I was messing around with a mix of a drum kit and noticed that when soloing the kick/ snare and overheads. It seemed that when muting and unmuting the overheads, the kick and snare would be more or less pronounced, depending on if the overheads were on.

It sounded like there was a phase problem between the overheads and the kick/snare. So I reversed the phase in the overheads and the kick/snare came out more in the drum mix. Never noticed that before. Any ever try this?

With BFD, sure!

This is a normal practice I use for all tracks actually. With a DAW like DP, I can just look at the waveform...since I'm up close anyway...dragging them to line em up and all that. It can be a huge difference when the tracks are "right" and finaly sound "true" when the phase of multiple tracks is coherent.

If you think about it Jeremy, the kick mic is recording a POSITIVE waveform from the head and the OHs and Snare are recording a NEGATIVE waveform from the kick head since they're on the BACK SIDE of the drum.

In the 'old' days of tape recorders, when you couldn't see the waveforms, I'd ALWAYS check phasing between microphones while listening in MONO!! You'd be amazed at what shows up. That's an old trick I learned from mastering to lacquers, especially when clients wouldn't put alignment tones on their master tapes!!

The first time I noticed phase cancellation years ago, the tracks completely cancelled each other out they were so out of phase! Once you experience/hear something like that, you really get how much difference being in (or out of) phase can make, and drums are the classic example because of what Eric describes.

Isn't reversing phase a good test for jitter too?
Record a sine wave and copy the track, reversing the phase on the copied track and then play them back together. If you hear blips in what should be silence, that's jitter.

It's become standard practice for a lot of engineers to align drum waveforms in a DAW. You can do a lot better than just reversing the phase, you can get them absolutely nuts on.

But you also have to listen, because phase differences are part of the sound.

I've never noticed this before, but I suppose it's because of the new system here and I can hear much more than before. I've tried lining up the OHs with the snare but sometimes that doesn't make that much of a difference. Never tried reversing the phase.