Comments on: Approaching A Mix

By: Studio Manifesto|Engineering Tips – 3:1 Rule of Microphone Placement

Studio Manifesto|Engineering Tips – 3:1 Rule of Microphone Placement — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:32:16 +0000

[...] information on Production and Recording tips, check out Producing a New Folk Recording Pt.1 and Approaching A Mix here on Studio [...]

By: John Meadows

John Meadows — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:46:51 +0000

Great article! I think I will be able to apply this to a lot of my home-recording efforts. Looking forward to the next installment!

By: Richie Betz

Richie Betz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:17:49 +0000

Looking forward to the next post. I’m new to all this so I’m finding it very useful and interesting.

By: Freddy Gabrsek

Freddy Gabrsek — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:50:01 +0000

Thanks for the comments guys!
some guy,
The purpose of a room mic is to capture the sound of the room and the purpose of overheads is to capture the entire drum kit in a correctly phase correlated stereo image. It’s not because of the difference in time arrival that makes the room mics add thickness, it’s the content. Time alignment just insures that you maximize compression and rarefaction of the waveforms and that there are no cancellations. As for the 3-1 ratio rule, this is a very old rule comimg from the analogue days. Today in a Digital Audio Workstation we can line everything up perfectly after the fact but back then those engineers could not do that. They knew that they could flip the phase and maybe get it closer, but still that didn’t always work because the signals might not be exactly 180 deg. out of phase. So the 3-1 rule was good to make sure they avoided that problem as much as possible. Still, it’s a good rule especially for live sound re-enforcement where you don’t have a chance to time align every mic (unless you have a digital console with delay available on each channel).
I found a web page written by Michael Schulze who explains the whole technique much more in depth and more eloquently than me. Check it out here:
http://www.recdiy.com/TimeAlign/TimeAlign1.html
it’s a good read…the only difference in our methods is that he likes to align all the tracks to the furthest mic while I like to align them to the closest mic. It’s really just splitting hairs though, because we’re talking about a few milliseconds overall. Oh, and pay special attention to his explanation of time alignment and polarity of the kick drum on page 6…good info!
Regards,
Freddy Gabrsek

By: Mortimer Kai

Mortimer Kai — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:20:54 +0000

Very useful information. Could this be applied to my home movies?

By: some guy

some guy — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:12:54 +0000

Very nice post Freddy!! A lot of what you said makes a lot of sense and I will definitely implement it in my work. I just want to ask you about phase aligning drum tracks. Doesn’t it defeat the whole purpose of the over heads and room mics? Isn’t the difference in time between the direct mics and the room mics the one that helps the drums sound roomy and thicker? Isn’t the job of the tracking engineer to take care of those phasing problems before recording, perhaps using the 3 to 1 ratio rule? Your answer will be greatly appreciated.
regards

By: Studio Manifesto

Studio Manifesto — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:52:52 +0000

Great post Freddy. I remember the day you first enlightened me on phase aligning individual drum tracks. We were in the car making one of our many trips from Burlington Go station to the Origin Audio lab. I remember thinking – “how come I’ve never read that in a music production magazine.” Still don’t think I’ve ever read it anywhere else. Thanks man!

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:55:33 +0000

Cool Freddy, helpful. I anxiously await hearing the rest of your process.
Everything i’ve heard from you sounded terrific; its evident you really know what you’re doing.
Teach an indie to fish, and he’ll produce for a lifetime. . . . …
Although he might not eat.