Crap 'phase' info in EQ mag Unbelievable.

[mixsit]

"To avoid phase issues, the first step is to record everything in phase."

"This occurs through proper mic placement and adhering to the 'Three to One Rule' : When using multiple mics.. blah blah blah..."

"This means that if one mic is three inches from a guitar cab, the second mic should be a least nine inches from that mic."

Jeff Anderson and is this Dr P. T. Cilham?

This is as it stands in the article. It's wrong on about nine different levels. It is not corrected later in the article.
Hello?

[boingoman]

Geez.

[noisewreck]

I've stopped reading US magazines altogether. The British mags are far ahead in being helpful, entertaining and informative. They bundle DVDs chuck full of goodies with each mag, audio and video tutorials. And even if they slip sometimes here and there, in general the quality of their advice is far superior than what you'd get from EQ, Electronic Musician and others. About the only US mag I read is MIX, and only because of Stephen St. Croix.

[pipelineaudio]

many of the bigger us mags, along with the recording schools, or should I say "together" with the recording schools are nothing more than ads, aimed at selling customers to marketers

I know thats the goal of any media, but usually its a little more balanced with the goal of informing

Don't worry, the british press will catch up soon

[SouthSIDE Glen]

It's a problem with having an editor who has no knowledge of the subject, or one that's forced to accept articles of dubious quality because they just aren't getting the submissions from people who actually know what they're talking about.

It's a bit of both, I think. There are very few good engineers left below the age of 60 these days, and if those old fogies are good writers they are already sitting back collecting royalites for their books or saving their material for a new book, and not interested in whoring for a little magazine.

G.

[mrface2112]

yeah, rolled my eyes when i read that in EQ as well.

but ya know, i don't read the mags for the "help". i read them for the interviews and gear reviews and nothing more. even those things you gotta take with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila.

that said, this is just another reason why everyone needs a subscription to Tape Op.


cheers,
wade

[gummblefish]

Only Mag i ever read is 'Sound On Sound' and thats mainly because of Paul White who's stuff i find entertaining. Theres also some other real good stuff in there as well. I read it on planes mostly. I find it puts me at more ease than "Plane Crash Monthly"

[ecktronic]

Originally Posted by noisewreck

I've stopped reading US magazines altogether. The British mags are far ahead in being helpful, entertaining and informative. They bundle DVDs chuck full of goodies with each mag, audio and video tutorials. And even if they slip sometimes here and there, in general the quality of their advice is far superior than what you'd get from EQ, Electronic Musician and others. About the only US mag I read is MIX, and only because of Stephen St. Croix.

Mon the SCots!! well Brits!

Eck

[89gtsleeper]

Originally Posted by mrface2112

yeah, rolled my eyes when i read that in EQ as well.

but ya know, i don't read the mags for the "help". i read them for the interviews and gear reviews and nothing more. even those things you gotta take with a grain of salt and a shot of tequila.

that said, this is just another reason why everyone needs a subscription to Tape Op.

Well said sir. I couldn't believe that article either, and as I was reading down this post I was about to mention tape op also, but you beat me to it. I think another part of their problem is sometimes they do know what they are talking about, but at the same time, they try to dumb things down for people so much that the advice they give no longer helps the majority of their readers.

[bkkornaker]

nawwwww.......i use 2 mics both up close to the grill......both are equal distance away from the grill.......i get no phase issues what so ever.............

[NYMorningstar]

I been reading the Electronic Musician and Recording magazines religiously for the last 3 years and I have to say I rarely come across misinformation aside from the normal hype of over rating certain equipment.

[cusebassman]

I actually like to hang between 20 and 30 mics all around the amp - front back, sides, top, bottom (did I mention the amp is suspended about 4 feet in the air???), at a couple different distances. No phasing issues there

To solve the problem, I mix on my surround system - 14.3 - yep, there are three independant subs on MY system

[XLR]

Originally Posted by mixsit

"This occurs through proper mic placement and adhering to the 'Three to One Rule' : When using multiple mics.. blah blah blah..."

"This means that if one mic is three inches from a guitar cab, the second mic should be a least nine inches from that mic."

That misinformation is common on a number of recording sites and forums. Pseudo-science is frustrating to see occur.

[The Axis]

Is it to avoid phase issues, or a delay issues ?

Since my ears are about 1 ft apart, I never listen to guitar cabinets at less than 3 feet away.

[superspit]

Originally Posted by The Axis

Is it to avoid phase issues, or a delay issues ?

Since my ears are about 1 ft apart, I never listen to guitar cabinets at less than 3 feet away.

hahaha.....faaarking beautiful!!!

[mattkw80]

Doh!

I just subscribed to EQ a few weeks ago.

Should have maybe subscribed to SOS instead.

Oh well.... so far, I've liked both.

[Reggie]

Originally Posted by The Axis

Is it to avoid phase issues, or a delay issues ?

Since my ears are about 1 ft apart, I never listen to guitar cabinets at less than 3 feet away.

As long as you don't sum your ears to mono, I guess you will be OK either way.


I don't really have much problem with the way he describes the magical "3 to 1 Rule" in the article. The thing that bothers me is when people think you have to put the second mic exactly 3 times as far away and then there will be no phase cancellation (instead of at least 3 times as far away, to help minimize some phase issues). Another thing that bothers me is when people think the 3to1 rule can never be broken. After all, sometimes you can use phase cancellations to your benefit...

[XLR]

The 3:1 rule applies to multiple sources, each with its own mic, that are going to be summed, with the purpose of minimizing phase cancellation caused by bleed. It's not about multiple mic's on a single source.

[Reggie]

Originally Posted by XLR

The 3:1 rule applies to multiple sources, each with its own mic, that are going to be summed, with the purpose of minimizing phase cancellation caused by bleed. It's not about multiple mic's on a single source.

Ah yes, how quickly I forget. In that case the article is quite stupid.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by XLR

The 3:1 rule applies to multiple sources, each with its own mic, that are going to be summed, with the purpose of minimizing phase cancellation caused by bleed. It's not about multiple mic's on a single source.

One niggling little qualification/correction to that:

Actually it is -- atomically speaking -- about multiple mics on a single source... in a sense -- because you're trying to minimize the phase-cancellation effects of combining the audio signal reaching those mics from a given source when they're summed.

But -- yes -- it's usually invoked when talking about drum mic set ups since that's the big bugaboo for most tyro engineers.

So, in that context, the 3-to-1 rule would suggest that the hi hat mic should be at least three times farther from the snare than the snare mic is -- to avoid phase cancellation/anomalies of the snare signal when those two mics are summed (with the others, of course) in your drum mix. And the snare mic three times farther from the hat than the hi hat mic.

And -- according to this rule of thumb -- the same 'rule' applies to each individual pair of proximate mics and their respective targets. So, if there's one mic per drum, and, say, two rack toms, you would want the right tom mic to be no more than 1/3 the distance from the right tom to the left tom mic -- so as to minimize cancellation effects of the right tom when the signals from those mics are summed in the mix -- but the inverse applies, as well: the left tom mic should be no further from its target than 1/3 the distance to the next closes mic (presumably the right tom mic).

But... you guys knew all that. I think my argument is more with the way XLR phrased it.


And -- of course -- going back to the original quote (and I have not read the article so I cannot comment on it) -- in the case of a multi-mic miking on a guitar cab you're probably going for effect, so you'll probably position your mics for the sound, regardless of phase issue rules-of-thumb.

[boingoman]

The key is "at least" 3:1. Lots of times you need much higher ratios to get usable tracks, because you will be micing sources with different volumes and using mics with different pickup patterns and frequency response. And of course, you can sometimes get away with less.

I'm glad somebody figured out the math, but cripes it's pretty common sense.

If you have too much bleed, move your shit farther apart, turn it down, or put your mics closer.

[theblue1]

Yah... it's just a rule of thumb... a starting place. A loose guide.

But it sure helped me out a lot when I first started doing kit set ups. I got so I could listen to the guy or gal's kit and usually get things pretty close the first time (since I usually worked without a second or at least a knowledgeable second, I liked cutting down on my trips from the CR to the floor)... That said, I also remember having a lot of snare/hat issues... that was my Achilles' heel.

[Anderton]

Regardless of the statement in question (and I've asked the author to respond), the thing that amazes me is that people somehow have the feeling that Printed Things should not be subject to the fact that humans make mistakes. Planes show up late, people go to jail for crimes they didn't commit, you misunderstand something your girlfriend said on the phone, the New York Times prints retractions, movies have continuity errors...but by golly, magazines -- which are put out on an excruciatingly tight schedule by a very limited number of underpaid people -- are supposed to be immune to human error, and if an author makes an error, the editors are supposed to always be able to catch that error.

Now think about an average issue of EQ. There are thousands of statements that could be factually inaccurate or accurate, from whether "DX-7" has a hyphen or not (it doesn't) to, say, elaborations on the 3:1 mic rule. There are also many more statements that might benefit from further explanation, although you have to draw the line somewhere ("A mic is a transducer that converts sound waves to electricity. A transducer is a device that converts one form of energy into another. Energy is neither created nor destroyed so some it may be lost as heat. Heat is caused by...") Sometimes errors of omission are treated as errors of commission. It's like the people who feel a feature that's missing in software is a "bug." It's not a bug, it's a missing feature.

So the magazine has maybe 3 -4 errors in an issue, and as a result someone proclaims on a forum (that has nothing to do with the magazine) how "That magazine is crap! The editor knows nothing! What morons!" (This, of course, is presumably from someone who has never made a mistake in his life and is therefore perfectly qualified to sit in judgement of all those who have strayed from perfection )

What this person apparently doesn't realize is that ALL publications make errors. Period. This is why they print corrections and letters to the editor. There is a mechanism to make sure that any inaccuracies are brought to the readers, and it mystifies me why people don't take advantage of that. The only rationale I can think of is that if magazines DIDN'T make mistakes from time to time, that would undermine someone's feeling of superiority, so in a way, they would prefer that "authoritative" sources be doubted in order to make themselves look better. Or something like that...I'm not a shrink!!

It's like that thread in Pro Sound Web that commented on my phrase-by-phrase normalization technique. The guy who talked about what a horrible article it was and how the technique would destroy dynamic range didn't know the meaning of the word "phrase" from a musical standpoint and didn't understand how normalization works. Then there were people who said normalization is a form of compression, which of course it isn't, and that you should never normalize to 0, which is true some of the time but not all of the time; it depends to a large part on the audio engine the software uses. None of them ever wrote to the magazine or mentioned anything in EQ's forums, which would have been the appropriate venue to correct an "error"...assuming of course that someone's motivation is to help the world understand technology better, not self-aggrandizement.

No one ever did show an error in the article, either, other than repeating things like "You shouldn't normalize! Normalizing is bad!" The only substantive correction was someone pointing out that you shouldn't normalize to 0 (which I never said you should do anyway) if you're going to be using additional DSP and if you're using Pro Tools, because the plug-ins go out through a 24-bit bus. To me, though, that doesn't negate the article: It adds additional useful information for those who use Pro Tools. And it showed someone was more into advancing the state of the art and HELPING OTHERS than stroking his own ego.

It's so easy to criticize, but apparently, it's far more difficult to do so constructively. Please, WE WANT EQ TO BE ACCURATE. If you find an error, or can contribute additional information, send it to us so we can either 1) print a correction, 2) clarify something that's not necessarily wrong but unclear, and/or 3) have a reason to chain the author to a steel cage and let loose an army of hungry rats.

We don't claim to be perfect, but welcome any assistance from people who are -- or even from people who aren't perfect, but knowledgeable about a specific subject

[NYMorningstar]

I have to agree with you Anderton. In fact the letter to the editors and the corrections to past article sections sometimes are the best read.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Right on, Craig! You give it to us (including me) because we probably deserve it!

I do have to ask, while I have the opportunity, though, on just how the author of that article could make such a crass and rookie mistake to begin with as the one he made about the distance from the amplifier being anything related at all to the 3:1 rule?

It's one thing to understand the human error in it getting past overworked editor. it's another thing to try and understand how that got in there to begin with.

I know you can't answer for the author, and that the onus for that error is more on the author than it is on you. And I, for one, apologize to you for everything I said earlier about editors. But you gotta admit that the error on the part of the author is pretty blatent.

G.