phase cancellation

  • Thread starter Thread starter liv_rong
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liv_rong

liv_rong

Knows very little
i read in a recent magazine about phase cancellation when using two mics to record one source. i dont quite fully understand what is is and how to avoid it.

i recently recorded some vocals tracks for a friend, i wanted to experiment so i used two condensors on the same stereo channel panned hard each in each dirrection.

i had pretty good sounding results, but i am worried i may have compromised the recording by doing that.

i also did some over-dub tracks with only one of the two mics on and i liked the way it sounded with both.

what do i need to know about phase cancellation?

ive been recording for a while now, but am just starting to get into better gear and im now into experimenting and will soon have multi track capability once i install a firewire card. i will be recording with one or more mics, plus direct line outs into the mixer for guitar amp recording. so, i need to understand a bit more about if i am going too far by using more than two line ins to record one sorce.

this phase cancellation thing is sort of confusing to me.
 
If you go to wikipedia and search for "destructive interference" it will give you a pretty good page there. On the right hand-side about half way down they show some pictures of some red waves and constructive and destructive interference. I think that part, in particular, is a good illustration of what's happening without going into a whole lot of detail.
 
Imagine you have two (or more) mics in a room some distance apart, say, 6' (just as an example). Now you have a guy playing a guitar in that room. Let's say he's 2' from one of the mics and 8' from the other one. The sound from his guitar arrives at the mic 2' away first. It arrives at the mic 8' away considerably later. The time difference between the two mics can set up something called comb filtering which CAN (not always) sound BAD. This is the short answer and doesn't touch on the physics involved.
 
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