Time align drum mics? || Live Sound Phase Issues

Punchy drums are critical to an energetic live mix. But timing and phase problems come with multiple mics on a source. So can time-aligning our drum mics make our mix feel better? And is it worth the effort?
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[@adamwberanek]

Love it! When the band is comfortable and the mix is sounding good, some audio engineers will play a game on their phone. Great sound engineers will do these kinds of things. The mix isn't complete until the gig is over

[@anthonyanzalone]

For mixing I use a plug-in called AutoAlign by Sound Radix. It measures the delay and polarity for you similarly to InPhase but it does it for you automatically which is a huge time saver over InPhase.

[@legargarcia4363]

Yes, but with inphase you are doing it, not a plugin

[@dylanraymusic]

Game changer! This is great stuff🔥💪

[@obijuan8466]

Another eye opening video. I'm not likely smart enough to do what you've just done, but it was cool to hear the difference. I also loved how hot your kick input gain is. I always have mine lower, but if you're not afraid, neither am I.

[@kadiummusic]

I used Melda's AutoAlign and it works perfectly. 😎

[@JeyFish]

Crushed the link and purchased my fellow Nerd!

[@DeltaWhiskeyBravo13579]

The Waves InPhase is definitely on my wish list. The graphic content alone is going to be very helpful to align my audio. WYHIWYG...what others hear should be good. 🙂☕

[@OtherTheDave]

I’ve always put _some_ effort into aligning the snare top & bottom, as well as the kick in mic (if I’m using it for anything other than keying the kick out mic’s gate), and this will probably get me to try it on the rest of the kit, too.

[@jthunderbass1]

Soooo, you said that metric makes measuring easier for this… What about Cubits? I always delay the kick in mic, if I don’t have in-phase for that event, I’ll just do input delay. I once time aligned a guitar channel to the rest of the channels by listening to the snare attack in the guitar mic and the snare channel. It was pretty easy to get within 1ms doing that.

[@user-cm1co4gi5u]

The difference is clear. It sounds so much more open/3D/full bodied when they are aligned

[@DaleBoyce2012]

In a live situation time aligning the kit with the PA gives very obvious results as well. There is significant spill from the kit in the vocal mics that are nearer so you have to choose whether to align the drums with the vocal mics or the PA since those are different distances. Or switch to electronic drums and kill the stage noise. 🙂

[@timnordberg7204]

I would have much rather watched a video about this! I envy any live engineer who has time onsite to measure and set 6-10 delay lines, and pity the drummer who has to play every drum for long enough to set gain, HPF, dynamics, EQ, polarity AND delay time wrt the OHs (not to mention the rest of the band). But mains-to-backline delay will make a huge difference, especially in venues small enough that the audience can still hear a lot of the acoustic sound of the drum kit.

[@robertwierer683]

@@timnordberg7204 Hello, How exactly do you go about this so that the signals in the oh are all in phase with the bd sd and toms and at the same time the signal from the pa and the direct sound reach the listener at the same time? Best regards Robert

[@joekwartin9008]

Your vids are killer!

[@garryyoung6]

Interesting video.

[@lukedavis3953]

Great video! For live, I think polarity switch goes a long way. I do always delay Kick in and Kick out. For studio, I think time alignment is perhaps more feasible plus you have those visual cues. I do think live having playback can help with this quite a bit. If your kit and mic position are the same week to week you could probably get very close to the same studio level accuracy. I guess I just got a reason to setup playback. 😂

[@Bhallmed]

How are you measuring the sample distance is there a quick key that shows the distance when you highlight the gap differences

[@benedwards9140]

Hello from Australia, i am a volunteer at a community radio station, I've been interested in audio production for a long time, mostly in my home studio. In the past year or so i have been involved in broadcasting local bands live on the radio and trying to mix in real time for broadcast with analogue gear. I also multitrack record as much as i can and have discovered the whole phase alignment thing. So . . . It crossed my mind that i could just do monitor mixes analogue and do the broadcast mix in the box. Reaper has a plug called phase rotation, i figure its doing time alignment. But could a given mic (thats waveform is inverted raw vs another mic) require both phase invert and time alignment . . . aswell.

[@noelbulls8628]

Nice video. I already delay the snare mics. I haven't try to delay the toms yet. I will try this and see how well they sound. Also you might want to experiment with a sonic maximizer on the toms send to their own subgroup then blend them with the drums subgroup. You will get punch for ever on the toms and will fell the impact. I promise lol. Take care James Thanks for everything.

[@davidmerewether5594]

I am struggling with this technique. I guess I am too much of an engineer to see the benefit. I can definitely see you can increase your kick by aligning all the tom mics to it, but are you not making the timing between the toms worse and increasing the comb filtering effect in the toms? I would also be interested to see how often you have to do the alignment. As you said, sound travels at different speeds depending on a wide range of conditions. If it is great today, will it be terrible tomorrow? Or, will the drift be small enough that you will need to recalibrate the mics once every 3 months or so? Inquiring minds want to know.

[@johnmcvicker6728]

Great video. For live, us X32 guys are at a limit to what we can do other than route through a DAW and do alignment and then back out (to livestream or other). I don't think I would ever go through a DAW back to the PA. Waves Superrack? Sure. Would love to see what we can do other than 1ms stepped delays on the X32. Moving mics by inches and feet can be done for some degree of adjustment. What kind of delays would be available in say a Digicom or Avid style costy-mixer?

[@AttawayAudio]

If you use X32 edit, you can type in your delay time in tenths of a ms. Some higher end consoles let you do it in samples, which is handy. I just tried this last weekend on an SSL L200 but forgot that my recording is in 48kHz but my console was running at 96k... so I only delayed it half as many samples as I should have.

[@johnmcvicker6728]

@@AttawayAudio Ah - thanks. I'll try typing it in with the iPad and/or X32Edit on the x32 over using the control knob which seems to work in 1ms steps. Also, for the first time at our church, will be measuring distance from snare to OH's.

[@surge-tech9381]

I hope to do this someday. I love helping out with sound

[@michaeltablet8577]

With our drummer I have to align to the speed of smell. Love your videos! Always helpful!

[@allitode]

Just tried doing this with the snare on Sunday. The sometimes worship leader/preacher/drummer said he loved it, but the active drummer noticed the latency in his ears. I'll be working on either double patching for ears or seeing if we can tap the ears pre-delay.

[@johnmcvicker6728]

How is your drummer getting his mix? Is it a pre-everything aux bus or post-fader type of thing? If you can mix pre-everything and let him EQ his bus - or perhaps use a different system (we use one FoH mixer and an X32 Rack for IEMs) it may not be noticed by performers.

[@allitode]

@@johnmcvicker6728 Right now it's a DLive to ME system, but I'm not sure where the direct out for each channel is picked from. Didn't quite realize it was a problem until in-between services and he said it wasn't too bad, but he noticed it. Hopefully we'll have a better chance to dial it in soon.

[@cgreentx]

@@allitode Definitely make sure your direct outs are way before the delay. Mine are currently post-gate in the chain. I generally don't want any of my work to change the ears.

[@rocketsauce5067]

This is a secret that the pro's don't usually share.Thanks.

[@Bobby_Uterus]

Sound radix auto align does this automatically. put it on every drum channel and then detect one channel to the next.

[@timnordberg7204]

why would you correct for an apparent timing delay between the two OH mics by using the snare? It's not as though the drummer is putting their snare dead-center of the kit, balanced on top of the kick. Wouldn't you just want to align the snare to the louder and earlier transient of the OH mics and then let physics do the rest? The panning of the OHs should feel more natural if signals panned to one side reach the listener's ear faster on the side on which they are louder.

[@AttawayAudio]

I like to fix this with mic placement so the snare is in the center of the stereo image, since it needs to be in the stereo image of the mix. But when I can't go back in time to move mics, I do what I can.

[@markwesley-smith3686]

​@AttawayAudio Do you have a video about drum mic placement please?

[@pumpkin1982]

What about lining up video and audio?

[@hypercalm23]

There was one time. And only once that I got to pay drums instead of mix audio. Had a guy mention the kick drum. Basically hummed it. Just want you to know I've accomplished the impossible