is there any way to mic a kick with 2 mics and have them "in" phase?

[ZEKE SAYER]

i've been looking into this mic placement. you put one mic on the inside, upclose to the beater, and then one outside the kick pointing at the hole. how can you do this without phase cannceling?


thanks,

zeke

[Gidge]

experiment and move them around.....

one way is to move them around until you find where they are MOST out of phase, and then pop the phase on one.......

[Track Rat]

Zeke, just because you use two mics doesn't mean you're going to have a phase problem. In the situation you described the two signals wouldn't be too far apart in phase. If you're working in a DAW you can look at the two wave forms and copare their phase. If you're not using a DAW you still have your ears. If there's a phase proble, you'll hear it. If when you have both mics solo'd it'll have weak bass or a strange hollow sound. When you mute one of the mics, the bass response will improve. Now if you're mic'ing a kick with a mic inside and one on the beater side there's a good chance you could run into a phase problem. You see, when the beater strikes the drum head, the initial pulse will cause a positive excursion on the inside mic and can cause a negative excursion on the outside mic by the beater. In a case like this the two signals when summed to mono would be 180 degrees out of phase. Again, use your ears if you don't have a DAW to see if you have a problem. You can either flip the phase of the offending mic, start moving the mic around or in a DAW, slide the track around to line the phases up.

[ZEKE SAYER]

yeah,

i'm using a daw. (fostex vf-16) but when i look at the wave form, what a'm i supposed to look for? and i don't have a pre-amp for my kick so i don't have anyway to switch the phase. i'm saving for one though. i think i will use it on other things besides the drums. do drums really did a pre?

[PapillonIrl]

You have to zoom RIGHT in on the two waveforms and see if the curves line up together, I'm not sure if you can do that on your machine.

pAp

[rocky outcrop]

move them and listen I have miced this way heaps and havnt had much trouble with phase.

[fenix]

Originally posted by ZEKE SAYER
yeah,

i'm using a daw. (fostex vf-16) but when i look at the wave form, what a'm i supposed to look for? and i don't have a pre-amp for my kick so i don't have anyway to switch the phase. i'm saving for one though. i think i will use it on other things besides the drums. do drums really did a pre?

you want to flip the phase of the mic that is on the beater.

Even though you do not have a preamp that will flip phase, you can still accomplish flipping the phase by taking a short mic cable, cut it open and reverse 2 of the wires (pins 1 and 2) and hook that mic cable up to the mic cable that has the mic that you want to phase flip.

[cordura21]

fenix is correct. And don't forget to mark it red, so you know that that cable flips polarity.

[ZEKE SAYER]

how can i "cut" the cable open without destroying it?

[ebeam]

Actually, fenix is not correct - but I think he just misread your question. If you have both mics on the same side of the back head (the one the beater hits) you don't need to invert the polarity. The only reason you'd want to do this is if you have one mic on either side of the head. Listen to Track Rat, experiment with sliding tracks around in your DAW (or put a delay on the close mic if you can't do this) and mic position until you get something that sounds right.

[Track Rat]

If you need to make a phase reversing cable, you just reverse the wires on pins 2 and 3 (1 is shield) on one end only. Be sure and mark this cable well so it isn't mixed with normal ones.