mono / stereo question

[JumpingInFire]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Yeah you need to use stereo figure 8 that you patched through a stereo to mono decoupler. I don't know if there's any plug ins that do that, I used to use a outboard box patched back to two inputs of the mixer to do it. Then reversed the polarity of the signal of one of the channels. This way you'd get tom 1 on a channel and tome 2 on the second. If you didn't reversed the polarity you would get phase cancellation.

I think you either left out the part about the Mid/Side Matrix (of which there are plug in versions) or you're forgetting to use a cardioid mic with the bidirectional one. I've never gotten my hands on a stereo bidirectional mic. Even if you had one you wouldn't have to reverse the polarity of either channel. With a normal bidirectional mic split into two channels and one phase inverted I can't imagine that sounding very good in stereo and certainly not in mono.

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by JumpingInFire

I think you either left out the part about the Mid/Side Matrix (of which there are plug in versions) or you're forgetting to use a cardioid mic with the bidirectional one. I've never gotten my hands on a stereo bidirectional mic. Even if you had one you wouldn't have to reverse the polarity of either channel. With a normal bidirectional mic split into two channels and one phase inverted I can't imagine that sounding very good in stereo and certainly not in mono.

No I'm not. I'm not talking of the MS technique here that is used to have a stereo imaging. Nor am I talking of Over Heads. I'm talking of a technique to capture two toms with only one mic, in this case a stereo figure 8 mic, to reduce the numbers of mic being used. It's a technique that been used for decades. And it sounds as good as using one mic per tom.

[JumpingInFire]

I guess I just don't see the point in splitting it and inverting the phase then.

[Emcha_audio]

Well see if you don't split it, you won't have an independent control of the eq, volume, pan settings etc. And if you do split them and don't invert the phase, then if you place them at equal volume, both will cancel themselves as they would be perfectly out of phased. Inverting the phase would ensure that this doesn't happen.

[JumpingInFire]

All you are doing is taking a mono source of both toms and treating an out of phase copy like another microphone. If you're trying to bring out each tom in it's own track then why bother with polarity when you could just EQ to suit each tom. Messing with the polarity would just give you phasing problems even if it's not canceling the entire signal. I just don't understand what effect you are trying to achieve with this. You wouldn't consider doing this with any other mono source.

[Emcha_audio]

The reason you reverse the polarity is to avoid phase cancellation of both tracks. Since one side of the stereo figure 8 takes the 180 (in phase) and the other side takes the -180 (out of phase) of one tome, and the reverse also happens to the other tom. If you bring both tom to the same level without reversing the polarity, you get phase cancellation and both tracks gets muted.

[jntracks]

ummmm, what mike do you have that is "stereo figure 8" you can have a stereo microphone, with two outputs. or a figure 8 pattern microphone, with one output.

are you confusing these two situations? or have i misunderstood?

the only way to get stereo out of a figure 8 mike is to use mid/side technique.

[Emcha_audio]

Either I'm not explaining myself right, or I'd have to do it live to explain it We used to use a Neumann 87 to do that job. AND NO once again, we were not looking for setreo imaging when doing this. This is a technique to use 1 mic to capture 2 toms. Stereo imagine has nothing to do with this.

[JumpingInFire]

So what is out of phase with what? You only have ONE SOURCE! Regardless of how many drums it is picking up it is a single mono audio file. If you take any waveform, duplicate it, and invert one side all you will get is cancelation no matter what eq or panning you do. This sounds like a very bad practice or you are very confused about mid side processing.

[getz76]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Either I'm not explaining myself right, or I'd have to do it live to explain it We used to use a Neumann 87 to do that job. AND NO once again, we were not looking for setreo imaging when doing this. This is a technique to use 1 mic to capture 2 toms. Stereo imagine has nothing to do with this.

Umm... then what were you inverting the phase against?

One mono microphone equals one waveform.

You are describing half of the mid-side technique.