How are the acoustic guitars in this song not phase cancelling despite being panned hard L&R? When I record 2 takes of an acoustic guitar part and pan them to either side, they completely fall apart when I listen back in mono. It causes horrible phasing issues. Is the key to record with a pair of mics? If so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction - e.g which mics would be best for this?

 

Double-tracked and counter-panned.

 

It is possible to solve that quite easily. You can flip the phase of one of the channels to see if that makes it better. You can physically move the waveform of one of the takes (while fully zoomed in) to align the peaks and troughs as much as possible, and the results will improve. You can also see if a plugin can solve the issue. Try the Flux EVO Channel, Sound Radix Auto-Align, or Melda MAutoAlign. Hope this helps. Cheers.

 

what do you mean counterpanned? Just one L and one R?

 

-double tracked with delay offset
-output of fx unit Left no small delay and right bigger delay
-HAAS effect ( will widen the signal to the sides)

XY Stereo micing with Ribbon and Condenser setup.

This is mono compatible.

Lots of good ways to do this, any same signal with delay and different timing will mono properly even though it will be hard panned in stereo mode.

 

Yes. If you pan one left, you pan the other equally (much) to the right.

 

thanks for the response, I've tried haas effect and get pretty noticable phase issues and same for manually delaying one of the tracks, i'm thinking about getting a pair of ribbon mics as I haven't been able to get a clean mono signal with the way I've tried so far

 

I get crazy phase issues when it collapses to mono though do you not have the same thing happen?

 

Then you are doing it wrong. Double-track the guitar (record the same passage twice) and counter-pan the two different takes.
The minute differences in timing, phase, timbre, etc will create a really wide sound. How wide you want it to be is up to how hard you want to (counter) pan the two takes.

Haas will (generally) create more phase issues (comb filtering), as it's just an exact copy of single take but one side is delayed (0.1ms to 40ms). Haas is generally used to add some "real panning" (without the HRTF and crosstalk).

 

Last edited: Mar 17, 2023

Strange, this shouldn't happen. Can you upload an example?

 

Here's an example first little exert is stereo second part is collapsed down to mono

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qr86xs6pcwopqzo/mono example.wav?dl=0

 

This is normal for double-takes tho. Try to collapse that Kanye-Wanye song to mono and listen.

You can raise Mid by 1dB and lower Side by 2dB if you don't like it for some reason, but I wouldn't worry about it personally.

 

Sounds normal. If you want to reduce the difference just add a bit compression.
And BTW, I've heard way worse. When you listen to some Rock/Metal tracks the GTRs are almost completely gone in mono.

 

There are about a hundred plugins that increase the wideness of a buss, but the easiest one to use on guitars is TC Electronic TC 1210 Spatial Expander. Sounds great on everything, but especially guitars.

 

Unless you are miraculously staying the same distance within microns to the mic and playing identically with the precision of a robot I don't see how this could happen. I routinely double track acoustic on a single mic. Even an internal mic or pickup shouldn't give issues like that. Must be something more happening...

That said I also often like to do each side with a different mic, or even guitar. That should definitely solve your problem.

 

Exactly what @Trurl said. Using a different mic and or different guitar is a great idea. Also, play the parts, even if playing the same chords in different positions of the guitar. You can use a Capo if you want the sound to keep that open feel while using standard position chording.

 

This was the fascinating thing, when I collapsed the Kanye song to mono there were 0 phase issues - I mean literally 0, it sounded perfect. Like not even a tiny bit of comb filtering.

 

You probably don't hear it over all that Kanye. However even with a 128kbps .mp3 I just downloaded off YouTube, the whatever highs left from guitars in stereo are gone when collapsing to mono, due to comb-filtering.

Anyways, try Wider by Polyverse Music on a mono guitar then. It's free, and it only affects Side channel. Meaning, when collapsed to mono, you'll end up with the same guitar you started with.
iZotope Ozone Imager can also widen a mono signal in a very clean way.
But in all honestly, you obsess over an insignificant detail. Mono compatibility is only significant for certain mediums like vinyl, in sub region, when you have too much muddy stuff in the Side channel, or when your whole instruments just disappear. Or if you're phase-sensitive and get a vertigo from too wide sounds.

Either way, keep in mind that a pair of ribbon mics won't change a thing in this regard. If you hope to resolve phase "issues" with that investment, you would be better off straight-up giving these money to charity.

 

Last edited: Mar 18, 2023

double or maybe triple tracked, EQed differently, the midrange is different. one in high mid heavy one is a little darker.

another trick is hard panned L + hard panned R and send them to a bus and HPF the Side channel only will create super wide impression.

Also everything else is so dead center and the guitar comes in once in a while making things feel super wide, that factor in too.

 

Try Vesco fx Haas Delay been using it for years.
https://benvesco.com/store/product/haas-stereo-enhancing-delay-plugin/