rock and real ambient, open mixes with lots of air between notes and beats...the differences might be evident...plus, I think it also depends on what kind of reverbs are being used, both in type and overall quality.
 
but I didn't think phase would come into play in a sampled drum program.

thoughts?

I never thought it would either but, in SD2 with the Avatar kit, many of the snare, kick and floor tom mics are out of phase with the overheads just as they might be when recording a real drum kit. What amazed me was that none of the presets had the polarities flipped on these channels.
 
I never thought it would either but, in SD2 with the Avatar kit, many of the snare, kick and floor tom mics are out of phase with the overheads just as they might be when recording a real drum kit. What amazed me was that none of the presets had the polarities flipped on these channels.

That's the kit I use most of the time, but with Rock Warehouse pieces added in.
 
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