Good stuff. I agree with you for the most part, but have a couple of comments.
Wait wait wait. There is some misinformation going around here.
Of course it's the internet....
1. If your mic sounds hollow and with no bass response, there is something WAY more wrong with your mic than phase. An out of phase mic will sound EXACTLY like an in phase mic on it's own.
I agree, but not with the exactly part. And I understand what dgatwood was trying to say, although like you, I don't think that's the best judge of it. If it's a Fig8 pattern mic, it MAY very well sound different from the back. Case in point, some of the ACM ribbons DO sound different from the back side. One I actually like BETTER from the back side. If you are saying "phase" from an electronic point of view, I'd tend to agree with you, although I have one engineer friend who can spookily hear whether the monitors are pushing or pulling air on the first excursion. He'll check and invariably - he's right. I used to always try to trick him up by occationally swapping + and - on BOTH speakers to see if he'd notice. He did. I'm not talking two speakers out of phase with each other, but whether both are "in phase" or "out of phase". BTW, I may unfortunately be confusing phase with polarity. I've always refered to it as phase for 20+ years, and I think most of us do as there is an "out of phase" switch on much of the gear we use. Technically we may be wrong in using that term.
2. Judging phase by looking at a DAW waveform isn't the best way either.
Here's where I disagree with you. If you can see a positive going waveform and a negative going waveform, there is no second guessing and wondering. It's really obvious. No need to don headphones or set up another "control" mic that may or may not be in phase itself.
3. Phase IS a relative term. One signal cannot be out of phase with itself. It can only be called out of phase when compared to another signal. These technical descriptions of phase are great, but all we are talking about here is that on some GB mics in the past, pins 2 and 3 have been essentially switched on their xlr connector. What we are talking about is POLARITY, not really phase.
Cool. I agree. You say pot
Atoe. I say pot
ahtoe
To test:
Set up a control mic (I'm using a 414) and one of your new ribbons so that their elements are so close they are touching. Snap your fingers equaldistantly from both elements. Listen back with both mic panned center and relatively equal in gain. If one mic soloed sounds fine, but both together sound thin and weird, you've got a phase problem. If the visual waveform of one is zigging while the other is zagging, you've got a phase problem.
Soooooo, how do you know your control mic is in phase??? How do you know you have a cable that hasn't been miswired on the control mic? Are you sure your pre and patchbay are wired correctly?? While I agree with your premise, I still maintain that looking at the waveform is the most solid way of seeing (literally) what's going on. This becomes critically important if you move from studio to studio during a project and are not intimately familiar with their mics, cables, etc.
A secondary way we used to do it? (Very old school here) Take a sound source with a lot of "thump" like a kick drum. Put the mic and following chain into your recording device. Record a few kicks (or whatever). They should have a very transient nature. Now, flip one of your speakers on it's back. Put a dime on the woofer cone. Hit play. Reverse the speaker cable inputs. Hit play again. In one case the speaker will be "pushing" and will launch the coin. On the other it will be "pulling" and the coin will move, but not jump. Simple and effective. This is also a good way to make sure that both your speakers are in literal phase with the signal on tape or DAW - or perhaps I should say polarity.
So if it is only relative, why does phase matter? Using one mic by itself, it doesn't. The minute you start interfacing that mic with other mics in your collection, like in a 12 mic drum setup, that's when trouble starts.
I couldn't agree with you more on this one. One of the main reasons for bad sounding recordings. Know your phase! Or polarity! Or whatever you want to call it!!!
PS - to further complicate issues, sounds are not always 180 degrees out of phase. But that's a topic for another time, another thread.
Cheers,
bp
