Optimizing phase relationships with Steve Albini
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2022
- Full video available exclusively on mwtm.org/sa-drums-phase
In this sneak peek, Steve Albini explores the complex world of polarity and phase relationships when recording drums.
Join us at Studios La Fabrique for a comprehensive tutorial on drum recording techniques! Hosted by the legendary rock engineer Steve Albini, this video series dives into great detail on tracking a drum kit in fully analog fashion with a Neve 88R console and Studer A800 MKIII tape machine. Albini takes you through his microphone preferences and positioning for bass drum, snare, toms, overheads, stereo drum kit, and room ambience. He gives concise reasoning for the types of microphone used and their placement, while suggesting suitable alternatives. Furthermore, he reveals his clever processing techniques to reduce bleed, enhance natural reverb, control dynamics, optimize phase relationships, and more. He demonstrates the use of his techniques by recording a live drummer, and draws diagrams on a white board to clearly impart his extensive knowledge! 
Видеоклипы
![Recording Drums With Steve Albini [Third Circle Recordings]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kmP9z-xTRz0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Recording Drums With Steve Albini [Third Circle Recordings]](/img/tr.png)
Full video available exclusively on mwtm.org/sa-drums-phase
RIP Steve. You are a legend for the industry.
I'm re-watching all these vids too.
I've learned so much about recording from this man throughout the years. He truly loved what he did and was more than willing to pass down his knowledge, simply because he loved talking about it. He never seemed annoyed by what I assume was a constant barrage of recording questions. In a world full of genuinely evil people with dogshit ethics, he was steadfast in what he believed was right. There is now a huge Steve Albini sized hole in the universe, but he left behind a legacy of incredible, boundary-pushing music. He was the perfect embodiment of the punk rock ethos. Rest well, Steve.
Extremely well put!
I mean this in the nicest possible way, and with immense respect: A) I can seriously imagine Steve Albini as a very old man in an assisted living facility, holding forth on mic polarity each and every afternoon at 4:30 PM, just before they serve the soup for dinner-with absolutely all residents, myself included, listening intently. B) If and when Steve Albini releases his line of jumpsuits, I will purchase and proudly wear one.
Hahahahahahaha
Steve Albini and Hank 3 made me realize that coverall jumpsuits are a perfectly acceptable piece of clothing
This is both ridiculous, and accurate, at the very same time.
Lmfao... just woke up and was having my morning coffee... some of it has just shot through my nose reading your comment! 🧡👊🤣👍🧡
Coveralls are the most efficient type of clothing, that’s why he wears them, lol
Over the years, I'm pretty sure I've watched every video he's ever been in on youtube. And since he passed, they have been resurfacing in my feed and its been such a great experience revisiting these videos. Steve will be missed, he may be gone, but he's left us with a wonderful catalogue of music, lessons to learn from, and inspiration. Thanks for everything Steve.
I love Steve and it has nothing to do with his audio engineering skills. He's just a super smart, articulate dude with kick-ass ethics.
This is gold. True audio engineering right here.
Albini is the absolute best. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
4:30 He's absolutely right about the Oktava MK012 mic on the snare - I pair mine with a 57 with the capsules aligned and it's always 180 out of phase.
Thanks for the excellent video
Most excellent!! 👏👏👏
Fantastic content.
On many important topics like mic polarity and drum tuning, it either takes dozens of different ways of explaining it or just Steve Albini for me to finally understand what’s going on
we lost a genius, i mean, i dont think people will really feel the impact of that for a while but yeah. incredible body of work he left behind. read some passages from 'our band could be your life' by michael azerrad. albini had a part in the creation of some of the greatest art of the last century- and he did that without any compromise or commercial subjugation. a real gem of a person- he will be missed.
I like to adjust all mics by a variable phase amount, like say 45 degrees, to get them all aligned with the kick mic. This is accomplished ideally via mic placement, but also there are hardware phase adjustment effects or in the box vst. It's very cool seeing the waveform rotate as it's adjusted. This is different than adjusting the timing of tracks btw, but that's another useful thing to consider. If all overhead mics are placed equal distance to the kick beater hit point, as well as the snare hit point, that's another good starting point to get coherent phase during a mix. I believe that's called the Recorder Man technique, but I'm sure a ton of engineers before him used it.
genius info- thank you
so brilliant !
Great information
YES! 👏 So important.
Very interesting! Thanx!
Great video, as always. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your wisom!
I know you're trying to simplify a very complex subject. Phase is most important in context of the entire mix, and obviously not just drums. As there is an EQ-levels-phase interrelationship across frequencies, and phase alignment affects a wide range of aspects of the mix/master, from dynamics and EQ to timbre and environmentals/ambience, the best advice I have found is to do what sounds best.
I am talking not just about the inter-mic phase issues, but also intra-mix dynamic phase relationships. It depends on the music being mixed, the monitoring used and the analog and digital elements in the chain. Being a media lab kind of geek, I created an AI based system which allows me to work creatively within a mix, enabling me to stay creatively/acoustically focused, while the AI identifies complex phase vs frequency level and alignment changes. Even when I enforce a max +/- 1dB change across the master, the difference from just phase can be powerfully impactful. Amazing world we are entering into.
would you share more about that AI system?
Would love to hear more about the AI system you've developed!
As always, you'll find the super experts in the comment section.
Thank you 💫
If you want to test whether the electronics inverting the signal is the cause of your preference, you can leave the electronics the same and just swap the wires feeding the speakers.
Whenever Steve speaks, I generally just say YES SIR, I will do what you say!
I love you Steve
dude is awesome
As a singing drummer, when I’m singing from an omniscient narrator POV, I pan the drums to audience perspective. When I’m singing from my own POV, I pan to drummer’s perspective. It may be too subtle for the majority of listeners, but it still has significance for me.
For me the difference of drums sum phase is pretty noticeable and meaningful. And often drums in solo sounds better when kick waveform goes up (or hit forward from the speakers), but in the mix opposite phase gives more depth and space to the sound, cause often we want drums to be behind the band. That’s for live drums at least. And while flipping the drums phase it’s worth trying to do the same with the bass just in case.
That’s also can be the case with background vocals. When phase of bv are flipped they sounds more behind, contrasting with the lead vocal.
So I often like to toggle phase on any source - drums, vocs, bass, etc - and choose what works better.
I usually notice a small loss in low end when reversing total polarity of a song. It’s nothing crazy but I can definitely hear it in an A/B test and I have. It’s a good little prank for your engineer friends. You show them that they can hear a definite difference between the two samples but then show them that they null.
this guy’s a fuckin’ wizard scientist.
100%, the phase thing is always situation dependant.
particularly with snare and kick drums. and especially if there's a bottom snare mic, and also this applies to resonant head kicks as well.. something like 25% of the time these things sound better reversed.
and I think it has more to do with their relationship with the mix itself more than anything. particularly the bass guitar. and in the snare's case, regular guitars.
but yeah, sometimes things just jive better with the Overheads and room mics when they are flipped. and sometimes it's hard to pin down exactly why.
Always gotta go to the comments to find the real experts
I have a mic of the same Russian brand as the snare top mic that has the same "reversed" polarity. in my model, the output stage is transformer balanced - would that mean that no additional electronics would be necessary to match the standard polarity?" If so, I would think these mics are following a different standard. It worked out for me, I often used mine as a snare bottom mic and didn't need the console phase switch .
Wow.
I’m nearly positive there are some phase issues with the drum track on Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower. But, can you imagine that track with different sounding drums? I know I can’t.
Yea. I can imagine the drums actually have low end.
@@dillontaylor8035 You know it's not a too difficult job to go in there and add modern drum samples to the original track. I bet someone has already done it by now. I wonder why updated versions aren't all over the place in the cultural consciousness.
Steve is a true artist, he doesn’t want any royalties on music he didn’t write.
👏👏👏👏👏👏
So, TLDR?
1. Know what you're using
and 2. use your ears.
If it sounds good, done. If not, refer to 1.
The Noam Chomsky of recording engineers
You can't really adjust the phase if you're recording into a Tascam Model 24 or something because there is no phase switch.
You can buy reverse-phase XLR couplers/adapters, however pointless that sounds. I think they're designed for situations like yours, where you have an oppositely-wired microphone running into a system with no such controls. Idk, might be handy in some use cases.
The older unit, the Tascam DP24SD (and by extension its 32 track sister DP32SD, which I own) has phase inversion for each track and input.
Luckily, nobody is recording into a Tascam Model 24.
@@waytospergtherebro This isn't true. I use a model 24 very frequeny. I switch between that and my MS16 on a day to day basis.
Stephen Albinikision III
Super interesting.
🤔 What would happen if you recorded a piece of music, made a copy, reversed the polarity and then played it simultaneously with the original?
Silence? 😎
Yep
In a DAW, if you play the exact same recording at the exact same time at the exact same level 180 degrees out of phase, the audio cancels itself out. If you're interested, you could easily do this experiment to confirm it for yourself.
I know Steve ... and I'm 8 years younger than, and don't die my hair ... my hair is silver ...
pense que era Alvaro Henriquez
Polarity.
"I don't want to learn anything new"
-Steve Albini
(I'll never forget him saying that horrible line)
Watch some other video then.
Context is important. He doesn’t want to learn something new in terms of his well established workflow. He obviously discovers something new everyday, but you’d have to assist him to uncover all of that knowledge.
I have this cheap shitty Nady condenser that I like to throw on snare sometimes.. and I always forget it's polarity is reversed. (it's pair that it came with is not haha)
Huh?
Jesse, what the %@$ are you talking about?
I wonder if he optimized his relationship with Tyler The Creator
But Steve - we're not actually working in real 3 dimensional space. We're mimicking 3 dimensional space with a pair of 2 dimensional membranes (speakers). And when the membranes are pushed (to create the positive side of the wave) and pulled (to create the negative side) at the same time, the two opposing forces cancel each other out. So even though our ears are very capable of perceiving all these different pressures of air moving in different directions, the technology we're using to mimic that isn't quite as capable of reproducing that.
These things don't concern me so let's talk about it for 6 minutes.
His deliberately anti fascist haircut 😂☺️😔😌
ITS SAFE TO TAKE OUR MASKS OFF?!?! 😂😂😂😂what a joke this guy has become
Awww, you think anyone cares about your opinion.
@@josephmartin8169 heart attacks were not killing many non smoking 61 year olds before 2021. Odd
@@josephmartin8169apparently you cared enough to leave a reply 😂
@@EdwinDekker71 Haha, that emoji - and that ancient comeback! Nothing like getting "roasted" by a hack ten-year-old.
My kit is minimal as possible (3 pc)and Use one sm57 overhead and one beta 52a bass just floating out the port hole.Some compression,eq from mixer and oh yeah good tuning is key don't want to sound like your hitting wet cardboard.🤖🪐📡