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Post by bluegrassdan on Sept 22, 2020 22:32:33 GMT -6
Been experimenting for a few months with SoundRadix's Auto Align plugin and have been impressed. A few anecdotes: - Two mics on upright bass (body and fingerboard areas). I had grown to dislike multiple mics on bass due to phase issues and loss of attack and punch. This plugin makes a gargantuan difference.
- You know how widely spaced pairs on instruments like guitar, banjo, and mandolin can have a hollowed out center stereo image? Phase aligning them allows this punchy center image to appear.
- Drums have gotten tighter by locking in the phase alignment.
Anyone else have any use for these types of plugins? Have you found any other brand plugins to be superior or better suited to specific situations in comparison to SoundRadix?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2020 23:08:03 GMT -6
You can phase align multimiced guitar cabs too.
The Voxengo one is more traditional and lets you do it by ear: www.voxengo.com/product/pha979/SoundRadix plugs and Tokyo Dawn Smart Ops are basically cheating. I love it. |
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Post by EmRR on Sept 23, 2020 4:12:31 GMT -6
Yes, I at least check it on multimic sources. Using the one provided in DP. Sometimes has to be tuned manually.
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Post by bricejchandler on Sept 23, 2020 5:59:02 GMT -6
Been experimenting for a few months with SoundRadix's Auto Align plugin and have been impressed. A few anecdotes: - Two mics on upright bass (body and fingerboard areas). I had grown to dislike multiple mics on bass due to phase issues and loss of attack and punch. This plugin makes a gargantuan difference.
- You know how widely spaced pairs on instruments like guitar, banjo, and mandolin can have a hollowed out center stereo image? Phase aligning them allows this punchy center image to appear.
- Drums have gotten tighter by locking in the phase alignment.
Anyone else have any use for these types of plugins? Have you found any other brand plugins to be superior or better suited to specific situations in comparison to SoundRadix?
It's one of my most used plug ins. My main use is multi miced guitar cabs but I use it for most everything and it's a real time saver. I've tried it on drums but most of the time preferred the non aligned version go figure! But everything else. Bass DI, amp, acoustics piano you name it I'll usually put it on and see if it sounds better. Though sometimes you don't want that super strong center image and focus, and the width of slightly out of phase stereo micing sounds great. One little trick I've already used a couple of times to great effect is on a stereo acoustic guitar when the song starts just acoustic guitar/vocal and then the band comes in, I'll have autoalign on during the solo parts to get that strong center and bass and then take it off when the band comes in, the acoustic gets wider, pushed back a bit and the kick and bass take over the center. My dream is a real time version of this with look ahead for when recording singers and acoustic guitar at the same time and the singer moves around all over the place. I'm not sure if it would work though. Another new concept in a plugin that I LOVE is Gulfoss, it's a smart eq, I originally bought it to tame harsh freqs on distorted guitar amps and it kind of works for that though I find soothe to be way easier to work with, but Gulfoss is amazing on Piano. I've always found Piano to be really hard to eq and you put the plug in on it'll instantly clear it up. I've used it on a ton of applications, though it's easy to get carried away and overdo it. |
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Post by Ward on Sept 23, 2020 6:42:26 GMT -6
How do you find the phase alignment plugins for taking things slightly our of phase? Like when using two guitar microphones and scooping out on honking up the sound like Brian May did with the crew on many of the Queen records.
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Post by bricejchandler on Sept 23, 2020 6:58:58 GMT -6
How do you find the phase alignment plugins for taking things slightly our of phase? Like when using two guitar microphones and scooping out on honking up the sound like Brian May did with the crew on many of the Queen records. They are perfect for this. I use Auto align in conjunction with Waves in phase to do this. I'll align the multiple mics with Auto align and get phase coherence between all the mics then I'll follow Autoalign with waves Inphase to fine tune the position, sometimes moving one of the mics just a ms gets rid of the harshness on a distorted guitar. You can do this with Autoalign too but Inphase has a lot more options to fine tune and I like being able to bypass plugins to hear how the original sounds, how the inphase sounds and how my fine tuned version sounds. It's all part of my template and it gets me where I want extremely fast. I know I could also just slide the tracks along and get similar results but this is much faster for my workflow at least and I barely ever end up needing subtractive eq. Sometimes I'll have the Waves plug in cutting out a little 4k by sliding one of the mics back 2ms on the electric guitar, and when the guitarist switches from rhythm to lead I'll bypass the phase plug in to get some extra definition and grit on the solo. |
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Post by bricejchandler on Sept 23, 2020 7:23:26 GMT -6
I just did a little demo if anybody's interested. www.dropbox.com/sh/gfrtcrtww0jzzv8/AAAkHmrLtHUXAxR1aPR1C2H4a?dl=0Here you can hear the original raw file, an SM57 and an M88 as close together as possible then the autoaligned version. Autoalign moved the M88 back 2ms. In the last example I insert Waves in phase and move the delay around. I've got the button mapped on my controller so I can sweep around really fast. |
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Post by Ward on Sept 23, 2020 8:25:07 GMT -6
How do you find the phase alignment plugins for taking things slightly our of phase? Like when using two guitar microphones and scooping out on honking up the sound like Brian May did with the crew on many of the Queen records. They are perfect for this. I use Auto align in conjunction with Waves in phase to do this. I'll align the multiple mics with Auto align and get phase coherence between all the mics then I'll follow Autoalign with waves Inphase to fine tune the position, sometimes moving one of the mics just a ms gets rid of the harshness on a distorted guitar. You can do this with Autoalign too but Inphase has a lot more options to fine tune and I like being able to bypass plugins to hear how the original sounds, how the inphase sounds and how my fine tuned version sounds. It's all part of my template and it gets me where I want extremely fast. I know I could also just slide the tracks along and get similar results but this is much faster for my workflow at least and I barely ever end up needing subtractive eq. Sometimes I'll have the Waves plug in cutting out a little 4k by sliding one of the mics back 2ms on the electric guitar, and when the guitarist switches from rhythm to lead I'll bypass the phase plug in to get some extra definition and grit on the solo. Good to know. I used to do this on a console back in the day... I think it might have been an Oxford. Memory is very fuzzy |
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Post by mcirish on Sept 23, 2020 9:37:12 GMT -6
I use faTimeAlign to tighten up the phase of drum mics. I use the the overheads as my reference and then measure the samples from a snare drum hit and adjust the close mics to be lined up with the overheads. This makes a huge difference in the punch of the snare. I work in Nuendo so I use the range tool to select the time between the start of the snare on a close mic to the overhead. That gives me the number of samples difference. It's usually around 120-160 or so. I use faTimeAlign to delay the close snare mic by that amount. Works really great. I do that for all the snare mics and the hihat. Surprisingly, it doesn't do as much for the toms but I do it anyway. I also use it to get the phase correct for my in and out kick mics. faTimeAlign is always the first plugin on each close mic drum track. Makes a huge difference in my world.
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Post by svart on Sept 23, 2020 10:48:34 GMT -6
I just use the nudge function to line up the tracks in reaper.
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Post by Blackdawg on Sept 23, 2020 11:09:59 GMT -6
I just use the Time adjuster plugin in ProTools. It does everything in samples so it's much more accurate. But really it's just a delay plugin.
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Post by soundintheround on Sept 23, 2020 16:39:21 GMT -6
Sometimes the best phase alignment plugin is to use 1 mic  But I agree that’s great if those plugs work, haven’t had a chance with them yet. |
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Post by tkaitkai on Sept 23, 2020 17:22:55 GMT -6
I used to use Auto Align all the time. Definitely a time saver and works exactly as described. You can even use it for non-multi mic'd sources like layered drum samples and guitar "tone stacks" (i.e. multing the same take out to multiple amp sims).
That said, I've gotten in the habit of just manually moving things around and listening for what I like. I'll either use a time adjustment delay plugin or just slide the region around until it sounds right.
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Post by ragan on Sept 23, 2020 17:51:30 GMT -6
One of the things I like most about Auto Align is how you can scroll through various timing/phase relationships with the arrow buttons. I very often like AAs first choice but sometimes one of the other relationships is the ticket. Listening in the mix (not solo'd), sometimes one relationship just sounds clearly best. Super easy to try them out.
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Post by Ward on Sept 24, 2020 4:30:34 GMT -6
Sometimes the best phase alignment plugin is to use 1 mic But I agree that’s great if those plugs work, haven’t had a chance with them yet. Anyone remember having to compromize on mic positioning to get two mics (say an 87 and a 57) on two different speakers on the same guitar cabinet, but having them at the same distance and angle to the speakers to keep them in phase when you didn't have tools at your disposal? Just me? K. |
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Post by nomatic on Sept 24, 2020 6:37:18 GMT -6
I LOve Auto Align!
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Post by bricejchandler on Sept 25, 2020 0:15:43 GMT -6
Sometimes the best phase alignment plugin is to use 1 mic But I agree that’s great if those plugs work, haven’t had a chance with them yet. Anyone remember having to compromize on mic positioning to get two mics (say an 87 and a 57) on two different speakers on the same guitar cabinet, but having them at the same distance and angle to the speakers to keep them in phase when you didn't have tools at your disposal? Just me? K. Well I've been doing it quite a bit recently because I've done some live in studio streamed sessions this year. |
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Post by EmRR on Sept 25, 2020 14:52:23 GMT -6
Sometimes the better option is to delay something out further, putting it at the next delay point that matches tempo, so it sounds like an early reflection that's in time with tempo. Something short so it's not an obvious delay. Find alignment timing, then do the difference math to get it to the right place.
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Post by notneeson on Sept 25, 2020 15:43:15 GMT -6
Sometimes the best phase alignment plugin is to use 1 mic But I agree that’s great if those plugs work, haven’t had a chance with them yet. Anyone remember having to compromize on mic positioning to get two mics (say an 87 and a 57) on two different speakers on the same guitar cabinet, but having them at the same distance and angle to the speakers to keep them in phase when you didn't have tools at your disposal? Just me? K. Yes, I had a Beyer 201 and a 421 so tightly matched on a 2x12 one time that the signal all but disappeared with one side out of polarity. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Sept 25, 2020 16:43:34 GMT -6
Been experimenting for a few months with SoundRadix's Auto Align plugin and have been impressed. A few anecdotes: - Two mics on upright bass (body and fingerboard areas). I had grown to dislike multiple mics on bass due to phase issues and loss of attack and punch. This plugin makes a gargantuan difference.
- You know how widely spaced pairs on instruments like guitar, banjo, and mandolin can have a hollowed out center stereo image? Phase aligning them allows this punchy center image to appear.
- Drums have gotten tighter by locking in the phase alignment.
Anyone else have any use for these types of plugins? Have you found any other brand plugins to be superior or better suited to specific situations in comparison to SoundRadix?
Yeah - love SR Auto Align on Kicks and snares and acoustics. It’s a life saver for stereo acoustics. |
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Sept 25, 2020 16:49:47 GMT -6
I agree with the above comment, it’s cheating. AA is the only way I’ve ever been able to record stereo and be satisfied. Glad to give Soundradix my money.
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Post by Johnkenn on Sept 25, 2020 18:50:24 GMT -6
Surfer EQ is a life saver too.
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Post by bricejchandler on Sept 26, 2020 1:33:09 GMT -6
Surfer EQ is a life saver too. Love it too! Drum Leveler is awesome too. |
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