Ableton Forum

I'm just beginning to record drums with close-mics and overheads. How do I go about phase-inverting, say, the snare track? I know you use the UTILITY plugin or whatever, but It says "phase left" or "phase right" and when I do that, it disappears in mono... I guess maybe I don't know enough about phase.

I hear people say on forums all the time to invert the phase of close mics on drums, but how do they maintain the sound when it folds into mono?

In the case of Live's utility plugin, you need to invert the phase of both sides, not just L or R.

This is because Utility, like all live plugs, is inherently a stereo device. You wouldn't normally invert the phase of just one side of a stereo pair, you would invert the phase of the pair -vs- another pair, or -vs- another set of mics.

Pitch Black wrote:Utility, like all live plugs, is inherently a stereo device.

reverb??

longjohns wrote:

Pitch Black wrote:Utility, like all live plugs, is inherently a stereo device.

reverb??

Nitpicker!

Pitch Black wrote:

longjohns wrote:

Pitch Black wrote:Utility, like all live plugs, is inherently a stereo device.

reverb??

Nitpicker!

Longjohns is the forum nitpicker

really? you wanna fight?

The Utility method is a bunk workaround.
We need a Ø Phase (polarity) reverse option in the mixer's session view at least.

e.maynard wrote:The Utility method is a bunk workaround.
We need a Ø Phase (polarity) reverse option in the mixer's session view at least.

explain?

I suspect a very low % of users need quick access to phase

I need it to reverse the instrumental out of a recorded piece with vocals, so that I can effect and EQ the vocals separately from the music before mixing the instrumental back in as a second track.

Is this technique possible in Live, as many of us hip-hop artists (as far as I know) go by this method to reverse out the vox or the instruments from the rest of the song?

i think the common use for reversing the phase on a snare track is when you have both a microphone on top and one on bottom of the snare, you would reverse the phase of the bottom mic (most of the time). if using utility for this, you would reverse phase on both left & right signal. of course, compare the sound of reversed phase on one vs. the other vs. no phase reversal for the one that sounds the best.