Reversing the Phase

G

goldfish

New member
Ok, here is my (strange) situation.

Lets start out saying : oh my god im an idiot. Right. Im recording using a 16 track Studer mixer, with 4 subgroups, XLR outs. Ive got 2 sound cards, both with a stereo line in inputs. So i used that to give me 4 track recording in cakewalk (drums stereo, guitar left bass right) lovley! Only till when i got home i realised that I had plugged the drums subgroups in the wrong way around (L and R reversed). How? the drums sound very thin and tinny, but sounds fine mono. I figgered that i must have recorded it out of phase.

But then I think, no biggie, i can just reverse the phase on the left/right track! The question is.. how?! Ive tried googling this and came up with nothing of any interest, and I asked my step dad who is a sound engineer, and he said I was right but he hasnt used Cakewalk very much so he doesnt know how either. Hes using pro tools lite on his laptop at the moment, and he could probably do it using that but then a) Id inturrupt him b) i dont think i could export the track without messing it up. I did look in flanger plugin, as that is what the help file pointed me to but actually it didnt help at all. Maybe you can somehow set it to reverse phase with no delay on only one channel? Im not sure

So.. how to reverse the phase of one track in Cakewalk?

TIA! :)
 
Which Cakewalk?
Sonar has a phase switch in the left hand track properties pane. The symbol looks like a zero with a slash across it (The Phase symbol, its a Greek letter but I can't remember which!).

Is it one channel of a stereo track you want to "invert"? If so, bounce to two new mono tracks and switch the phase of one.

If your Cakewalk is older than Sonar (I'm not familiar with Pro Audio) and doesn't have the switch built in, there is a free DX plug in out there called, I think, Phase; which does just that, flip the phase. Google for it.
 
goldfish said:
...How? the drums sound very thin and tinny, but sounds fine mono. I figgered that i must have recorded it out of phase.
Click to expand...

But then why do they sound better combined in mono?
(Alot of times drums sound more focused as you pan them in even when there ok spread out. I wonder if it's more a case of it being the mic distances sounding slightly phasey but not 180 out.
Can you lets us know how it turns out?
Thanks
Wayne
 
Probably it's the spill between mics, if it's all 180deg out it's at least one mic to blame.

It is possible to correct sometimes (for mic distance induced phase problems) to turn off your sequencers "Snap to grid/time" feature and zoom right in and drag the offending track forward or back (probably talking milliseconds here!). With multi mic recordings, you can usually see some common shapes in the different waveforms so you can figure which track to drag.
 
Yeah sounds like the overheads where out of line making it slightly phasey but not exactly reversed. I fixed that and re-recorded and sounds good now :) and also adjusted the Overheads to they were a in a proper stereo arrangement, and were less influential in the mix. They were only there to pick up drum ambience anyway, as all the drums were close-mic'ed appart from floor tom which was picked up quite nicley from the bass drum.

Mixing for drums is probably the hardest thing ive ever done with a band, so many mics and so many places to slip up! But now i have learned many things from this session, especially to mic the snare well and to deaden it with whatever you can (I had to do this a bit quickly so I used selotape with bog roll underneath it. Ugly but it worked!) That was my downfall with previous recordings was that it was bass drum or cymbal based rather than snare based, so it didnt have such good rhythm to it.

Anyway I've got a link to the near finished product over in the MP3 clinic so you can go have a listen if you like :)
 
Nothing can top the sound of real drums, but you've got to love the convenience of V-Drums. Plug 'em in and hit record. :)
 
Goldfish, I just noticed (re-read!) in your first post -you said the two XLR's were swapped -not 'out of phase'(?) Did we all miss that? Left/right got switched?
As in; bounce the track to dual mono (if it was stereo) and reverse the pans to 1=R > < 2=L?
Wayne
 
dachay2tnr said:
Nothing can top the sound of real drums, but you've got to love the convenience of V-Drums. Plug 'em in and hit record. :)
Click to expand...

Hey, not everybody has "Vic The Drum" available to lay down a track ya know.
 
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