It matters a great deal particularly in something like an M-S pair. If you introduce a delay on one side of the figure of 8 signal by applying a phase shift plugin they will not be exactly 180 degrees out of phase. This will result in comb-filtering.

If you have a stereo signal of anything try nudging one side by one sample and listen to what happens. Most plugins have a delay of about 64 samples. As I said before your better off rendering the plugins offline by using their audiosuite equivalent.

I use Steinberg's Nuendo when doing DAW mixing. It has a phase switch built into it's mixer (one of several reasons it is superior to Pro Tools).

Zoom in on the waveforms in question and LOOK at the phase.

In tracking: Record a few seconds, zoom in on the waveforms and check the phase. Select the distance between the two out of phase tracks to determine the number of milliseconds that the tracks differ. Readjust your microphones and rerecord (based on a calculator like this: http://www.doctorproaudio.com/doctor/ca ... -distancia) I find this extremely helpful for mic placement on the bass cabinet when I’m also running a DI.

In mixing: Zoom in on the waveforms in question and nudge the tracks to be perfectly in phase.

Or you can "Use yer ears, Man!"

Unless I am mistaken (good chance), a phase switch is best suited for fixing 180 phase. Nudging the tracks gives one better control over wishy washy half phase problems. Sort of a variable phase switch, if you will.

Still, it would be kind of “retro” to have an old fashioned phase button on the PT mixer...

that's funny, because the "invert" function has been standard on Cool Edit (now Adobe Audition) going back all the way to CoolEdit 96 and currently is still standard. not a plug-in or anything, just a menu command. granted this is only for use in reversing the polarity of an already-recorded track, and it is permanently applied to the track, not processed realtime or anything... maybe the theory is that if you want to reverse the polarity of your input signal before tracking it is that you'll just use the polarity reverse button on your mixer? and if you reverse the polarity and don't like the sound of it, you can just click "undo"? beats me. i never get to do recordings so complex that i need anything like that.

Barry Phipps wrote:Zoom in on the waveforms in question and LOOK at the phase.

In tracking: Record a few seconds, zoom in on the waveforms and check the phase. Select the distance between the two out of phase tracks to determine the number of milliseconds that the tracks differ. Readjust your microphones and rerecord (based on a calculator like this: http://www.doctorproaudio.com/doctor/ca ... -distancia) I find this extremely helpful for mic placement on the bass cabinet when I’m also running a DI.

In mixing: Zoom in on the waveforms in question and nudge the tracks to be perfectly in phase.

Or you can "Use yer ears, Man!"

Unless I am mistaken (good chance), a phase switch is best suited for fixing 180 phase. Nudging the tracks gives one better control over wishy washy half phase problems. Sort of a variable phase switch, if you will.

Still, it would be kind of “retro” to have an old fashioned phase button on the PT mixer...

The problem with protools is not just latency incurred from input but also the latency from plugins which varies on the type and amount of plugins on a track. In things like an M-S pair you need to flip the phase exactly 180 degrees but as stated by inserting the phase shift plugin in prtools you will experience phase differences because of the delay the plugin itself has induced. A simple phase flip button would be a lot simpler.

sndo wrote:No HTML allowed on this forum? Boo!

Why do you want HTML? What would you do with it that you can't already with the options that are available to you when you make a message anyway? You can make stuff bold, italic, underlined, quoted, code-blocked, listed (in two different ways), include images, urls, different colored text, different sized text. Plus, you can get creative.

So, why the fuck would you want HTML when everyone else seems to be fine without it, and it would be a potential security risk?

"Boo" to you!

russ

The problem with protools is not just latency incurred from input but also the latency from plugins which varies on the type and amount of plugins on a track. In things like an M-S pair you need to flip the phase exactly 180 degrees but as stated by inserting the phase shift plugin in prtools you will experience phase differences because of the delay the plugin itself has induced. A simple phase flip button would be a lot simpler.

Good point. I use an MS decoder, so this hadn't occured to me.