Phase Cancelation Between Gain Stages - Seeking Advice

[TheArchitect]

Much of what has been written above about phase is incorrect.
It can happen when you multiple mic a single source of music (same take)
It does not get corrected by a few degrees other than moving a mic.
It can be corrected electronically assuming it is 180 degrees out of phase.

If the mics are tracked separately, they can be corrected

 

[Jim C]

If the mics are tracked separately, they can be corrected

If you are referring to sliding a track in recording software to be inline with another then yes assuming separate tracks.
It's not going to happen live or with combined tracks.
Best way is to use your ears and fix it with mic position in the first place.

 

[TheArchitect]

If you are referring to sliding a track in recording software to be inline with another then yes assuming separate tracks.
It's not going to happen live or with combined tracks.
Best way is to use your ears and fix it with mic position in the first place.

No one is talking about. Live. Tne question was specifically about recording

 

[mouthmw]

Recording fuzz straight to DI/mixer/interface sounds like poo poo. Your cab has a natural high end roll off (usually starts around 5kHz), and of course there are resonant peaks and tonal characteristics of every cabinet, so drive/fuzz pedals sound great that way, but not so great when going direct.

You need at least a low pass filter to get rid of those high frequencies. A cab sim would help too.

 

[Kurtis Marleau]

Sorry for going MIA guys! This thread really took off! Thank you so much to everyone who has chimed in so far, this has been so helpful! I'm glad I've helped facilitate such an interesting and insightful debate. Also, thanks for being respectful of eachother and myself. This is clearly a community that is much better than many other internet forums.

There's some excellent and useful discussions going on here. Both myself and my studio guy/drummer are still amateurs and we really appreciate this feedback. He has recorded and mixed a couple of metal records, but this is a lot more complicated than what he's used to working with, so it's been a good challenge for both of us... Learning how to work together.

Let me try to explain some things further to spark some more discussion and hopefully get us the help that we need with this track. We are writing our songs in this home studio, so we are taking our time and will likely send them out for mix/master or just mastering depending how confident were feeling at the end. We've tracked bass on several songs, but this particular song where I'm using fuzz throughout the whole thing has caused us the most headaches.

This bands lineup is bass, vocals, drums, and synths. The synths are a more textural element of the song and usually our last step in the process. (We are trying to find a synth player, but its looking more and more like were going to play along to samples when we eventually go live with this. This area has no shortage of drummers, but all of the synths players go: "Sorry bro, im already in 6 bands".) These songs are very bass guitar focused, kind of like DFA1979 or Royal Blood with even more effects saturation on the basslines than what you'd hear on their records. Lots of chords in the higher registers and growly percussive picking in the lower registers. The bass and drums are the focal instruments and drive the songs forward, with noisy or fluttery synth lines tastefully added later on.

Yes, I was disappointed that using the DI on my amp at the end of my chain in addition to my Two Notes Le Bass at the start of my chain, didn't sound the same as my cabinet. Thank you so much for enlightening me as to why that is. We will try both micing the cabinet and cab sims during our next session to see what works best for us. My personal cabinet is a Gallien Krueger CX210, and in the studio space I'm running through a SWR Henry 8x8, there's a slight difference in tone, but I'm okay with what I'm getting out of it and I'm totally willing to make changes here as the songs call for them.

I'm not too privy to the idea of doing all of my effects through software, as one person stated, I feel like investing so much into my board and ditching it for convenience isn't in our best interests. We want this music to sound authentic between our live performance and our studio performance. Using software effects is a lot of time spent learning the software and dialing everything in when we're already getting a decent tone out of the pedalboard prior to the interface + DAW. If you're a heavy pedalboard effects user, how do you record these effects? I am able to double track clean and then again with each individual effect, we can also try a variety of different settings. Eliminating the variables as one person suggested.

Going back to the phase issue... the opening passage of the song uses the Le Bass + the JC Fuzz Wah + the noise gate. At the end of each phrase in that opening section there's a slow sweep with the wah pedal before I go into the chorus section with just fuzz + Le Bass + noise gate. I should probably ditch the pedal noise gate for a software noise gate now that I'm thinking about this. The reason we believe we're having phase issues is because on some, but not all, of my takes, there have been sudden changes in my tone at random points throughout the song when I am not manipulating anything. The tone will change and then stay that way until we do another take. I am using high quality cables, so we can somewhat easily rule out this being a cable issue. Perhaps this is related to shielding in my instrument itself? Maybe it's the Audient iD44 interface? We're not really sure what it is...

There's been some discussion about phase switches in pedals. Can we explain this a little further? Is this a physical switch within the chasis of the pedals? Is it related to wiring? Is this something we can manipulate in the DAW?

 

[sunbeast]

Sorry for going MIA guys! This thread really took off! Thank you so much to everyone who has chimed in so far, this has been so helpful! I'm glad I've helped facilitate such an interesting and insightful debate. Also, thanks for being respectful of eachother and myself. This is clearly a community that is much better than many other internet forums.

There's some excellent and useful discussions going on here. Both myself and my studio guy/drummer are still amateurs and we really appreciate this feedback. He has recorded and mixed a couple of metal records, but this is a lot more complicated than what he's used to working with, so it's been a good challenge for both of us... Learning how to work together.

Let me try to explain some things further to spark some more discussion and hopefully get us the help that we need with this track. We are writing our songs in this home studio, so we are taking our time and will likely send them out for mix/master or just mastering depending how confident were feeling at the end. We've tracked bass on several songs, but this particular song where I'm using fuzz throughout the whole thing has caused us the most headaches.

This bands lineup is bass, vocals, drums, and synths. The synths are a more textural element of the song and usually our last step in the process. (We are trying to find a synth player, but its looking more and more like were going to play along to samples when we eventually go live with this. This area has no shortage of drummers, but all of the synths players go: "Sorry bro, im already in 6 bands".) These songs are very bass guitar focused, kind of like DFA1979 or Royal Blood with even more effects saturation on the basslines than what you'd hear on their records. Lots of chords in the higher registers and growly percussive picking in the lower registers. The bass and drums are the focal instruments and drive the songs forward, with noisy or fluttery synth lines tastefully added later on.

Yes, I was disappointed that using the DI on my amp at the end of my chain in addition to my Two Notes Le Bass at the start of my chain, didn't sound the same as my cabinet. Thank you so much for enlightening me as to why that is. We will try both micing the cabinet and cab sims during our next session to see what works best for us. My personal cabinet is a Gallien Krueger CX210, and in the studio space I'm running through a SWR Henry 8x8, there's a slight difference in tone, but I'm okay with what I'm getting out of it and I'm totally willing to make changes here as the songs call for them.

I'm not too privy to the idea of doing all of my effects through software, as one person stated, I feel like investing so much into my board and ditching it for convenience isn't in our best interests. We want this music to sound authentic between our live performance and our studio performance. Using software effects is a lot of time spent learning the software and dialing everything in when we're already getting a decent tone out of the pedalboard prior to the interface + DAW. If you're a heavy pedalboard effects user, how do you record these effects? I am able to double track clean and then again with each individual effect, we can also try a variety of different settings. Eliminating the variables as one person suggested.

Going back to the phase issue... the opening passage of the song uses the Le Bass + the JC Fuzz Wah + the noise gate. At the end of each phrase in that opening section there's a slow sweep with the wah pedal before I go into the chorus section with just fuzz + Le Bass + noise gate. I should probably ditch the pedal noise gate for a software noise gate now that I'm thinking about this. The reason we believe we're having phase issues is because on some, but not all, of my takes, there have been sudden changes in my tone at random points throughout the song when I am not manipulating anything. The tone will change and then stay that way until we do another take. I am using high quality cables, so we can somewhat easily rule out this being a cable issue. Perhaps this is related to shielding in my instrument itself? Maybe it's the Audient iD44 interface? We're not really sure what it is...

There's been some discussion about phase switches in pedals. Can we explain this a little further? Is this a physical switch within the chasis of the pedals? Is it related to wiring? Is this something we can manipulate in the DAW?

Phase issues occur when mixing two or more signals of the same thing- so you are saying that you are mixing a DI before your effects with one that comes after your effects currently? Does muting one of the two tracks improve the sound when you notice this change? If not, then phase isn't the issue.

Phase can be changed by many different effects/processors in a chain and in many cases is frequency-dependent and not simply 180 degrees (for example- most analog EQ utilizes phase to occur- flipping phase at certain frequencies then mixing the results back together so for example a phase response graph of a typical amplifier usually is not a straight line but has some peaks and dips dependent on frequency) , but if you are hearing a single moment where there seems to be a strong phase incoherency that doesn't change again then it may well be because an effect you are switching inherently flips the phase 180 degrees or so. This is not uncommon from some fuzz and other types of effects. Your DAW should have a 180 degree phase shift option somewhere, sometimes you need to add a plug-in to the channel in order to find this option. There may be a phase switch on your audio interface per channel as well. Of course if the phase is shifting throughout the song then this may just flip where the phase is out rather than correcting the issue.
Phase is also caused by time coherency- for example when one signal is only run through analog effects or no effects at all while the second signal is run through some digital effects, the AD convertors and digital processing of the latter will add some latency to its signal which then can push the phase of the signal out in regards to the other signal. When micing a cab there will always be some time delay vs a direct signal that will need time correction to sound right but latency can happen even between two direct signals too if one has more processing going on.

Using a DAW it should be fairly easy to visualize the time phase between two signals by zooming in to the waveforms of both tracks simultaneously and then time-correcting one of the two tracks at an easy to see transient at the start of the bass track (find a strong attack that is easy to see on both waveforms and physically slide one waveform until the two transients match up). If you are toggling a fuzz effect on or off it may be easier to find a transient where both signals are clean at the same time, as heavy gain can smear the attack transient on the effected track.

Once you've aligned the two tracks time-wise then listen back again and see if you still hear the clear phase change on playback. Try to identify where this happens and what change might have made it occur. If you are able to find that one of your pedals is flipping the phase then it can be corrected before recording using an active FX Blender pedal with a phase switch for tracking to contain that pedal (Radial Blend-Mix, Saturnworks Mixers/Blenders, One Control Mesquite, etc), but you should also be able to edit your existing recording by selecting the out of phase section and flipping the phase. There are plug-ins that allow you to compare and correct phase between two tracks as well- depending on your DAW this functionality might well be built-in.

 

[crguti]

Since when the guy who record audio is now called an Engineer?

 

[Ross Davies]

Sorry for going MIA guys! This thread really took off! Thank you so much to everyone who has chimed in so far, this has been so helpful! I'm glad I've helped facilitate such an interesting and insightful debate. Also, thanks for being respectful of eachother and myself. This is clearly a community that is much better than many other internet forums.

There's some excellent and useful discussions going on here. Both myself and my studio guy/drummer are still amateurs and we really appreciate this feedback. He has recorded and mixed a couple of metal records, but this is a lot more complicated than what he's used to working with, so it's been a good challenge for both of us... Learning how to work together.

Let me try to explain some things further to spark some more discussion and hopefully get us the help that we need with this track. We are writing our songs in this home studio, so we are taking our time and will likely send them out for mix/master or just mastering depending how confident were feeling at the end. We've tracked bass on several songs, but this particular song where I'm using fuzz throughout the whole thing has caused us the most headaches.

This bands lineup is bass, vocals, drums, and synths. The synths are a more textural element of the song and usually our last step in the process. (We are trying to find a synth player, but its looking more and more like were going to play along to samples when we eventually go live with this. This area has no shortage of drummers, but all of the synths players go: "Sorry bro, im already in 6 bands".) These songs are very bass guitar focused, kind of like DFA1979 or Royal Blood with even more effects saturation on the basslines than what you'd hear on their records. Lots of chords in the higher registers and growly percussive picking in the lower registers. The bass and drums are the focal instruments and drive the songs forward, with noisy or fluttery synth lines tastefully added later on.

Yes, I was disappointed that using the DI on my amp at the end of my chain in addition to my Two Notes Le Bass at the start of my chain, didn't sound the same as my cabinet. Thank you so much for enlightening me as to why that is. We will try both micing the cabinet and cab sims during our next session to see what works best for us. My personal cabinet is a Gallien Krueger CX210, and in the studio space I'm running through a SWR Henry 8x8, there's a slight difference in tone, but I'm okay with what I'm getting out of it and I'm totally willing to make changes here as the songs call for them.

I'm not too privy to the idea of doing all of my effects through software, as one person stated, I feel like investing so much into my board and ditching it for convenience isn't in our best interests. We want this music to sound authentic between our live performance and our studio performance. Using software effects is a lot of time spent learning the software and dialing everything in when we're already getting a decent tone out of the pedalboard prior to the interface + DAW. If you're a heavy pedalboard effects user, how do you record these effects? I am able to double track clean and then again with each individual effect, we can also try a variety of different settings. Eliminating the variables as one person suggested.

Going back to the phase issue... the opening passage of the song uses the Le Bass + the JC Fuzz Wah + the noise gate. At the end of each phrase in that opening section there's a slow sweep with the wah pedal before I go into the chorus section with just fuzz + Le Bass + noise gate. I should probably ditch the pedal noise gate for a software noise gate now that I'm thinking about this. The reason we believe we're having phase issues is because on some, but not all, of my takes, there have been sudden changes in my tone at random points throughout the song when I am not manipulating anything. The tone will change and then stay that way until we do another take. I am using high quality cables, so we can somewhat easily rule out this being a cable issue. Perhaps this is related to shielding in my instrument itself? Maybe it's the Audient iD44 interface? We're not really sure what it is...

There's been some discussion about phase switches in pedals. Can we explain this a little further? Is this a physical switch within the chasis of the pedals? Is it related to wiring? Is this something we can manipulate in the DAW?

Ross from Two notes here! Great thread and loads of detail in here - is the Wammy still in your signal chain? This may be inducing some latency onto your recordings for sure. In terms of cab sims, have you considered using an OPUS / C.A.B. M / C.A.B. M+? I am a big fan of Fuzz on Bass but I find a cab sim is imperative to help tame this a little, especially in the context of a mix!

 

[sunbeast]

Sorry for going MIA guys! This thread really took off! Thank you so much to everyone who has chimed in so far, this has been so helpful! I'm glad I've helped facilitate such an interesting and insightful debate. Also, thanks for being respectful of eachother and myself. This is clearly a community that is much better than many other internet forums.

There's some excellent and useful discussions going on here. Both myself and my studio guy/drummer are still amateurs and we really appreciate this feedback. He has recorded and mixed a couple of metal records, but this is a lot more complicated than what he's used to working with, so it's been a good challenge for both of us... Learning how to work together.

Let me try to explain some things further to spark some more discussion and hopefully get us the help that we need with this track. We are writing our songs in this home studio, so we are taking our time and will likely send them out for mix/master or just mastering depending how confident were feeling at the end. We've tracked bass on several songs, but this particular song where I'm using fuzz throughout the whole thing has caused us the most headaches.

This bands lineup is bass, vocals, drums, and synths. The synths are a more textural element of the song and usually our last step in the process. (We are trying to find a synth player, but its looking more and more like were going to play along to samples when we eventually go live with this. This area has no shortage of drummers, but all of the synths players go: "Sorry bro, im already in 6 bands".) These songs are very bass guitar focused, kind of like DFA1979 or Royal Blood with even more effects saturation on the basslines than what you'd hear on their records. Lots of chords in the higher registers and growly percussive picking in the lower registers. The bass and drums are the focal instruments and drive the songs forward, with noisy or fluttery synth lines tastefully added later on.

Yes, I was disappointed that using the DI on my amp at the end of my chain in addition to my Two Notes Le Bass at the start of my chain, didn't sound the same as my cabinet. Thank you so much for enlightening me as to why that is. We will try both micing the cabinet and cab sims during our next session to see what works best for us. My personal cabinet is a Gallien Krueger CX210, and in the studio space I'm running through a SWR Henry 8x8, there's a slight difference in tone, but I'm okay with what I'm getting out of it and I'm totally willing to make changes here as the songs call for them.

I'm not too privy to the idea of doing all of my effects through software, as one person stated, I feel like investing so much into my board and ditching it for convenience isn't in our best interests. We want this music to sound authentic between our live performance and our studio performance. Using software effects is a lot of time spent learning the software and dialing everything in when we're already getting a decent tone out of the pedalboard prior to the interface + DAW. If you're a heavy pedalboard effects user, how do you record these effects? I am able to double track clean and then again with each individual effect, we can also try a variety of different settings. Eliminating the variables as one person suggested.

Going back to the phase issue... the opening passage of the song uses the Le Bass + the JC Fuzz Wah + the noise gate. At the end of each phrase in that opening section there's a slow sweep with the wah pedal before I go into the chorus section with just fuzz + Le Bass + noise gate. I should probably ditch the pedal noise gate for a software noise gate now that I'm thinking about this. The reason we believe we're having phase issues is because on some, but not all, of my takes, there have been sudden changes in my tone at random points throughout the song when I am not manipulating anything. The tone will change and then stay that way until we do another take. I am using high quality cables, so we can somewhat easily rule out this being a cable issue. Perhaps this is related to shielding in my instrument itself? Maybe it's the Audient iD44 interface? We're not really sure what it is...

There's been some discussion about phase switches in pedals. Can we explain this a little further? Is this a physical switch within the chasis of the pedals? Is it related to wiring? Is this something we can manipulate in the DAW?

Oh yeah I forgot an important point I meant to include in my last reply. One way to minimize frequency-dependent phase issues is to treat your two signals as seperate parts of the same signal- rather than trying to blend full-range cleans with full-range fuzz, put a low-pass filter on the clean DI signal and a high-pass filter on the fuzz signal. Frequencies that aren't shared between the signals can't have phase-cancellation, and the two signals will tend to sound less like separates than a massive whole! You can also experiment with adding seperate compression to the clean low-end to make it meld more with the compression of the fuzz signal. I've had similar done to my bass on several dirty recordings and it is very common practice on studio bass processing

 

[Kurtis Marleau]

Ross from Two notes here! Great thread and loads of detail in here - is the Wammy still in your signal chain? This may be inducing some latency onto your recordings for sure. In terms of cab sims, have you considered using an OPUS / C.A.B. M / C.A.B. M+? I am a big fan of Fuzz on Bass but I find a cab sim is imperative to help tame this a little, especially in the context of a mix!

The whammy is still in my chain, I use an octave up harmony on the final chorus of the song.

I'd love to try your cab sim hardware! I just haven't found any in my local music shops. We're using Reaper for recording, I'm not sure what we have for cab sims yet.

I've always struggled with learning computer software, if my board wasn't a dead giveaway, I'm not a fan of menu diving. My drummer/studio guy is pretty good at it and he's been incredibly patient with teaching me.

 

[Ross Davies]

The whammy is still in my chain, I use an octave up harmony on the final chorus of the song.

I'd love to try your cab sim hardware! I just haven't found any in my local music shops. We're using Reaper for recording, I'm not sure what we have for cab sims yet.

I've always struggled with learning computer software, if my board wasn't a dead giveaway, I'm not a fan of menu diving. My drummer/studio guy is pretty good at it and he's been incredibly patient with teaching me.

Thanks for getting back to me. Ah, the Whammy may be the issue here as it is a digital processor so may be inducing some latency.

In terms of software cab sims, we have our GENOME application you may want to look at - please see the link below.
GENOME - Out Now

This is compatible with all of our virtual cabinets and we have loads for Bass!
DynIR™ Virtual Cabinets | For Bass - Two notes

If you need any more info on this, let me know and if you can let me know where you are based I can surely send you some local dealers. Thanks so much!