phase issues when dumping between tape & daw?

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jeancoltrane

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so last night i filled up my 4 track with rhythm loops and proceeded to bounce down to my daw. everything sounded fine and i did some minor panning between 11 and 1 oclock in the daw before sending the tracks back through stereo out 1,2 into tracks 1 & 3 on the tape. i added 2 overdubs and bounced back to the daw but now the original rhythm loops are super out of phase unless i pan hard l/r. i assumed i could just pan the original tracks to 11 and 1 in the daw again and everything would be fine, but apparently not.

any thoughts on what im doing wrong here? would panning the tracks hard left/right in the daw before sending back to tape eliminate this issue? was hoping i could make minor panning adjustments in the daw as i bounce back and forth but seems like its not that easy ;]

thanks
 
A pan relationship between 11 and 1 is very close to mono in reality and if you again take that degraded stereo track and force it through another near mono state you'll essentially end up with a mono plus phase plagued recording.

Panning should be done for artistic reasons ONCE and hard left and right thereafter to preserve any previous panning decisions from a previous tape generation. Otherwise, you'll only end up damaging your original panning decisions.

Keeping things in phase is also a pretty delicate task as out of 360 degrees, only 1 of them is bang on. The other 359 will not be. Analog or digital.



Cheers! :)
 
Curious about this. OP hasn't come back.. Is it clear you are not mixing the two bounced versions back in the DAW, and the phaseyness is in/on the tape only?
 
thanks for the help fellas - & sorry for the delayed reply. it seems the ghost is spot on, though i'm struggling to comprehend why & how this all works ;)

re miroslav - i wasnt syncing the daw & tape deck, just using the daw to bounce the 4 tracks to, then output from the daw as 2 tracks into the reel to reel to free up 2 of the tracks on the tape deck and then continue overdubbing (on the tape deck itself w/ simu sync) and then rinse & repeat.

i only first noticed the phasiness when bouncing back to the daw the 2nd time, because the pan positions in the daw are automatically at 0, and as ghost mentioned, if i make panning adjustments earlier on i then need to pan hard left & right to keep them (and i guess the phase) in check. so it seems theres no phase issues if i hard pan the bounced down tracks, but the original slight stereo spread (of 11 and 1) is definitely altered and sounds wider now. i'm probably missing something obvious here :) perhaps when bouncing back to the daw instead of using 2 mono tracks in logic, i should use 1 stereo? though not sure, what, if anything that would do.

ideally, this is what i was hoping to do - track drums to 4 tracks, say track 1 (L) kick, track 2(L) overhead, track 3(R) snare, track 4(R) overhead. then load those into the daw, give the 4 tracks a slight spread in logic (11 and 1) and bounce them back to 2 tracks on the tape. then overdub guitar and keys on the 2 free tracks of the tape, bounce back to the daw and pan the keys & guitar out wider than the drums (say 9 & 3) to gradually build the stereo field before bouncing back to tape again and adding whatever else. it seems this causes issues though, and as ghost mentioned i should wait till the end or final bounce to make panning decisions, which leaves me limited options for the individual pan positions of the instruments as they'll be squished onto just 2 tracks from all the bouncing back and forth. not a huge deal but if theres any work around for this im all ears :)

maybe i'll have to look into the 'poor mans clasp method' next.. bouncing to daw direct off the repro head.
thanks again.
 
jeancoltrane said:
. it seems the ghost is spot on, though i'm struggling to comprehend why & how this all works ;)
Click to expand...

Phase is a difficult concept to get one's head around but think about like this:

Our ears perceive sound to be in phase when it arrives at our ears at the same time. On a purely mono recording, that's easy to achieve because we're dealing with a single point source of where the sound starts from. In stereo, things get very complicated, very quickly! Why that is is because we're now relying on two point sources to deliver their sounds to us at the same time in order for things to sound in phase to us. But in stereo, sound will bounce off different room surfaces with some frequencies being attenuated and others remaining more or less neutral and still others getting amplified by very reflective surfaces, so it doesn't take much in the real world to damage the magic of stereo which ideally is to reproduce multiple musicians in a given space with each of their instruments throwing out their sound waves into that space and then our ears at the other end deciphering where they are coming from as we naturally do, being able to detect directional information. Handy when you hear a roar in the woods and get a real good idea of which direction we need to run in to not get eaten by said growl. :D

So, getting back to our original stereo recording where we've thoughtfully panned all of tracks to simulate this natural space we live in, if we then collapse that set of clues down to a near mono or full mono state, all of those directional clues are trashed with only the phase-y sound left as a reminder of how we damaged all that hard work. Hard panning full left and right preserves those original mix decisions. Doing anything short of that damages it.

Hope that helps add a bit more clarity.



Cheers! :)
 
Is there a reason you are going from tape to DAW then back to Tape? I understand you want to free up the tracks, but if you record the 4 tracks to your DAW, even if you have to do two passes for each channel, then free up all four tracks, then bring the new set from the tape to the DAW, then mix in the DAW. Your only issue you have to do is synchronize the signals. Some snap or clicker so you can line up the signals.

It seems to me once you go digital, you've lost the purity of the analog signal anyway and only introduce more analog (amp and tape) noise going back and forth. Maybe I am think too practical or miss it all together.
 
When you bounce the drums back to tape the first time, than is when you pan the drums where you want them in the mix. After that, you need to pan that stereo mix of the drums all the way...because it is now a stereo mix.
 
thanks guys, i think i'm starting to get it. the one thing thats throwing me off is that even after hard panning the previously slightly panned tracks, there is some phasing on certain sets of speakers (like my built in laptop speakers) its not really noticeable on my main stereo, or headphones though. i guess this just illustrates the importance of making your mixes mono compatible :) its alright, ive already loaded up my original tracks sans panning and bounced them down again with no issues.

dm60 - the reason i tried working this way is ive heard a tape machine will never play back the same way twice, so running tracks in to the daw via multiple passes, or trying to line them up later will never work that well without a synchronizer to slave the daw to the rtr (correct me if im wrong anyone..) plus, for drums i actually preferred the sound i got running them to tape twice despite the multiple conversions. it is limiting though and probably wouldnt work so well on other sources, which is why im glad i found out about the 'poor mans clasp' method which i'll be starting another thread on shortly :)
 
On any analog stereo mix, anything that is panned in the center (or close to the center/not hard L or R) will not sound perfect unless the azimuth (a type of head adjustment) is perfect, which is rare unless the deck has been finely calibrated. I wouldn't sweat it in general, but summing to mono (or messing with the panning of the original stereo spread) or bouncing the stereo mix back and forth will make it less subtle (or very obvious in some cases). I decided awhile back to only do my bounces in mono, and use the final tracks for the stereo spread. You have fewer stereo options but a tighter sound. Even on well set-up decks.

You're probably noticing it more on your laptop because the speakers are closer together. Also, lots of people have default audio "enhancers" turned on when they listen to music on their computers, and these often do some strange things like sum to mono, then "stereorize" it again ... or whatever they do, you can hear phase/azimuth problems jump out.

These things are all part of the charms of analog sound ... But you have to respect the limitations, and work within them.
 
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Exactly. Every time you bounce something to the computer, you create a stereo mix. When it gets bounced back to tape, that stereo mix must be panned wide in order to keep it the way you mixed it on the way to the computer. Any adjustment to the panning after that will quickly ruin your day, for a variety of reasons.

The previous suggestion to bounce everything in mono is a good one. Hundreds of classic recordings have mono drums. Bass is generally centered. Lead vocals are centered. Solos are centered...

Really, if you have everything in mono except the left and right rhythm guitars, it will still be a wonderful stereo mix.
 
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