I really like PI. After experimenting I ended up using it differently than I thought I would at first. At first I thought it would be good to give more weight to the big ticket items like bass, kick and snare so they really cut through. However, what ended up working better for me is turning the weight on the loudest tracks down so I can turn up the volume more for the satisfying feel of energy without covering up all the other details. Then I turn up the weight on the quieter, more detailed sounds so I can turn them down but still hear all the details.
I wish you had tested this plugin on two layered sounds of the same source, too. Like a double vocal takes, two pianos/guitars/violins or something like that. In these cases, dynamic phase rotation should have a much bigger impact on the sound than it does with percussion instruments.
@@citadelo5ricks fascinating. I usually avoid double sources, whether DI's or mics, because the phase bothers me... I have a love hate thing with bottom snare mic that's the one I always use as well... but this is good to hear.
This plugin is my secret weapon for mixing. After I'm done mixing I throw this on EVERY track at the end of the chain. It brings clarity and focus that no other plugin can achieve. This is not just for live recorded instruments, although it makes sense that it's mostly used for that. Hear me out. I used to use it like in this video...on live drums mainly. Later, I was mixing a song that was fully recorded in a garage. It made sense to use this on every track then. After that mix, an idea started to take over me...the idea that EVERYTHING has polarity. I believe that a synth bass and a vocal recording, although have nothing to do with each other in the recording process, can be out of phase. A speaker produces sounds by vibrating inwards and outwards. The polarity of a track is basically telling the speaker how to vibrate. Some tracks might be telling the speaker to move inwards while others tell it to go outwards. The sum of these differences is the final pattern of vibrations. Now...what if all tracks were "in phase" and collectively tell the speaker to move inwards in unison and outwards in unison. Then you get way clearer mixes, punchier mixes, cleaner mixes, and focused mixes. That's my personal theory based solely on too much time to think about these things and no actual or factual research lol. It makes a lot of sense to me, and the results speak for themselves. Pi is on every mix of mine and in every track of mine. I think it gives my mixes the upper hand against other mixes. Expensive, yes. However there's no competition for this plugin out there and it's extremely good at what it does. If you use it the way I do then I think it's worth every penny. If you only use it for live recorded instrument phase issues, then I think you're better off manually fixing phase.
P.S. It is not a perfect plugin. It sometimes does introduce artifacts, like a wobbling sound. Specially on guitars. So, in rare cases I do remove it from certain tracks due to these artifacts. Also, due to the fact that every instantiation of the plugin is interconnected and communicating with each other. I recommend to instantiate it on your tracks AFTER you're done mixing to avoid delay compensation errors. Experiment with the knobs and with grouping. This plugin is very intricate and can do cool things like subgrouping.
@@rickylegend Thanks for your reply. Ah man, it's a bummer because I loved what it did to my tracks but its too CPU intensive for me. Do you actually put it on every track or just the ones that have multiple mikes from the same sources?
@@evanmcgregor3758 yeah on every audio track, like @G. O. says, don’t put it on any auxiliaries, busses, etc. just the actual audio tracks. even though its main focus is for multimic’ed instruments, i put it on everything because of my crazy theory i explain in the paragraph above. my update is that lately i rarely use it because it started to misbehave more often with latency and it was frustrating. my frustration was more than the punchiness and clarity it gives lol
when it comes to pop, this thing is magic. I get what you're saying about the more natural fell of when things are slightly out but this plug-in takes so much effort away from multi-mic recordings and when you're trying to get a clean mix in most cases. Sounds Radix is a really great company.
I remember back in the day...musicians and engineers used to work really hard together on tuning drums and instruments so this phasing effect would be minimal because tape was involved. I can definitely hear the differences and it's certainly a great tool for today's DAWs. But again...just a tool for small corrections like you said before. Without a good track to start with might hinder the effect. I like it!
mcsstudios101: thank you for that comment, and of course I agree, there’s no excuse for not doing due diligence when recording the source. I’m thanking you because when I see “I remember back in the day...” in the comments of a RUclips video on pro audio, I immediately assume Luddite/audio flat-earther and my blood pressure goes up. All due respect!
@@russellszabadosaka5-pindin849 all due respect...not flat in the least...definitely not opposed to any of it at all...I was simply bringing back an experience...I did say I liked the plugin. I would use it.
mcsstudios101 yes, I know you said you liked it and I was glad you did. I’ve been recording music since the late 80’s and some guys I came up with are still complaining about digital recording in general, they hate DAWs, they hate this & that. I assumed you’re close to my age (52) and I was happy that you liked the plugin because it’s the kind of thing that would drive those other guys nuts. I was happy you didn’t say something like “everything’s too easy now, back in my day...” LOL. Now that I’m re-reading my original comment, it was poorly worded. I gotta work on that. ;-)
@@russellszabadosaka5-pindin849 I agree. I'm going to be 50...and same here...music in the eighties and what an amazing time. I have grown with all of the tech through it's evolution and stuck with it. I'm totally Digital now...but I respect old school techniques and new. I would never knock a product or another's work. We are on the same team as far as I'm concerned. My hope in life is have to shared everything I know to pass down. Knowledge is key...I enjoy music arts and film very much and always looking for new ways and things...the reason why I like his channel.
Listening here on small PC speakers and I can definitely hear what it's doing. A drum tone when out of phase using two mics, will present 'phase shift' as in the 'Doppler effect' where the wave front arrives just early or late in respect to the sound source speed. This will change the drum tone(pitch). The PI aligns the two wave fronts and you can hear the pitch change, if you hear with perfect relative pitch, you will surely hear it. Aligned, I also thought it sounded better...especially with pitch. With the room mics, I didn't hear much is any difference, mainly because of the room's diffusion.
I totally understand "the glue" you speak of, but something about the way this works is a really nice starting point. Almost as if I would rather render the drum tracks with the plugin as the first insert. This way, I can have a little more control on what I can throw a little out of line, like some of the midrange in the room that keeps it in a space and adds a sense of bigness without, say, sacrificing punch on the snare and either sufficing to make it super thin due to cutting boxy low mids from the phase misalignment and having to more artificially add them later. I quite liked what the plugin was doing because it felt like I would have to do less to bring the sound together to more of a final product
I think, when you said, "without the plugin, there's a glue and blend, when everything's not organized perfectly...". Would be nice if they added a "humanize' option to this, some sort of algorithm to make it perfect sometimes, and perfectly aligned at times. Would be nice if you could automate the "not perfectly aligned" to activate in the verse or chorus...something like that.
Very interesting plugin. I liked most of the examples with processing, listening mostly with engineer's ears. However, with these well recorded tracks - as many of you point out - one might go either way. Approaching a bit of science maybe: I should think we experience less than ideal phase correlated sound all the time, so our auditory cortex has no problem - in most circumstances! I bet we've all encountered tracks and mixes or rooms and frequencies that can really ruin the sound, even throw our sense of balance off a bit. Seems like perfect and easy tool for handling the worst of cases - although I would like to see it tested first. Hooray for the content, thanks, keep up the good work :)
a good analogy is quantisation....which pulls things on beat but can end making it more sterile than a more human feel. Pi does the same, pulls thing into line but this can end up removing desirable charachter
yeah. like the plugin on...if you want tight centered drums. when it was off you could hear it wasn't phase aligned. It sounded 'wider' and off set. Its easier to hear with headphones I think. It might be problematic when listening in mono with that type of sound. As much as I hate waves plugins, the time align plug works great cuz you can control what you're doing completely. plus its not active so all of a sudden the plug starts doing something different cuz there's different audio content. I steer clear of automatic plugins. maybe be geeky and break out the scope and really see what its doing....or just use do what sounds good and move on. A hit record is not made on phase alignment. I'd pick my battles.
the room mic is not meant to align, so the processor needs to be told it should not seek the starting point of a drum hit, but merely prevent major canceling in case it happens at all. it can shift the waveform just anywhere within one period of the lowest frequency, but not further. if it can align more than one frequency at a time, then even better. I had guitar and bass randomly antiphase already, but turning the polarity switch for some sections did the job well enough.
Nice review. I really liked what it was doing in general. One thought I had about your comment regarding the glue. We are used to working within a framework of things not being that well phase aligned. It even effects our choices of mics and placements not to mention processing in general and balance with the faders. Is the glue issue or feeling of the lack of it that you noted due to the actual processing or our lack of experience with this process? I say this because when I "grew up" in the industry we didn't really have the easy capacity to time correct kick drum mics. Kick in and kick out I mean. With that we just learned to find a placement that was less notably negatively effectual in terms or relative phase between the two channels. It is really not just a phase issue as it is caused by a time displacement. Years later consoles started coming out with a delay function on every channel. How cool was that? The thing is we suddenly got to compensate for the time displacement issue more readily. The thing is in an analogue world you only have so many processors available to you at a given time and as a mix engineer you have to (subjectively of course) prioritize their deployment. Here is the thing. I was not used to hearing kick drum that in phase so my mind pictured a kick drum that was less focused sounding. With them aligned like that I found it hard to make it sit in the mix the way I wanted it to because for me at the time it moved the kick drum often too forward in the mix and I found myself needing to compress the attack of the instrument in order to tame it something I rarely had a problem with before. If anything trying to get better definition was more an issue for me not less. Again this applies to mic choices and placements in general. As an example in the past I would typically shy away from putting a 47 FET type mic on the front head of a kick drum in a live application but with the added definition it can be a far more usable tone. Bleed is definitely a concern but less so because the direct sonic is far more focused and therefore requires less level in the mix off of the mic. Again this is not something applicable in every application but an example of what I mean. New tools require us time and effort to learn how to work with them.
This plugin is great if you layer multiple samples. Of course you should align them and flip polarity to get the best sound. But adding this at the end of say a snare group or kick drum group brings the weight of the drums to another level.
WHO GAVE A THUMBS DOWN? please tell us the reason you could ever not like a video this straight forward honest and to the point ..... Please im dying to know the reason, i bet my left nut you havent got one . good video man as usual ...... thx for explaining some things in detail that we cant really here as youtube compression dulls our sound our end , wicked stuff
@@Whiteseastudio 100% , they should be grateful . There about 5 channels on the whole of youtube that tell the truth and be honest and tell you what you need to know. it makes your head spin trying to find skilled videos that actually explain things properly .... Thats why i feature your channel on mine , so people dont waste their time all day listening to amatures who do nothing but tell lies :p
interesting,it seemed to almost learn as time went on or perhaps the brains adjusting to the reordering on the sounds into their compartments... it was noticeable... like a blurry image coming into focus. I can see the use in unmasking also ... cool
The phase interactions are part of what makes it sound lively.. If you make everything line up perfectly it starts getting closer to the qualities of a drum machine. It is more of an aesthetic choice than the "it's just better" mantra given by the plugin creator.
It's also worth it to look if you can align a part of a drum kit by just delaying one of the sources (usually using overheads as a reference), before resorting to something that actively changes the phase of a track.
I bought this plugin two years ago and it introduces artifacts (wobbles, not sure if it's intermodulation), especially on drum groups. I never used it again. Come to think of it, sometimes it introduces benefit but in most cases I find this benefit minimal, the tradeoff it comes with is actually far more detrimental to me.
I think the real test is to mix through it. Insert it before you start the mix and choose to either have it first or last in the chain as you add more plugins. Then try do mix it again without and see which one sounds more like a "perfectly recorded kit" and which one is easier to get perfect. This test shows what it does and sounds like, but doesn't really show how it will work within the context of doing a mix.
@L_ A_ I think it's better if the sound is in phase. If it sounds to "flat" for you, you can add that warmth/width/color back but in a controlled matter
Awesome video as always - thank you! I was curious to hear how this effects the mix if you put it on all the instruments, and decide which has more priority.
It works the other way around :D Maximum correlation means that 2 signals are the same, basically. That is a correlation of 1. If there's no correlation, it is a correlation of 0. 2 completely random signals have a correlation of 0. However 2 signals that are the same but are in inverse phase, they have a correlation of -1. But I suspect you know all this and I took the bait :)
every decision is a tradeoff. in music production at least :D as a dnb producer, i like tight transients and I use the melda "auto align" for years now. helps sometimes when you layer a lot of drum sounds.
Very useful tool, and indispensable if you're stuck with subpar tracks. I've been recording for 25 years and sometimes I don't nail drum recordings perfectly, and there are some phase issues. I do appreciate the point you made that basically says, having things technically correct is not necessarily, "correct". Ultimately what feels the best is the best 😉👍
I just used it for a track with two acoustic guitars. Sounded good i thought. Till i put Pi on it then i realized they were cancelling each other out alot. The change was dramatic and very good.
It's maximum phase correlation. If you have the exact same track 2 times and cross-correlate them, you get a correlation factor of 1. Flip one of them and you get -1, which is exactly out of phase by 180 degree. So maximum correlation ( here 1 ) is the way to go.
Good video. I started to prefer with the plugin when you added the room mics.. the snare decay became smoother. If this would stop people putting drummers onto the grid, it should be handed out for free! ha ha
I noticed the biggest difference in the reverb tail… the verb/room sound just sounds a little bit more present 🤷♂️ I use auto align on overheads/acoustic mics and just bought pi. It’s great for people who don’t have a professionally designed recording space. I have gotten great results.
Great review! I completely agree. I bought this plugin when I was mixing a recording that someone else had tracked and completely botched. It really helped me quickly get the mix done, but it was an extreme case. Normally I don't lake the sound and the random phase cancellation that's not from bad mic technique is natural and I kind of like it. So it's a good tool, but rarely useful if you know what you're doing.
actually, the change is huge, when there were some phase issues before, and the mix had attempted to overcome these issues. with the processing, these boosts become obsolete. so practically, you need to remix, or have the tool in place from the beginning. ..my humble 2 cents..
Works real nice to add some extra tightness into bass guitar + kick drum combo or to distorted electric guitar + fuller sounding snare. It can even help finding better place for a lower male vocal in a mix. But this plugin can introduce unnatural phase warbling artefacts too, and if that happens, it is not easy to finetune it so that it still gives the desired effect...
I would think you could end up losing some stereo imaging with phase alignment. These are the tricks we use to create stereo field right? a few ms off on one channel can make it seem like it's coming from somewhere else.
I think you also have to hear in the context of the mix not just within the context of the kit. Sometimes when you have the instrument solo'd and you phase align it may not be as desirable in the context of the full mix.. it kind of "depends" It would be nice if we could dial in the amount of phase alignment... sort of like a focus on a camera. Great video!
I think there is a little bit a volume boost that is making it sound better tbh. Not that there isnt other effects but I think there is some volume boost as well that might need to be dealt with in a blind test.
I use Polarity Maximizer. I'd rather make sure polarity is more accurate than phase alignment. If you have a room mic for drums it should be delayed in phase because that's the sound of distance.
Thanks for reviewing this. I think phase alignment is crucial to a solid mix because otherwise you can go hunting for a problem that is very hard to discern - example, is it frequency masking that is 'the problem..? But having Pi on each track is one less thing to worry about! I just wonder how much CPU and RAM it might hog in a plus-30 track project though. All transients need to start precisely together if mix accuracy matters to you, and I get your point about technical vs real world. There are producers who hate the thought of accuracy to this degree. But at least we have a choice and that can only help us. Have you done a review yet of Vocal Align by Waves? Would so appreciate that and another would be the Arturia Plate140/EMT140 plate reverb! Thanks again for another entertaining as well as informative upload. Very interesting to see what other people thought of this in the comments!
I think this plugin would be good for particular things, like maybe not on *everything*, but on different parts of a mix suited for the effect it gives. I feel like it could create a relationship between things, but in a different way. Also, just now trying the trial out - great for psytrance bass lines, likely also great for EDM.
Sounds like a propper misunderstanding of "phase". Phase alignment (or misalignment) can not happen between *different* sound sources (like bass and kick or snare and toms etc.). It can only occur due to multiple measurements of the same source and subsequently adding those together. That is what the word "phase" refers to (time-differences expressed in numbers of a period). Everything else (e.g. adjusting "phase" between kick and bass) is very different because it is much more unlikely for correlations to occur between different sound sources. A kick for instance typically drops in pitch, while a bass stays rather constant (for the length of a note); so there's only a tiny moment, when both "pitches" really correlate and can even have something resembling a phase-relationship. I would never *dynamically* time-adjust bass/kick to avoid such a (rare) difficulty; just adjust the track delay if really needed (or, if its only happening here and there, do some cutting/adjusting). Anyways, the differences in sound are subtle. If you ask me, quite snake oily (even if it might technically really do something).
I guess it depends on how painstaking you are about your recordings . I think over a +24 track project there will be serious phase alignment issues resulting in frequency masking which might be mistaken for mud. Micro voltage fluctuations can affect timing so its doubtful any mix will be truly accurately aligned (?) If you produce with midi instruments and sequencers you can lock everything to time codes and minimise timing inconsistencies. I think Pi s a great solution no matter how you record. I just wonder how much of a CPU hog it would be over an entire project! I look fwd to trying it out and wonder if it could be used on an aux group bus instead of every track insert?
So then you have the phase of your base tones aligned... But the subharmonics phases could still be unaligned an cancel each other out? Or is this plugin doing some FFT and aligns every frequency band?
Welp, I use vsti for my drums.. soo I don't think I need this in my production, though it doing its job really well.. btw you should check out SurferEQ from SoundRadix, new eq with unique quirk
Why didn't you check Pi on different elements of a mix (like kick and bass)? I also sense a misunderstanding of what this plugin does. From what I've read and tested Auto Align takes care of time aligning one source captured in different positions whereas Pi zones in on frequency ranges and their interactions. For example if a snare hit comes 10 ms later in a room mic than in a close mic it will not try to align the transients but rather find a maximum summation point by adjusting timing and polarity of specific frequency ranges (similar to what an all pass filter would do, but dynamically). So with that it can also counteract phase shifts caused by filters, which is super useful when for example you want to apply a HPF on a track that is a part of multi miced source without changing phase correlation between microphones.
Any time I start looking at these kinds of plugins I talk to any of the old timers I work with and they say "Do you know how many great records were made without any of this bullshit?"
Has anyone else demo’d or bought this yet? I got a demo yesterday and gave it a go on a current mix I’m doing. I definitely noticed an improvement in sound but unfortunately my CPU went crazy. It went from about 30% before PI to about 50-60% but there was also constant dropouts and glitches. So considering I wasn’t even close to finalising my mix I don’t think it’s useable. I also have a brand new MacBook Pro which otherwise runs beautifully! Anyone else have same problem? P.s. I had about 5 instances on drums and 3 on guitars
I'd argue that you hear less 'glue' with the phase-corrected tracks because the transients are so much bigger, so the overheads and their sense of space suddenly feel undermixed. With the phase aligned tracks, you can blend the close mics reallllly low, giving you a more blended/ambient sound but with way better tone and imaging. I got no love for hashy/comby cymbals and snare wires. 😠
Right, which makes their claim a bit misleading since, if one phase is up when the other is down, then that is also a (inverse) correlation. I think, what they really mean is a correlation with a positive correlation coefficient.
@@DiAL033 Their claim kind of still holds since a inverse (flipped phase) correlation has a correlation factor of -1. The maximum of 1 and -1 is still 1. Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
What kind of Darude Sandstorm is this? I think that this is very quick trance song from the 90's, very unsimilar to that you're using it in this video? Oh and another excellent and very educational video from you. I have some experience with av receivers which can correct the phase between the speaker units: bass, midrange and tweeters and the effect is similar to this. Sound is better defined and controlled especially in bass region and everything is more punchy and also more dynamic.
If something correlates, it means the two signals function similarly, so "maximum correlation" is correct.
I really like PI. After experimenting I ended up using it differently than I thought I would at first. At first I thought it would be good to give more weight to the big ticket items like bass, kick and snare so they really cut through. However, what ended up working better for me is turning the weight on the loudest tracks down so I can turn up the volume more for the satisfying feel of energy without covering up all the other details. Then I turn up the weight on the quieter, more detailed sounds so I can turn them down but still hear all the details.
I notice a difference in definition, kick and snare are tighter, each timbre is more defined, more lively. Great for organic instruments.
I wish you had tested this plugin on two layered sounds of the same source, too. Like a double vocal takes, two pianos/guitars/violins or something like that. In these cases, dynamic phase rotation should have a much bigger impact on the sound than it does with percussion instruments.
This!
Just tried with 3 voices, amazing difference. Harsh moving resonances...GONE. Literally, no adjustments. Slap it on 3 tracks, put in group, done.
@@citadelo5ricks fascinating. I usually avoid double sources, whether DI's or mics, because the phase bothers me... I have a love hate thing with bottom snare mic that's the one I always use as well... but this is good to hear.
This plugin is my secret weapon for mixing. After I'm done mixing I throw this on EVERY track at the end of the chain. It brings clarity and focus that no other plugin can achieve. This is not just for live recorded instruments, although it makes sense that it's mostly used for that. Hear me out. I used to use it like in this video...on live drums mainly. Later, I was mixing a song that was fully recorded in a garage. It made sense to use this on every track then. After that mix, an idea started to take over me...the idea that EVERYTHING has polarity. I believe that a synth bass and a vocal recording, although have nothing to do with each other in the recording process, can be out of phase. A speaker produces sounds by vibrating inwards and outwards. The polarity of a track is basically telling the speaker how to vibrate. Some tracks might be telling the speaker to move inwards while others tell it to go outwards. The sum of these differences is the final pattern of vibrations. Now...what if all tracks were "in phase" and collectively tell the speaker to move inwards in unison and outwards in unison. Then you get way clearer mixes, punchier mixes, cleaner mixes, and focused mixes. That's my personal theory based solely on too much time to think about these things and no actual or factual research lol. It makes a lot of sense to me, and the results speak for themselves. Pi is on every mix of mine and in every track of mine. I think it gives my mixes the upper hand against other mixes. Expensive, yes. However there's no competition for this plugin out there and it's extremely good at what it does. If you use it the way I do then I think it's worth every penny. If you only use it for live recorded instrument phase issues, then I think you're better off manually fixing phase.
P.S. It is not a perfect plugin. It sometimes does introduce artifacts, like a wobbling sound. Specially on guitars. So, in rare cases I do remove it from certain tracks due to these artifacts. Also, due to the fact that every instantiation of the plugin is interconnected and communicating with each other. I recommend to instantiate it on your tracks AFTER you're done mixing to avoid delay compensation errors. Experiment with the knobs and with grouping. This plugin is very intricate and can do cool things like subgrouping.
Do you have CPU issues? I tried the demo and only about 6 instances made the CPU spike and I had dropouts and glitches
@@evanmcgregor3758 nope not really. sometimes i have latency issues but that's due to my crazy routing.
@@rickylegend Thanks for your reply. Ah man, it's a bummer because I loved what it did to my tracks but its too CPU intensive for me. Do you actually put it on every track or just the ones that have multiple mikes from the same sources?
@@evanmcgregor3758 yeah on every audio track, like @G. O. says, don’t put it on any auxiliaries, busses, etc. just the actual audio tracks. even though its main focus is for multimic’ed instruments, i put it on everything because of my crazy theory i explain in the paragraph above. my update is that lately i rarely use it because it started to misbehave more often with latency and it was frustrating. my frustration was more than the punchiness and clarity it gives lol
The difference on headphones (DT880s) is rather huge, wow!
Tbh, to me it sound better with this plugin on, so I hope they have a sale soon and I can buy it. Thanks for the video!
it was much better with
There are so many ways to get better definition.... Just check your mix in mono regularly..... This plug-in should be well under $100.
@@ramspencer5492 Maybe but for the novice its gods own magic
@@annother3350 $250 for just this for a novice? Woah.... So many places that money can go!
@@ramspencer5492 oh sure, its probably over priced -- id need to hear more examples
when it comes to pop, this thing is magic. I get what you're saying about the more natural fell of when things are slightly out but this plug-in takes so much effort away from multi-mic recordings and when you're trying to get a clean mix in most cases. Sounds Radix is a really great company.
1:47 Correlation is what you want, so more of it/it being closer is a good thing.
I remember back in the day...musicians and engineers used to work really hard together on tuning drums and instruments so this phasing effect would be minimal because tape was involved. I can definitely hear the differences and it's certainly a great tool for today's DAWs. But again...just a tool for small corrections like you said before. Without a good track to start with might hinder the effect. I like it!
mcsstudios101: thank you for that comment, and of course I agree, there’s no excuse for not doing due diligence when recording the source. I’m thanking you because when I see “I remember back in the day...” in the comments of a RUclips video on pro audio, I immediately assume Luddite/audio flat-earther and my blood pressure goes up. All due respect!
@@russellszabadosaka5-pindin849 all due respect...not flat in the least...definitely not opposed to any of it at all...I was simply bringing back an experience...I did say I liked the plugin. I would use it.
mcsstudios101 yes, I know you said you liked it and I was glad you did. I’ve been recording music since the late 80’s and some guys I came up with are still complaining about digital recording in general, they hate DAWs, they hate this & that. I assumed you’re close to my age (52) and I was happy that you liked the plugin because it’s the kind of thing that would drive those other guys nuts. I was happy you didn’t say something like “everything’s too easy now, back in my day...” LOL.
Now that I’m re-reading my original comment, it was poorly worded. I gotta work on that. ;-)
@@russellszabadosaka5-pindin849 I agree. I'm going to be 50...and same here...music in the eighties and what an amazing time. I have grown with all of the tech through it's evolution and stuck with it. I'm totally Digital now...but I respect old school techniques and new. I would never knock a product or another's work. We are on the same team as far as I'm concerned. My hope in life is have to shared everything I know to pass down. Knowledge is key...I enjoy music arts and film very much and always looking for new ways and things...the reason why I like his channel.
Listening here on small PC speakers and I can definitely hear what it's doing. A drum tone when out of phase using two mics, will present 'phase shift' as in the 'Doppler effect' where the wave front arrives just early or late in respect to the sound source speed. This will change the drum tone(pitch). The PI aligns the two wave fronts and you can hear the pitch change, if you hear with perfect relative pitch, you will surely hear it. Aligned, I also thought it sounded better...especially with pitch. With the room mics, I didn't hear much is any difference, mainly because of the room's diffusion.
I totally understand "the glue" you speak of, but something about the way this works is a really nice starting point. Almost as if I would rather render the drum tracks with the plugin as the first insert. This way, I can have a little more control on what I can throw a little out of line, like some of the midrange in the room that keeps it in a space and adds a sense of bigness without, say, sacrificing punch on the snare and either sufficing to make it super thin due to cutting boxy low mids from the phase misalignment and having to more artificially add them later. I quite liked what the plugin was doing because it felt like I would have to do less to bring the sound together to more of a final product
I think, when you said, "without the plugin, there's a glue and blend, when everything's not organized perfectly...". Would be nice if they added a "humanize' option to this, some sort of algorithm to make it perfect sometimes, and perfectly aligned at times. Would be nice if you could automate the "not perfectly aligned" to activate in the verse or chorus...something like that.
Very interesting plugin. I liked most of the examples with processing, listening mostly with engineer's ears. However, with these well recorded tracks - as many of you point out - one might go either way.
Approaching a bit of science maybe: I should think we experience less than ideal phase correlated sound all the time, so our auditory cortex has no problem - in most circumstances! I bet we've all encountered tracks and mixes or rooms and frequencies that can really ruin the sound, even throw our sense of balance off a bit.
Seems like perfect and easy tool for handling the worst of cases - although I would like to see it tested first.
Hooray for the content, thanks, keep up the good work :)
a good analogy is quantisation....which pulls things on beat but can end making it more sterile than a more human feel. Pi does the same, pulls thing into line but this can end up removing desirable charachter
@11:00 the very organized sound that plug in give you can also increased final's master more volume (LUFS).
yeah. like the plugin on...if you want tight centered drums. when it was off you could hear it wasn't phase aligned. It sounded 'wider' and off set. Its easier to hear with headphones I think. It might be problematic when listening in mono with that type of sound. As much as I hate waves plugins, the time align plug works great cuz you can control what you're doing completely. plus its not active so all of a sudden the plug starts doing something different cuz there's different audio content. I steer clear of automatic plugins. maybe be geeky and break out the scope and really see what its doing....or just use do what sounds good and move on. A hit record is not made on phase alignment. I'd pick my battles.
you didn't mix these drums bad, but the plugin still really improved it. amazing.
the room mic is not meant to align, so the processor needs to be told it should not seek the starting point of a drum hit, but merely prevent major canceling in case it happens at all.
it can shift the waveform just anywhere within one period of the lowest frequency, but not further. if it can align more than one frequency at a time, then even better.
I had guitar and bass randomly antiphase already, but turning the polarity switch for some sections did the job well enough.
Nice review. I really liked what it was doing in general. One thought I had about your comment regarding the glue. We are used to working within a framework of things not being that well phase aligned. It even effects our choices of mics and placements not to mention processing in general and balance with the faders. Is the glue issue or feeling of the lack of it that you noted due to the actual processing or our lack of experience with this process? I say this because when I "grew up" in the industry we didn't really have the easy capacity to time correct kick drum mics. Kick in and kick out I mean. With that we just learned to find a placement that was less notably negatively effectual in terms or relative phase between the two channels. It is really not just a phase issue as it is caused by a time displacement. Years later consoles started coming out with a delay function on every channel. How cool was that? The thing is we suddenly got to compensate for the time displacement issue more readily. The thing is in an analogue world you only have so many processors available to you at a given time and as a mix engineer you have to (subjectively of course) prioritize their deployment. Here is the thing. I was not used to hearing kick drum that in phase so my mind pictured a kick drum that was less focused sounding. With them aligned like that I found it hard to make it sit in the mix the way I wanted it to because for me at the time it moved the kick drum often too forward in the mix and I found myself needing to compress the attack of the instrument in order to tame it something I rarely had a problem with before. If anything trying to get better definition was more an issue for me not less. Again this applies to mic choices and placements in general. As an example in the past I would typically shy away from putting a 47 FET type mic on the front head of a kick drum in a live application but with the added definition it can be a far more usable tone. Bleed is definitely a concern but less so because the direct sonic is far more focused and therefore requires less level in the mix off of the mic. Again this is not something applicable in every application but an example of what I mean. New tools require us time and effort to learn how to work with them.
This plugin is great if you layer multiple samples. Of course you should align them and flip polarity to get the best sound. But adding this at the end of say a snare group or kick drum group brings the weight of the drums to another level.
WHO GAVE A THUMBS DOWN? please tell us the reason you could ever not like a video this straight forward honest and to the point ..... Please im dying to know the reason, i bet my left nut you havent got one . good video man as usual ...... thx for explaining some things in detail that we cant really here as youtube compression dulls our sound our end , wicked stuff
They thumbs down because of envy or jealousy
@@Whiteseastudio 100% , they should be grateful . There about 5 channels on the whole of youtube that tell the truth and be honest and tell you what you need to know. it makes your head spin trying to find skilled videos that actually explain things properly .... Thats why i feature your channel on mine , so people dont waste their time all day listening to amatures who do nothing but tell lies :p
Works a lot better than the first auto align plugin👍🏽
it’s even noticeable with iPad’s loudspeaker ...
interesting,it seemed to almost learn as time went on or perhaps the brains adjusting to the reordering on the sounds into their compartments... it was noticeable... like a blurry image coming into focus. I can see the use in unmasking also ... cool
The phase interactions are part of what makes it sound lively.. If you make everything line up perfectly it starts getting closer to the qualities of a drum machine. It is more of an aesthetic choice than the "it's just better" mantra given by the plugin creator.
It's also worth it to look if you can align a part of a drum kit by just delaying one of the sources (usually using overheads as a reference), before resorting to something that actively changes the phase of a track.
Wish there was this kind of expertise and love of outboard gear but with interest in orchestral, classical, and film score music.
Thank u so much for ur time i have learn alot from u last year or so. Keep up the great work keep vid coming cuz i still need learning. Lol 💪👍
I bought this plugin two years ago and it introduces artifacts (wobbles, not sure if it's intermodulation), especially on drum groups. I never used it again. Come to think of it, sometimes it introduces benefit but in most cases I find this benefit minimal, the tradeoff it comes with is actually far more detrimental to me.
I love your perspective on this.
I think the real test is to mix through it. Insert it before you start the mix and choose to either have it first or last in the chain as you add more plugins. Then try do mix it again without and see which one sounds more like a "perfectly recorded kit" and which one is easier to get perfect. This test shows what it does and sounds like, but doesn't really show how it will work within the context of doing a mix.
it really cleans the drums. I like that plugin
@L_ A_ I think it's better if the sound is in phase. If it sounds to "flat" for you, you can add that warmth/width/color back but in a controlled matter
@@kellerasselmusik yeh, its best to start clean and tidy
@1:53 ...Well if your aiming to reduce Phase issues, then yes, every step along the way is an improvement
Autoalign works fine, you just need to set which track your aligning everything else too using the send and receive function
I think you already understand that this vst is a powerful one and that yeap delay is phase shift indeed in a correlation situation 😊❤now you know!
Awesome video as always - thank you! I was curious to hear how this effects the mix if you put it on all the instruments, and decide which has more priority.
Great demonstration and an even better conclusion! Spot on!
It works the other way around :D
Maximum correlation means that 2 signals are the same, basically. That is a correlation of 1.
If there's no correlation, it is a correlation of 0. 2 completely random signals have a correlation of 0.
However 2 signals that are the same but are in inverse phase, they have a correlation of -1.
But I suspect you know all this and I took the bait :)
every decision is a tradeoff. in music production at least :D as a dnb producer, i like tight transients and I use the melda "auto align" for years now. helps sometimes when you layer a lot of drum sounds.
Very useful tool, and indispensable if you're stuck with subpar tracks.
I've been recording for 25 years and sometimes I don't nail drum recordings perfectly, and there are some phase issues.
I do appreciate the point you made that basically says, having things technically correct is not necessarily, "correct". Ultimately what feels the best is the best 😉👍
I just used it for a track with two acoustic guitars. Sounded good i thought. Till i put Pi on it then i realized they were cancelling each other out alot. The change was dramatic and very good.
It's maximum phase correlation. If you have the exact same track 2 times and cross-correlate them, you get a correlation factor of 1. Flip one of them and you get -1, which is exactly out of phase by 180 degree. So maximum correlation ( here 1 ) is the way to go.
Good video. I started to prefer with the plugin when you added the room mics.. the snare decay became smoother. If this would stop people putting drummers onto the grid, it should be handed out for free! ha ha
I noticed the biggest difference in the reverb tail… the verb/room sound just sounds a little bit more present 🤷♂️ I use auto align on overheads/acoustic mics and just bought pi. It’s great for people who don’t have a professionally designed recording space. I have gotten great results.
Dam big difference, definitely looking into this THANKYOU 😊
Even on my small inear I could hear a difference crazy
Great review! I completely agree. I bought this plugin when I was mixing a recording that someone else had tracked and completely botched. It really helped me quickly get the mix done, but it was an extreme case. Normally I don't lake the sound and the random phase cancellation that's not from bad mic technique is natural and I kind of like it. So it's a good tool, but rarely useful if you know what you're doing.
For me, with the plugin the drums sound more closer with more low mids, but without it the drums sound more open and spacious
actually, the change is huge, when there were some phase issues before, and the mix had attempted to overcome these issues.
with the processing, these boosts become obsolete. so practically, you need to remix, or have the tool in place from the beginning.
..my humble 2 cents..
If i try on kick and bass line on Psytrance productions were is realy important it looks like it is perfect solution ? 🤔
Could this be of use when for example layering sounds in the same frequency rage?
For a sounddesign point of view.
Yeah, this?!
Exactly what I was wanting to know
Works real nice to add some extra tightness into bass guitar + kick drum combo or to distorted electric guitar + fuller sounding snare. It can even help finding better place for a lower male vocal in a mix. But this plugin can introduce unnatural phase warbling artefacts too, and if that happens, it is not easy to finetune it so that it still gives the desired effect...
with the plugin engaged, the snare definitely sounds fuller, with a more powerful attack. same with the kick.
Correlation Coefficient 1 =equal relation, 0= no relation , -1 inverted relation
I would think you could end up losing some stereo imaging with phase alignment. These are the tricks we use to create stereo field right? a few ms off on one channel can make it seem like it's coming from somewhere else.
I think you also have to hear in the context of the mix not just within the context of the kit. Sometimes when you have the instrument solo'd and you phase align it may not be as desirable in the context of the full mix.. it kind of "depends" It would be nice if we could dial in the amount of phase alignment... sort of like a focus on a camera. Great video!
Have you done SurferEq yet?
I use NUGEN's plugin, phase alignment and low end mono sum. I'm very pleased with it.
The whole video "ahh okayy!?"
Very good review again! Best reg from Oslo! 😄👍👏
@10:41 the need comes from certain aesthetics of music. its different sound architecture.
I think there is a little bit a volume boost that is making it sound better tbh. Not that there isnt other effects but I think there is some volume boost as well that might need to be dealt with in a blind test.
Is there anything like this but for stereo out of phasing?
MAN! You muuuust do sound radix surf eq! Your mind will blow up!
I use Polarity Maximizer. I'd rather make sure polarity is more accurate than phase alignment. If you have a room mic for drums it should be delayed in phase because that's the sound of distance.
Isnt putting everything into phase putting things in mono? or at least unwide things?
You should have also tried it on 2 rhythm guitars :) But on drums it's working at least
Thanks for reviewing this. I think phase alignment is crucial to a solid mix because otherwise you can go hunting for a problem that is very hard to discern - example, is it frequency masking that is 'the problem..? But having Pi on each track is one less thing to worry about! I just wonder how much CPU and RAM it might hog in a plus-30 track project though. All transients need to start precisely together if mix accuracy matters to you, and I get your point about technical vs real world. There are producers who hate the thought of accuracy to this degree. But at least we have a choice and that can only help us. Have you done a review yet of Vocal Align by Waves? Would so appreciate that and another would be the Arturia Plate140/EMT140 plate reverb! Thanks again for another entertaining as well as informative upload. Very interesting to see what other people thought of this in the comments!
I think this plugin would be good for particular things, like maybe not on *everything*, but on different parts of a mix suited for the effect it gives. I feel like it could create a relationship between things, but in a different way. Also, just now trying the trial out - great for psytrance bass lines, likely also great for EDM.
It would be nice if there was a global dry/wet mix. Get the best of both
For Multitrack bass and Stereo Guitars its awesome
plz demo auto align 2, love ur vidz
Do you have a video where you show your method of fixing phase alignment by hand?
Could give your opinion of the SSL Native Channel Strip?
Sounds like a propper misunderstanding of "phase". Phase alignment (or misalignment) can not happen between *different* sound sources (like bass and kick or snare and toms etc.). It can only occur due to multiple measurements of the same source and subsequently adding those together. That is what the word "phase" refers to (time-differences expressed in numbers of a period). Everything else (e.g. adjusting "phase" between kick and bass) is very different because it is much more unlikely for correlations to occur between different sound sources. A kick for instance typically drops in pitch, while a bass stays rather constant (for the length of a note); so there's only a tiny moment, when both "pitches" really correlate and can even have something resembling a phase-relationship. I would never *dynamically* time-adjust bass/kick to avoid such a (rare) difficulty; just adjust the track delay if really needed (or, if its only happening here and there, do some cutting/adjusting). Anyways, the differences in sound are subtle. If you ask me, quite snake oily (even if it might technically really do something).
Would you test this on something more electric? Dance track, using 909 kick and synth bass for example.
I guess it depends on how painstaking you are about your recordings . I think over a +24 track project there will be serious phase alignment issues resulting in frequency masking which might be mistaken for mud. Micro voltage fluctuations can affect timing so its doubtful any mix will be truly accurately aligned (?) If you produce with midi instruments and sequencers you can lock everything to time codes and minimise timing inconsistencies. I think Pi s a great solution no matter how you record. I just wonder how much of a CPU hog it would be over an entire project! I look fwd to trying it out and wonder if it could be used on an aux group bus instead of every track insert?
excellent video.
Great video... but I love not-so-perfect Music... I truly agree with your last conclusions
This is why I use VST and MIDI Drum synths. lol
I’m newbie to the channel, can somebody explain the snake oil thing or tell me some videos to watch?
this was a great video and you at your best. thanks :-)
So then you have the phase of your base tones aligned... But the subharmonics phases could still be unaligned an cancel each other out? Or is this plugin doing some FFT and aligns every frequency band?
it analyzes, then shifts the whole track inc subharmonics. The other way madness lies
@@annother3350 so then, if I understand correctly, subharmonics could still cancel eachother out ... hmmm
@@AlmerosMusicCode No, because the subharmonics have been factored in -- the other way craziness lies
Maybe this is better for low end vs full range? Maybe only on tracks with bass instead of every track as it states?
will you ever make a snake oil episode on UAD neve summing?
Welp, I use vsti for my drums.. soo I don't think I need this in my production, though it doing its job really well..
btw you should check out SurferEQ from SoundRadix, new eq with unique quirk
Do you layer a lot of sounds? If you do, then you would probably find this handy, whatever your preffered sound source.
I probably would align the overheads but not the room mics. Aligning the room mics is probably why you lost the "glue".
Inquiry? What is the load on the processing?
Why didn't you check Pi on different elements of a mix (like kick and bass)? I also sense a misunderstanding of what this plugin does. From what I've read and tested Auto Align takes care of time aligning one source captured in different positions whereas Pi zones in on frequency ranges and their interactions. For example if a snare hit comes 10 ms later in a room mic than in a close mic it will not try to align the transients but rather find a maximum summation point by adjusting timing and polarity of specific frequency ranges (similar to what an all pass filter would do, but dynamically). So with that it can also counteract phase shifts caused by filters, which is super useful when for example you want to apply a HPF on a track that is a part of multi miced source without changing phase correlation between microphones.
Any time I start looking at these kinds of plugins I talk to any of the old timers I work with and they say "Do you know how many great records were made without any of this bullshit?"
Can you make a video about metering and how to properly read the meters from a daw for recording and mixing?
Pretty good job!
Has anyone else demo’d or bought this yet? I got a demo yesterday and gave it a go on a current mix I’m doing. I definitely noticed an improvement in sound but unfortunately my CPU went crazy. It went from about 30% before PI to about 50-60% but there was also constant dropouts and glitches. So considering I wasn’t even close to finalising my mix I don’t think it’s useable. I also have a brand new MacBook Pro which otherwise runs beautifully! Anyone else have same problem?
P.s. I had about 5 instances on drums and 3 on guitars
I'd argue that you hear less 'glue' with the phase-corrected tracks because the transients are so much bigger, so the overheads and their sense of space suddenly feel undermixed. With the phase aligned tracks, you can blend the close mics reallllly low, giving you a more blended/ambient sound but with way better tone and imaging. I got no love for hashy/comby cymbals and snare wires. 😠
Correlation means relationship essentially
Right, which makes their claim a bit misleading since, if one phase is up when the other is down, then that is also a (inverse) correlation. I think, what they really mean is a correlation with a positive correlation coefficient.
@@DiAL033 Their claim kind of still holds since a inverse (flipped phase) correlation has a correlation factor of -1. The maximum of 1 and -1 is still 1. Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Another great video! I would love to see you get the Slate ML1 Microphone in there one day.
Phase opposition cancels. Phase correlation adds.
I think it alters the stereo Image as well.
Sandstorm everytime
What kind of Darude Sandstorm is this? I think that this is very quick trance song from the 90's, very unsimilar to that you're using it in this video? Oh and another excellent and very educational video from you. I have some experience with av receivers which can correct the phase between the speaker units: bass, midrange and tweeters and the effect is similar to this. Sound is better defined and controlled especially in bass region and everything is more punchy and also more dynamic.
can you review SurferEQ2?