Stavencrows said:
As I'm reading around all the old post so I don't ask what the difference between "Mixing and Mastering" I've noticed the occasional reference to phasing, e.g "the guitar mic got knocked and was 160 degrees out of phase for the rest of the track." Now I know this has to do with the way waves interact by cancelling/adding to each other. My problem is I've never experienced any problems with this and I'm getting worried when I read about "a mastering engineer fixing any phasing problems the mixing engineer missed." It seems like a big topic that I know nothing about that is just waiting to catch me out. Can anyone help me out?
Thanks.
Well first off you can't have a phase problem with a single mic, unless you have problems with room reflections hitting the mic and causing cancellation, but that isn't usually referred to as a 'phase problem'.
With respect to the guitar mic moving, what that will create is a likely change in frequency response (and amplitude, but that's an easy fix) halfway through the track, due to the change in the mic's position relative to the guitar (or amp), a rotation of the mic causing the source to be off-axis, or a change in the mic distance affecting the proximity response of the mic. I wouldn't call any of those 'phase problems', and all should be fixable with EQ.
Now in a stereo mic situation, if one mic gets bumped, yeah that could create a nasty problem when summed to mono (both center panned). In other words if you pan the stereo mics hard left-right, any cancellation would be minimized (eliminated on headphones). If the stereo mics are used on a single source, and one gets bumped, then imparting a very short delay to one of them might help, otherwise you're looking at a detailed EQ fix. In that situation I think I'd trash the bumped track and live with mono guitar.
Anyway, if you'd like to experiment, read up on XY (coincident pair), ORTF (near coincident pair), and spaced pair micing techniques. Record the same thing using all three methods. Listen to them in stereo (hard panned) and mono (center panned). You'll discover that one of them is mono compatible and the others progressively less so.
As for mastering engineers catching problems, that sounds like they are checking the mono mix of the stereo mixdown. Worth doing if that sort of thing concerns you.
