“Being social”

Some days ago Tape Op magazine published on its Facebook page the article formerly published on their website within the tutorials section. It is the article you find opening the “Tape Op #106” page here at the blog. Luckily comments followed the posting, unfortunately some of them were either inappropriate when not rude or offending. The article was described as “full of inaccuracies, misstatements and gross over-simplifications“; “not up to Tape Op standards“; “a dud“; “filled with half-thruths and falsehoods”.

I guess these are just different ways of “being social” over at Facebook, ways I am not interested in. Again, the reason why I estimated a good idea sharing my experience as an audio engineer was that I felt I had come to interesting conclusions, that could possibly be helpful to somebody else.

I believe that one should at least try to go along, understand, put into practice the proposed methods and solutions and eventually reply. After, not before. I totally understand the skepticism that might arise upon reading the article. In fact it actually contains a few early “inaccuracies” about the series of harmonics influenced by the combination of microphones. Those “inaccuracies” have been revised and improved here at the blog.

This article never wanted to be “scientific”. It originated as a shot in the darkness of phase related “issues” when working with more than one microphone. I am not a scientist. I try to be as accurate as possible. I don’t draw my own conclusions. I am not new-age.

You can’t even imagine how skeptical and at the same time embarassed I was when I first started to have hypothesis about the phase displacement between condensers on one side and moving-coils plus ribbons on the other; and about what happens when their outputs are combined.

While researching, I tried to gather as much information I could but… what I was hoping for wasn’t around! I read a very interesting article on Sound-On-Sound magazine which was extremely in accordance with my results (down to using the same words) but totally missed the point when saying “If you use more than one mic to record a single instrument, the simplest way to minimise the effects of phase cancellation is to get the mic capsules physically as close together as possible”. Aaarghhh… Damn it!

I felt almost guilty before the audio engineering world community. “Who am I to introduce these obscure facts?”. Because to me they were facts. “Why isn’t anyone talking about this?” I was desperate for support, until…

One day I finally read the “Handbook for Sound Engineers”, chapter 16, page 505: “The electrical waveform output from the moving-coil microphone does not follow the phase of the acoustic waveform because at maximum pressure the diaphragm is at rest (no velocity). Further, the diaphragm and its attached coil reach maximum velocity, hence maximum electrical amplitude at point c on the acoustic waveform (i.e. when pressure is at null). This is of no consequence unless another microphone is being used along with the moving-coil microphone where the other microphone does not see the same 90° displacement. Due to this phase displacement, condenser microphones should not be mixed with moving-coil or ribbon microphones when micing the same source at the same distance”.

Then, at page 508: “Capacitor microphones generate an output electrical waveform in step or phase with the acoustical waveform […]”

Those were exactly the same conclusions I had come to on my own: I finally felt relieved and legitimated to share.

tunedmiking.net actually tells you that one can mix condensers with moving-coils or ribbons. It is quite accurate in telling you the shape of the comb filtering which occurs when you do so and also how to manage the filtering for the benefit of your recordings.

You might find it interesting and hopefully useful. Or you might think it’s not for you.

I strongly encourage you to try yourself and post honest comments here, whatever you think about it. If you have supporting documentation, please share.

P.S. I have replied very politely to the various comments but for some reason Facebook classifies the majority of my replies as spam and doesn’t allow them. They must be approved by Tape Op first.

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