Am I being phased?

[Bulls Hit]

When you copy and paste a track of say, drums and they don't quite line up, you can clearly hear the phase effect of the interference between the 2 waveforms.

I was reading about compression techniques and it mentioned that phase issues can occur using outboard digital compression on an aux bus (I guess the same would apply for any outboard digital effects) due to the amount of time required for the ad/da converters to do their thing. My question is would this slight delay be audible?

I record my own drums with 3 mics, and I don't seem to have any phase issues, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm just not hearing it properly and this sort of phasing sounds different to 'copy & paste' phasing which is so obvious.

The drums all seem to record OK, but am I maybe being robbed of sound without knowing it?

 

[mixsit]

"I record my own drums with 3 mics, and I don't seem to have any phase issues, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm just not hearing it properly and this sort of phasing sounds different to 'copy & paste' phasing which is so obvious."

Combining with offset would be audible in either case (assuming each were at similar volumes).
I logged 95 samples round trip (spdif) through an L2 and back. At 44k about 2 ms, very noticable.
You should be able to 'copy-paste' dead-on though. (?)
Wayne

 

[Bulls Hit]

Yep no problems copying tracks. I also use plugins so outboard effects aren't an issue.
My question is around recroding drums. Could I have phase issues and be losing sound without knowing it?

 

[mixsit]

Ok, I see where you're going.
I guess bottom line is that any time there's more than one mic getting the same sound there has to be some going on. It's just a matter of how much (depth -relative volume) and the flavor (relative time), and if it sounds good it's good flavor right?
You have mic placements (and track delays to some extent), polarity, relative volumes and panning. They can be used for troubleshooting and comparing tone options, and ultimately end up how you set your tone.
So the question might be more of, a) Does it sound good? and b) Could it sound better (ooh, and let's not forget different but not necessarily better ) by sliding stuff around?
Then... what you hear is what you got.