Need a huge time saver to phase align & polarity match MANY Bass transients (3 x trac

[Speed_45]

All,
Still a newbie here - please continue to accept my apology!

I have many sessions (songs) with 3 x bass tracks that have some varying degrees of phase alignment - some are our due to moved clips in one/two tracks vs the other(s) or certain frequencies didn’t stick together from a 3 source setup (2 mic and a direct). The root of the problem was not getting it right at the source during tracking phase but, that is now water way under the bridge. I am hoping there is a post recording solution.

As mentioned the clips are all separated by each bass note/transient with some clear separation between one. So each transient is a single clip with some silence (no very near it) before and after each note. The notes were originally separated by Beat Detective (Pro-Tools) and then unfortunately moved (but, not always) around individually (not grouped, then moved as should have been done).

So I now have all these out of phase and polarity clips with a HUGE task if this can only be done one clip by one clip per track (matching 2 of the 3 tracks to 1 used as a reference). I have used Auto-Align to do this clip by clip on one and It took long day or days to do one song - but, I have to admit when done was a tremendous results in audio quality improvement.

Now, I need a quicker solution to do all this at once, not clip by clip using this workflow per clip x 100s, per track x 2:

1) serpent Auto-Align on the the 3 tracks; set one as Send ‘reference’ and the other 2 as Receive ‘targets’.
2) analyze target clip on track 1
3) manually nudge (click and set nudge value then + or -) the clip the number of samples as suggested by the results of the analysis in step 2
4) repeat step 2 and 3 until suggestion is 0 (zero) and polarity is matched and normal
5) analyze target clip on track 2
6) repeat steps 3-4 for track 2
- at this point the same Bass note/transient has been phase and polarity aligned for all e 3 tracks... that’s about 5mins if your flowing good. Sometime it takes longer if the transients are way off or just don’t analyze well.

Having said all that (yes I know it’s a lot) - there HAS to be an easier way to put all this back in phase and polarity matched without spending HUGE AMOUNTS of time basically manually moving notes based on a tool that just tells you how far to move it (don’t get me wrong - that is a big deal and worth a lot because with out it, you have nothing to go by at that precision level)!

As a footnote: I did use Auto-Align Post to try to do the phase align and polarity march for all the clips in each track (I even tried consolidated the tracks as well as selecting all the individual clips) at once and though it did some moving around, it didn’t do right as it flipped the polarity on some already matching transients to be 180 wrong as well as when checking the results of Auto-Align Post with just Auto-Align again the analysis step displayed them off by various sample lengths still/now. Not 0 (zero) as I was hopeful of. So the results of that tool simply delivered the same issue, only in a different way.

I need another solution, if one exist! Or another life! :)

Thanks for all feedback, comments and suggestions.






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[pierrobass]

Wow... what a mess ...can’t see another solution beside flip polarity and see what happens... good luck


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[Ben Jenssen]

Let me get this; you want a function to automatically micro-nudge individual clips into phase with a "guide" track? I don't think such a thing exists.

It sounds to me like you're overcomplicating. Separating transients in clips? Clever mixing ideas... perhaps. I've tried a few creative "theories" on bass mixing myself over the years, and what I learned it's best to keep it simple. Presisely to avoid phase problems.

If you have the original takes, going back and simplifying might be the best way to go. Just my c2.

[kasman]

From what you described, I don't think you'll get the phase or audio to align properly at this point. Hopefully you have the original audio you can revert to start again as Ben mentioned. If for some reason you don't have the original audio you can try and reamp the DI track if that is intact and aligned with your other audio sources or go old school and re-record the track.

[Speed_45]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

Let me get this; you want a function to automatically micro-nudge individual clips into phase with a "guide" track? I don't think such a thing exists.

It sounds to me like you're overcomplicating. Separating transients in clips? Clever mixing ideas... perhaps. I've tried a few creative "theories" on bass mixing myself over the years, and what I learned it's best to keep it simple. Presisely to avoid phase problems.

If you have the original takes, going back and simplifying might be the best way to go. Just my c2.

Yeah.. you understood correctly.... yeah it sucks for me. I have gone back on one or two of the original 3 bass tracks and I can start there.. but, what I find is polarity is flipped on various frequencies (though I have not dug into if these are specific and the same onces over and over). And since the 2 mics an direct were out of phase to start... I still have work to do...

Maybe time spent getting the originals right is more worth it ???

[Speed_45]

Originally Posted by pierrobass

Wow... what a mess ...can’t see another solution beside flip polarity and see what happens... good luck


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

Yeah ... it is a huge mess. I do appreciate the look in and the comment. Affirmation that I am not missing another tool out there is still good feedback.

[Speed_45]

Originally Posted by kasman

From what you described, I don't think you'll get the phase or audio to align properly at this point. Hopefully you have the original audio you can revert to start again as Ben mentioned. If for some reason you don't have the original audio you can try and reamp the DI track if that is intact and aligned with your other audio sources or go old school and re-record the track.

I should have the originals (may have to do all other edits/fades/time alignment/etc. again)... but, that's ok if I can figure out if/why/which certain frequencies flip polarity and then phase align the entire tracks after all that.

granted I can locate the original cuts... this might be a less time consuming workflow (once I define some repeatable steps to find and fix)

Thanks for input. Much Obliged!

[albee1952]

Its way beyond a case of flipped polarity. You are talking about multiple phase shifts of any number of degrees and I would step back and consider some other approaches. What exactly are the 3 tracks? Is it 3 bass parts or 3 "things" trying to play together? If its 3 bass parts, I would consider how much each part is actually needed(maybe the song really needs a single track made up of the best parts out of the original 3), OR, is this a case of you have 3 recorded passes but you were just handed a batch of audio tracks from some other DAW? I know if I open an AAF from my friend's NUENDO system and he did 4 takes of the lead vocal, those 4 takes open in PT as 4 tracks(instead of a single track with 4 playlists)

If its supposed to be a blend of 3 parts that all play the same thing, what are the sounds? If its a bass guitar and 2 synth sounds, could you create a midi file from the bass track and use that midi to trigger similar(or the same) synths?

Lastly, if you can locate the original 3 tracks with no adjustments done, make a group of the 3 so when you adjust timing, all 3 get the exact same edits

[Ben Jenssen]

I thought this was simply a case of one performance recorded with two mics and a DI, and perhaps complicated by separation of frequency ranges into even more tracks... If so my suggestion was to simply start over and select maybe the best of the mic tracks and the DI, I don't know.