Phasing

[FC]

I am recording with two mics and surprisingly I think I am getting good results. When I did my Metal demo of the H&K I reamped the riff so today I used the same riff to mess with the phasing of two mics. I did the white noise test to get them in phase and I secured (somewhat) their position. I recorded the reamped riff with both mics at the same time and I ended up with interesting results. I set the e609 on the left channel and the sm57 on the right channel. I did the first recording pass with them in phase and it sounded "kind of" flat so I inverted the polarity on the sm57 and it got totally screwed up as expected, so I know I am in phase. BTW, the e609 is panned all the way to the left and the sm57 is panned all the way to the right on all the recordings.

But then I tried the "nudge" feature in Reaper to see where it took me. To my surprise I think my riff sounds a little better when it is a tad out of phase. I nudged the sm57 by 15ms delay. Then I though that my initial phasing test was not as accurate as I thought, so I again inverted the polarity on the 15ms delayed sm57 track and the change was not as dramatic as when I was in phase.

So now I am confused. Perfectly in phase sounds OK, but "slightly" out of phase sounds better. What gives? Here are the sound samples I just recorded:

e609 and sm57 in phase: http://www.4shared.com/music/OwanyF0L/e609_L_-__sm57_R_-_in_phase.html
e609 and sm57 out of phase: http://www.4shared.com/music/dXbjXFdS/e609_L_-__sm57_R_-_out_of_phas.html
e609 and sm57 (+15ms delay) in phase: http://www.4shared.com/music/nG4BGj4h/e609_L_-__sm57_R__15ms_-_in_ph.html
e609 and sm57 (+15ms delay) out of phase: http://www.4shared.com/music/urSPGM7x/e609_L_-__sm57_R__15ms_-_out_o.html

Any ideas as to what is going on here?

This is the way I have them setup per my white noise test:

[breakfastime]

So now I am confused. Perfectly in phase sounds OK, but "slightly" out of phase sounds better. What gives? Here are the sound samples I just recorded:

I think the little 'twinge' of out-of-phaseness can add sparkle or depth, depending on the part in question--and now that you recognize the sound of this  phenomenon you'll hear it all over Led Zepplin records!  True 100% in-phase is pretty tough to capture, if it's even possible at all (since the sound waves are moving anyhow, and will vary in frequency from note-to-note)

Nowadays though you can do phase correction in the computer (as you know) and you can see (ummmm...hear) that it's not as much fun as having the subtle effect.  You just don't want the two signals to be so out of synch that the part disappears in a stereo mix when listening on a mono source.

Also, you can just take a mono part, and split it to a delay with an extremely quick delay (between 1-9 milliseconds) to 'double' it after the fact.  Fattens up them chunky rhythm guitars or vocals...put some modulation on the delay track and you start to get...chorus

[FC]

Cool tricks, thank you BT. +1. So in theory you should be able to correct phasing problems with a combination delays and reversing polarity? I will pay more attention to these things on my next Led Zep music listening session.

[FC]

Also, you can just take a mono part, and split it to a delay with an extremely quick delay (between 1-9 milliseconds) to 'double' it after the fact.  Fattens up them chunky rhythm guitars or vocals...put some modulation on the delay track and you start to get...chorus

Absolutely. That is what I did but instead of copying and pasting the mono recording into a new channel I created two identical recordings from the reamped track, but with the different microphones. As you can hear from my amateurish recordings, it does fatten up the tone nicely.

[Mr.Spicecake]

French Viagra, Oui! Merci. lol