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dean1964
New member
A shift in phase (assuming it's really bad) would definitely screw with tracks that where recorded as a group. Overdubs not so much.
At that point, drums would probably suffer most since the entire image depends on the tracks being in phase.
Me testing for that would actually help me decide if it's worth processing group tracks for, or just saying "don't run group tracks through tape, just tracks that are not phase dependent to other tracks."
Vocals would be a good one, assuming they are tracked in mono.
Actually, anything that is panned dead center, rather anything that is not panned full to one channel or the other, would be effected by the phase shift. The left and right channels would be shifted relative to each other, so every relationship a between a particular instrument and more than one speaker will be colored by the shift. Processing individual tracks this becomes a non-issue.
Honestly, I don't agonize this much over phase when I am working. However, it is very important to be aware of it, and check a correlation meter from time to time.