|
|
Post by OtisGreying on Oct 10, 2021 23:36:17 GMT -6
I’m recording vocal and acoustic at the same time with some phase troubles.. here are the chains: VOX :MA5 -> Serrano 87 (Figure 8) -> Lisson Grove -> DAW GTR :Coil 70S -> EV RE16 -> DAW I can’t seem to figure out how to get things in phase after recorded. The mics are the exact same distance from me, and vertically about 1-1.5 feet from each other in height. Serrano pointed at my mouth, RE16 pointed at my 12th fret. Zooming in on waveforms was my go-to but the waveforms are very different, and I seem to align them in one spot and then they’re out of time in another. Time alignment plug in feels too difficult to hear whether the low end is getting tighter or just phasing away and nulling. Should I ditch the RE and use my second Serrano for the acs guitar? Should I go as far as same preamps? Is there some sort of method to make sure the mics are in phase before recording or at the very least know how much I’ll need to nudge through some sort of time test? Thanks guys.
Setup looks like this (seems to work for JM, different mics diff height):
Attachments:
|
|
|
|
Post by Blackdawg on Oct 11, 2021 0:19:51 GMT -6
why figure 8 on the u87? Have you tried just cardioid or omni?
Given the distance between the capsules if its like that photo you posted, you won't really be able to get in a perfect phase anyways. this is because you are doing basically an A/B pair setup just vertically and while that is a coincident stereo method it is dependent on a stereo image due to time differences and amplitude differences. Because of the space.
So with that in mind, the mics will always pick up both sources they will just reach them at different times, the guitar bleeds into the U87 at a later time than it gets into the RE16.
This of course is obvious..
All that to say you have to find a sweet spot where it works and this will be different for each player, how loud they play vs sing, do they lean in on the vocal mic a lot? or sit back? Is the guitar really loud.
Ultimately just keep moving them around a bit and don't be afraid to push one or the other a bit closer in or further out. You'll know when it's right.
As for plugins to try and maybe help with this, I have had decent luck with Auto Align if you wanted to check that out.
If you want to do the zoom method still. Make sure since you're able to do a test tone at the start. Pluck one string real loud so you can use that one note to align the whole take. That might be all you need to do.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2021 1:07:00 GMT -6
Exactly what BlackDawg says, plus knowing about polar patterns and off axis rejection properties of certain mic's can help a lot in these regards. The MD441 for example is a hyper cardioid with great off axis rejection very much suited to these sorts of situations. I've often used a condenser (cardioid) with a 441 to decent effect but there's always going to be a bit of bleed even if you used two 441's in an ISO booth.
If that's an issue the obvious alternative is to track everything one at a time.
|
|
|
|
Post by OtisGreying on Oct 11, 2021 1:24:34 GMT -6
why figure 8 on the u87? Have you tried just cardioid or omni? If you want to do the zoom method still. Make sure since you're able to do a test tone at the start. Pluck one string real loud so you can use that one note to align the whole take. That might be all you need to do. Figure 8 bottom of mic pointed at the acoustic gives me some great separation so that seem to be working well
- Will try the test tone definitely, thanks blackdawg
|
|
|
|
Post by svart on Oct 11, 2021 8:15:08 GMT -6
IF I record like this, I always angle the vocal mic upwards slightly and the guitar mics downwards slightly to increase the rejection of each other.
BTW, you said the waveforms look different, which is to be expected, but how far off in *time* are they from one another? If you record both, but only sing (or only play guitar), are they lined up in *time*? If you figure out how far different they are, you can just nudge the tracks later by that amount and everything should line up in phase much better too.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ward on Oct 11, 2021 8:38:34 GMT -6
My reply was going to be the same as svart, Blackdawg and @soriantis To recap, the three great points in these replies is: 1. Switch the S87 to Cardioid 2. Try a 441 or another condenser on the acoustic guitar, not in a straight line with the vocal mic 3. Angle the vocal mic upwards and the guitar mic downwards. Should solve all problems. |
|
|
|
Post by svart on Oct 11, 2021 8:55:34 GMT -6
Oh and another thing, vocalists tend to sway or rock when singing. They almost never notice it, but it can sound like phasing sometimes when they sway in and out of the sweetspot of the mics.
|
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Oct 11, 2021 9:06:54 GMT -6
I’ve had a bunch of singer guitarists who want to perform both together lately, and a pair of figure 8 is the winner. Frequently can punch one or the other without obvious bleed, no phase problems.
|
|
|
|
Post by drumsound on Oct 11, 2021 9:53:49 GMT -6
IF I record like this, I always angle the vocal mic upwards slightly and the guitar mics downwards slightly to increase the rejection of each other. BTW, you said the waveforms look different, which is to be expected, but how far off in *time* are they from one another? If you record both, but only sing (or only play guitar), are they lined up in *time*? If you figure out how far different they are, you can just nudge the tracks later by that amount and everything should line up in phase much better too. Oh and another thing, vocalists tend to sway or rock when singing. They almost never notice it, but it can sound like phasing sometimes when they sway in and out of the sweetspot of the mics. I’ve had a bunch of singer guitarists who want to perform both together lately, and a pair of figure 8 is the winner. Frequently can punch one or the other without obvious bleed, no phase problems. I'm also a big fan of 2 figure eights paying a lot of attention to the nulls for separation. And the players do tend to move, hopefully not so far that it's a problem, but sometimes.. I also like to have a room pair when I do this for both some spread, and a bit of liveliness. Depending on how close the rooms are, sometimes you can lean harder on them when the player sways a lot. There's also the option of using ONE mic to capture both acoustic and vocal. |
|
|
|
Post by drumsound on Oct 11, 2021 9:55:55 GMT -6
Otis, I believe you're recording yourself. Have you simply recorded a take, listened in mono and reversed the polarity of one mic to see how badly the mics are intereacting? From your first post it seems like you instantly went to zooming in and plugins.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2021 10:55:30 GMT -6
There's a lot of good advice in this thread. The last time I did this was a vintage U47 in cardioid and the guitar mic was a Beyer M160. The Beyer was good because it's not only hypercardioid, but it's small and simple to orient for the null. Listening to the individual tracks, you get some spill of guitar into the U47, even with it angled upward, but there's almost no vocal in the 160 mic.
If you want to time-align the tracks, and you can't control bleed from both mics, it then obviously becomes a choice of who do you want to "win", because the other will likely be thrown further out of phase. If there was a lot of vocal spill in the 160, I would have attempted to line up the vocal, being more important, but knowing that the guitar could suffer a little as a result. With these particular microphones, you can align the guitars to each other, without harming the vocal. Or, you just leave it alone.
Good luck, singer/guitar combo can be tricky at the best of times.
|
|
|
|
Post by bluegrassdan on Oct 11, 2021 11:55:22 GMT -6
Pan the guitar hard left or right and fuhgeddaboudit.
|
|
|
|
Post by jmoose on Oct 11, 2021 12:26:03 GMT -6
IMO phase is just another form of EQ. Do you prefer your phase shift in the form/sound of say... a 1073 or by altering mic placement?
Phase on something like this is kinda relative. Good phase and bad phase. Good is where its not distracting... Bad sounds like everything is coming through a garden hose... or maybe we stuck a wah pedal in there and parked it halfway through the sweep.
I am kind of a stickler for using the same mic pre & whatnot... EQ, compressor on everything. Guitar & vocal like this? Even bass DI & amp? Absolutely.
Audio just seems to hit harder when everything is working together, all the preamps have the same slew rate & response time.
I can't remember ever zooming in on waveforms to get into time alignment on anything, ever. Getting lost in the sauce.
How did Neil Young ever make a record without the ability to zoom in on waveforms..?
|
|
ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,011 
|
Post by ericn on Oct 11, 2021 12:26:41 GMT -6
OK a couple of things that are always going to cause some issues with phase here;
First, with 2 different models of mics there will always be some phase issues, they will have different phase response.
Second. Even if the 2 mics did have the same phase response, for alignment you would need to have the diaphragms equal distance not the mics, but the diaphragms, so you would have to know the distance between the diaphragms and the grills.
Now given those physical limits Dan nailed it.
|
|
|
|
Post by bluegrassdan on Oct 11, 2021 18:08:28 GMT -6
Just make sure the music going into those mics sounds good. All else is trivial.
|
|
|
|
Post by chessparov on Oct 11, 2021 19:36:25 GMT -6
IIRC The Everlys were sometimes recorded at RCA Studio B, with a lone U47 in Omni.
(Will re-check soon)
Chris
EDIT: Looks like a single 47 (Vocals) and a 77 Ribbon set beneath the guitars...
Was at least sometimes used.
Lots of cool Studio B photos online.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2021 23:08:20 GMT -6
IIRC The Everlys were sometimes recorded at RCA Studio B, with a lone U47 in Omni. (Will re-check soon) Chris EDIT: Looks like a single 47 (Vocals) and a 77 Ribbon set beneath the guitars... Was at least sometimes used. Lots of cool Studio B photos online. Single omni's are quite a common way to do it, without writing a book on the subject you ideally need a decent sounding room to pull it off though. Back when I was learning we had a few dynamic Gefell omni's and EV RE 50's in the locker, they sounded pretty cool tbh. |
|
|
|
Post by Ward on Oct 12, 2021 4:46:03 GMT -6
IMO phase is just another form of EQ. Do you prefer your phase shift in the form/sound of say... a 1073 or by altering mic placement? .... SNIP . . . Interesting point, but . . . Only is useful if the sources are fixed and static, and the spl of the sources stays constant, otherwise it becomes a moving target which the OP is trying to eliminiate. Switching to cardioid works since the backend reflections from a figure-8 are nulled and do not muddle the sound, which is problematic in rooms with less than 900 cubic feet. (I believe that's 10 cubic meters) |
|
|
|
Post by OtisGreying on Oct 12, 2021 5:00:54 GMT -6
Otis, I believe you're recording yourself. Have you simply recorded a take, listened in mono and reversed the polarity of one mic to see how badly the mics are intereacting? From your first post it seems like you instantly went to zooming in and plugins. I haven't, but I will now definitely.
The pic is a little misleading, my serrano is tilted at an angle and upside down, so the tip of the mic nulls the ACS gtr. This is giving me good seperation and putting in cardiod makes for quite a bit more guitar sound that I don't want. The top end of the acoustic was coming through a bit more then I wanted and making it harder to pan the guitar without hearing weirdness so I:
-Placed an small 4 inch depth panel angled between the top of my guitar and the tip of the Serrano which made a nice difference in the highs that make it much more useable. This high end acs bleed in the vocal track was the main phase issue so it seems to be solved from the small panel. It also seems like the seperation is actually really good to the point where I can't really properly phase match the two because of the waveforms being so different etc. etc. The ACS guitar track really has hardly any vocal bleed.
So I think my best bet since I'm getting good seperation I don't want to lose is to do some sort of sine wave test or test tone test to figure out some time interval before I record that I just know I need to nudge one track X amount of miliseconds... not sure the best method for that quite yet though
Really appreciate all your guys' help!
|
|
|
|
Post by Ward on Oct 12, 2021 5:01:26 GMT -6
Single omni's are quite a common way to do it, without writing a book on the subject you ideally need a decent sounding room to pull it off though. Back when I was learning we had a few dynamic Gefell omni's and EV RE 50's in the locker, they sounded pretty cool tbh. But again, the use of omni's is a bit of a crap shoot. If the room has a lot of space, the source is static and not moving, and the SPL is constant (which would mean no breathing or rests in the music), it might be possible. The capture may sound lovely, but the OP wishes to eliminate phase issues (i.e. variating comb filtering). |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2021 6:20:10 GMT -6
Single omni's are quite a common way to do it, without writing a book on the subject you ideally need a decent sounding room to pull it off though. Back when I was learning we had a few dynamic Gefell omni's and EV RE 50's in the locker, they sounded pretty cool tbh. But again, the use of omni's is a bit of a crap shoot. If the room has a lot of space, the source is static and not moving, and the SPL is constant (which would mean no breathing or rests in the music), it might be possible. The capture may sound lovely, but the OP wishes to eliminate phase issues (i.e. variating comb filtering). I think we'd discussed the OP's problem and then moved on to our own conversation  . |
|
|
|
Post by EmRR on Oct 12, 2021 6:26:33 GMT -6
I also have used a small foam baffle on a mic stand to gobo one mic from the other. Not really needed with a pair of 8’s.
The problem with single omni isn’t so much bleed and reflections as it is client’s inability to self mix the respective dynamics to their satisfaction. People are used to hearing automated highly compressed vocals, so you have to sing like it’s already there. Classic session player dynamic control is a must.
|
|
|
|
Post by enlav on Oct 12, 2021 7:08:34 GMT -6
The problem with single omni isn’t so much bleed and reflections as it is client’s inability to self mix the respective dynamics to their satisfaction. People are used to hearing automated highly compressed vocals, so you have to sing like it’s already there. Classic session player dynamic control is a must. It also leaves less control out of your hands at mix, given that there's no separating the two.
Even when you have a talent (or you yourself) that can project their voice and play guitar at suitably balanced levels throughout a piece, sometimes the single omni doesn't give you the right sound or character for that song (or at least what you/the talent wants).
Rant: I think there's been a generation of players that have been affected by performing more in front of PA's and microphones; especially now when even coffee shops have a Soundcraft digital mixer with a barista that went to some online college for audio and makes tweaks on their ipad inbetween lattes and caps. The last open mic I went to, there was an A&H 32 channel digital mixer...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2021 7:42:22 GMT -6
Omni mic'ing is a long topic, although it's the cornerstone of many a' classical recording / folk bands etc. and I'm sure I've heard about some older well known tunes recorded in this manor. Any half decent singer should have at least a relative understanding of mic positioning, as in move back when you sing loud, get closer for the quieter parts etc. and because there's no proximity effect or chance of swinging outside the polar pattern it can be easier to do.
The obvious advantage is the inherent lack of phase shift between multiple standard polar response mics but the downside is separation as in the room, guitar and vocals. You can compress the lot to an extent and you can also get closer to the mic to reduce spill.. You can also EQ like you would when mastering a track, the biggest issue for me has always been reflections when omni-mic'ing. You need a good room..
Or even better, grab an AEA R88 Bi-Di and use it in the same way.
|
|
shawnh
Junior Member
Posts: 58
|
Post by shawnh on Oct 12, 2021 8:28:08 GMT -6
I have spent quite a bit of time with these issues recently. I mostly record myself and it's a hobby so take my thoughts FWIW. But there are a few things to think about here: -You have 2 sources and 2 mics. It is not going to be possible to "phase align" the 2 recordings (visually or otherwise). A listener is going to be more sensitive to phase issues on the voice - so you could attempt to visually phase align the vocal. Just sing or say something with no guitar at the beginning of the take and then make your phase alignment. Most likely this is going to push the guitar a little more out of phase - but that may not be a bad thing. In the end I tend to find that visually shifting tracks to attempt to correct these phase issues rarely works - you have to use your ears. This is a huge challenge when recording yourself because you can't sit and listen and make small mic position adjustments. I usually spend a lot of time getting mics setup because I have to do little takes, then listen, then make small adjustments, rinse and repeat. I really don't want to be manually moving tracks around - I prefer to get it where I want it with placement. -I find that vocal spill into the guitar mic is a much bigger problem than the other way around. As long as you are not trying to do pitch correction on the vocal. Guitar spill into the vocal mic often is a good thing - becoming part of the acoustic guitar sound overall - obviously within reason. So for this reason I find myself using figure 8 or possibly a drastically angled mic on the acoustic. On the lead vocal I don't feel like you can get away with that as much - I don't love the sound of the figure 8 on vocal (in my room - in a better room it might be fine). I also don't love the sound of a cardioid mic tilted up - it starts to sound really thin and nasal to me. So I live with the guitar spill into the vocal mic. -I was recently working a fun cover thing to try some of these things and some other recording/mixing practice. I attempted to do the Vance Powell/Chris Stapleton thing with 4 mics. I did my best to recreate what he has described as his technique for recording Chris - I don't have his mic locker though  . With 2 sources and 4 mics the potential issues are many. I had a Heiserman h47tube and a Se Voodoo ribbon on the vocals - aligned as closely as possible. I had a Gefell m300 on the neck side of the guitar and a Miktek C7e on the body side. All mics in cardioid. My biggest initial problem was way too much vocal in the M300. So I had to angle it pretty severely - and even then I was getting a surprising amount of vocal. I also can't quite figure out how Vance gets an equilateral triangle in this setup - the geometry never seemed to work quite right. I did end up getting a sound I was fairly happy with using all 4 mics. You can see the setup in the video below. In the end - I decided to overdub the acoustic guitar. I was never 100% happy with the vocal because of the bleed I was getting in the guitar mics. So while you can see the setup in this video - I am not using either guitar mic in the final mix. Here is an earlier mix with all 4 mics - it's not bad. In some ways I like the acoustic guitar sound better here. But I think the vocal sounds better in the final mix. www.dropbox.com/s/widotylkevrclfs/Tear%20Stained%20Eye%20Print%2001.wav?dl=0And here is the final mix (same as video). On this one I re-cut the acoustic guitar with the M300 (neck side) and the Heiserman (body side). There is still a lot of the original acoustic coming through the vocal mics. But it all works I think. www.dropbox.com/s/ty3lnix5vd611c5/Tear%20Stained%20Eye%20Print%2003.wav?dl=0So long winded post - sorry. This stuff is a never ending challenge. |
|
.
. With 2 sources and 4 mics the potential issues are many. I had a Heiserman h47tube and a Se Voodoo ribbon on the vocals - aligned as closely as possible. I had a Gefell m300 on the neck side of the guitar and a Miktek C7e on the body side. All mics in cardioid. My biggest initial problem was way too much vocal in the M300. So I had to angle it pretty severely - and even then I was getting a surprising amount of vocal. I also can't quite figure out how Vance gets an equilateral triangle in this setup - the geometry never seemed to work quite right. I did end up getting a sound I was fairly happy with using all 4 mics. You can see the setup in the video below. In the end - I decided to overdub the acoustic guitar. I was never 100% happy with the vocal because of the bleed I was getting in the guitar mics. So while you can see the setup in this video - I am not using either guitar mic in the final mix.