Phase in Drum Tracks

Gtoboy said:
^^^1
To my ears flipping the polarity is all about the bottom, whereas phase issues I hear as flanging or hollowness in the mids usually. Two separate issues much of the time
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Often the case, sure. When I say two separate issues, I mean the principle behind each is totally different.
One's a mathematical inversion and the other is a time delay.
 
I know arguing terminology is fun, and, he probably didn't say it correctly in the videos, but his point was, I think, that what is often called phase, particularly in plugins, is actually polarity, which is just what the link shows. They are, of course, not the same thing, but phase is what the button says in my DAW!

It does seem like monitoring in mono and flipping polarity is a pretty quick, painless, and not uncommon check for drums.

Maybe a letter writing campaign to the plugin and DAW manufacturers that are abusing the phase term will get things set right...
 
keith.rogers said:
I know arguing terminology is fun, and, he probably didn't say it correctly in the videos, but his point was, I think, that what is often called phase, particularly in plugins, is actually polarity, which is just what the link shows. They are, of course, not the same thing, but phase is what the button says in my DAW!

It does seem like monitoring in mono and flipping polarity is a pretty quick, painless, and not uncommon check for drums.

Maybe a letter writing campaign to the plugin and DAW manufacturers that are abusing the phase term will get things set right...
Click to expand...
Nah. Nice thought (and I'm sympathetic), but if it were to happen it would have by now.
Also, 'Polarity' instead of the phase sign on 1/4 inch buttons..? :>)
 
keith.rogers said:
This link might have been in the earlier thread. (That ø symbol is actually what’s in my DAW.)
Phase vs Polarity explained | JustMastering.com

So, it is phase, but a specific, 180-degree-out, with no time shift kind.
Click to expand...

That's the thing; It's not.
Phase is a time relationship. Being picky, with anything more than a sine wave a frequency must be specified to talk about a phase relationship anyway.

Unfortunately the images on that site are made in such a way that the point is missed - All of the examples have each waveform starting at zero.
He does make the point well in text, but the images are misleading, I think.

If someone gave you a clip, cut short at the start and finish, of two sine waves, you won't be able to tell conclusively if they are out of phase or not, because you don't know where they started.
You might say it doesn't matter with a sine wave - It's the same thing - but what if that sine wave changed pitch in the next bar and all of a sudden you realised you were looking at two copies of the same wav exactly half a cycle out of time at the first frequency you saw?

With anything other than a generated wave, there's always a way to identify where you are, time wise.
Really uniform waves are probably the worst thing to use to demonstrate phase+polarity, and probably a big part of the reason the terms have become interchangeable.

It's picky in most conversations, sure, but it's important.
 
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i'm from old school that if drums are miked correctly with acoustic drums phase issues are not a problem. can't help with midi since i don't use it for drums.
 
For me it's not that phase is a problem, phase is a tool for getting a sound. Maybe I want the sound of slightly different arrival times, maybe I want the sound of time alignment. It just depends on the music, my mood at the time etc.
 
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