Hello,

I've been messing with recording drums for quite a while now.
I've attempted to take into consideration the 3:1 concept (with regards to overheads and distant miking) as well as all close miking.
A while back I read an article about Frank Fillipetti recording drums.
In the article it was mentioned that his assistant had phase aligned the microphones before the recording had proceeded.
Are there special tools and proceedures for this?
Could I possibly do this in a home studio?
How? Using What?

Paul

An oscilloscope would be the tool, but I think it's easiest to listen while you're tracking and move the mics to get as close as possible, and then slide the tracks around in the DAW later. You can use the waveforms to line the tracks up visually as a 95% starting point, but it's not a 100% exact science - you have to nudge until it sounds right.

Doing that makes a surprising difference to the clarity.

Hi Paul,

We use a two piece device that checks polarity over tie lines and mic lines and for the life of me I cannot remember it's marketed name. I'll call the studio later to see what it's called and I'll re-post my findings. It's a breeze to use - one guy holds the transmitter up to the live mic while it pulses (like a metronome pulse) while the other holds the receiver up to any speaker cone in the control room. The receiver measures whether the cone has positive or negative excursion and an LED lights up when it's positive. You repeat the entire process on all mic/lines on a drum setup and voila... in phase micing.

Hope this helps.

http://www.galaxyaudio.com/products/CRICKET.html

The one thing that EVERYONE forgets is the MONO BUTTON on the console!!! If there's going to be ANY problematic phase cancellation, you'll hear it when you switch back-n-forth from MONO to STEREO!!! I'd start there before spending the money on anything else, IMHO.

If your using a DAW just look at the wave forms and see if the waves line up to the curser after you record a few seconds of drums, then move mics accordingly.

You can also use a mesuring tape, like they do in film. After a while you just get a felling for it and sight is enough, it has got to look good to the eye to sound good to the ear.

Once again Eric states the obvious, mono never lies.

Please excuse my ignorance. I'm not quite getting this Galaxy Audio/Cricket thing.

I always associated audio phase problems, such as comb filtering, as being created by two microphones picking up sound waves from the same sound source at different intervals (i.e. distances).

If this is so, then predetermined distances from the microphone to the transmitter and from the speaker to the receiver should be made. No?

I assume that the Cricket addresses electrical polarity but how does it address audio phase problems?

Would you place the transmitter where the microphone is to be located?

Is this device supposed to be used with several mics on at once?

Sorry, I don't mean to make this sound as if it were an inquisition.

I thank you guys for your input.

Paul