Dealing With Alignment & Phase

 When it comes to using more than one mic on any instrument you will immediately run into phase and alignment issues with your mix when tracking. This will result in flaming (slight delayed echo sound) and thin sounding drums as two mic's out of phase will almost cancel one another out. Even Mic's themselves respond to sound in different ways from type used (Ribbon, Dynamic, Condenser etc) and all these factors have to be addressed before any real recording is done.

Dealing With Phase

  Now most of these issues can be somewhat eradicated by setting up the mic's properly, by that I mean, having them both equidistant from the source they're going to pick up. A good engineer will spend sometime making sure mic's are in the right place for best tonal quality as well as the exact distance from the sound source (a snare drum for example) to avoid phase issues. It's also important in the case of 2x Drum Overhead mic's also being a matched pair, as even different mic's will pick up sounds differently.

Dealing With Alignment

 Alignment is something similar as phase and can be caused by some of the same issues, but as can be seen in the example below, the alignment of the close mic and far mic (set further back from source), has been caused by the sound being picked up on the one mic first and then the delay in the time it takes for the same sound to be picked up on the other mic placed. This delay between mic's picking up the same sound at different times causes alignment to be off. See in the pic below, from a Pro Tools Session, how the Kick (close mic) and Kick (far mic) are both out of phase with one another, one wave file is going up whilst the others wave file is going down. They should both be the same. 

 You can also see their alignment is off. The sound is hitting the Kick (far mic) first and then a delay in the mix before we see the same Kick sound on the (close mic). They should be perfectly aligned in the mix window. 

 I must admit I believe someone has labelled the session file the wrong way round as the sound clearly would hit the close mic first and then the mic placed further away from the Kick drum second lol. Mistakes are easily made, long hours and short sleeps will do that to a person.

How to Fix in the Mix.

 Now if the tracking stage is well and truly over and re-doing the recording is impossible your only choice is to fix it in the mix. This was easily done in Pro Tools using a bit of the zoom tool and a wonderful freely included plugin utility called (Time Adjuster).

 As you can see in the example above we firstly set our time grid to 'Samples' and then we, by eye only, highlight the distance between the start of the kick hit on one track with the start of the hit of the Kick on the other. In the transport view you can see it's reading 76 samples. So we simply type that into 'Time Adjuster' that fixes the alignment. Secondly we click the phase flip switch, that little orange button just to the right of where we type in the samples, and that flips the phase meaning when one track wave file is going up the other one is now doing the same. Viola all done both Kick mic's now aligned and in phase with one another creating a tight loud pleasant thump giving us the sound as it should be heard.

So What Is The Problem?

Well in Studio One 3 we don't have an included plugin utility that does the same thing as 'Time Adjuster' does in Pro Tools, so how can we achieve the same fixes without extra costs on shelving out for something like SoundRadix Auto Align ,which is far more advanced, but automates the whole entire process. Well watch the video below and all will be revealed.

Three Ways To Record - Pre-Count, Pre-Roll & Autopunch.

5..4..3..2..1 Record.

 When it comes to recording, especially if you record your own tracks at home on your own, Studio One has three little helpers to aid you in capturing that perfect take. The three methods are called Precount, PreRoll and Autopunch.

Pre-count and Pre-roll

 When recording audio or Instrument Parts, it is often useful to give the performer a count-in before recording begins, to alert them that recording is starting, and also to give a guide to the tempo of the song, so that they can play on-beat from the start. Studio One offers two ways to do this: Pre-count and Pre-roll.

 Pre-Count; [Shift+c] lets you specify a number of bars of metronome clicks to be played before recording begins. This helps to count the musician in and start playing to the correct beat and timing on the first note of the track.

 Pre-Roll; [o] lets you specify a number of bars in the Song to play before recording begins. This is helpful when you want to get used to the feel or groove, timing or tempo of the song before recording begins.

Autopunch

Autopunch; [i] lets you select a range, using the paint tool [5], on the timeline scale from which you can start and end recording on the selected clip/event.
 For example, if you wish to record over a specific phrase of a vocal part, but not before or after that phrase, you can automatically begin and end recording at specified points. This process is commonly referred to as “punching in and out,”
 If you use the Auto-Punch to record the newly recorded audio is automatically crossfaded at its edges with the existing Audio Event/Clip, so the transition between the old and new audio is not audible.

 As always these things are easier to show than to write about so please check out the quick video below for more practical help. Happy mixing.

Basic Editing in Studio One 3.

The Tools of the Trade

Editing audio in any digital audio workstation is paramount when it comes to features. The easier and faster one can edit within the program can make or break the general appeal it may aspire to.
Studio One, for quite sometime, had no 'Smart Tool' and although you could still edit audio as much as any other program could, you simply couldn't achieve the speed or efficiency levels that other programs had. Thankfully that has been addressed and a new 'Smarter Tool' was introduced.

So lets introduce you to the original line up of eight editing tools that Studio One had and then we'll dive into the best of them all... the 'Smart Tool'.

The Arrow Tool (1) - Primarily the main tool used for editing. It can move and resize events (clips), create fades, adjust event gain and select single or multi events.
Modifier Keys;

• Spacebar - to drag things faster.
• Hold Shift - to temp bypass 'snap to grid' when dragging to new position on timeline.
• Hold Shift - to adjust both fade in & out at same time when setting fades.
• Holding [Alt]/[Option] on the keyboard and then sizing an Event from the right edge results in the Event being freely time stretched.

The Range Tool (2)- The Range tool is used to select a range, or area, within Events both singular or multi. click-and-drag over the area to be selected; a grey box is drawn over the target selection area.
             Modifier Keys;

• Hold Shift - To select multiple, non-contiguous ranges across any Event, on any Track.

The Split Tool (3) - Using the Split tool, single Events can be split into multiple Events. Just click once on the event (clip) where you want it split.

The Eraser Tool (4) - The Eraser tool is used to delete Events, just click on what event you want deleted.

The Paint Tool (5) - used to create an empty Instrument Part on an Instrument Track. This can be handy if you want to manually insert some midi parts. Using the Paint Tool on the timeline you can draw and adjust Loop Selections. Used when creating automation the paint tool and add nodes and manually draw automation lines. When working on the Piano Roll                   View it is used to insert midi information.

The Mute Tool (6) - In the Arrange view, the Mute tool is used to mute audio events, audio parts, and Instrument parts. Just click once on anything you want muted and again to un-mute.

The Bend Tool (7) - In the Arrange view, the Bend tool is used to manipulate, add, and remove Bend Markers. It comes into its own when working with transient detection and editing.

The Listen Tool (8) - In the Arrange view, click and hold on any Track to instantly solo the Track and start play back from the position you clicked.

Last but not least the most anticipated tool of them all... the 'Smart Tool'

The Smart Tool - with this selected you now have control over the Arrow Tool, the Range Tool simultaneously. You can then set up a third alternate tool by selecting the down arrow on the highlighted Arrow Tool and choose from it's drop down menu options. Simply hold down the [Alt] key to access and use your third tool of choice.

Check out some more practical editing, employing all the tools listed above, shown in the video below.