Forum help (MAutoAlign)

[Starship Krupa]

I love MAutoAlign for my drum overheads, but I'm trying to sort out why sometimes it creates more of a "Haas effect" than it does just simply aligning phase.

Same source material, repeat analysis yields way different results. You know the story.

I've seen it said here that these issues have been well-covered in the forum, and I would like to RTFF, but when I try to search on "MAutoAlign" or "MAutoAlign tips," the search engine spits back that the terms are too common.

How do I find the posts where this has been discussed?

[mibby]

First off - I don't know the answer to your question...

I got a bunch of stuff searching for MAutoAlign...

search.php?keywords=mautoalign&fid%5B0%5D=138

I've got a document, a couple of years old and not very well organized where I did a search and "collected" tips on using MAA. I should probably update it.

PM sent...

[MeldaProduction]

Generally if the results are different every time, then the correlation between the signals to be aligned isn't strong enough. Either these are unrelated sources. Or some of them are too far / too ambient. For example, if you have snare mics + tom mics, things may be different when you play section with snare drum hits and section with tom hits.

[Starship Krupa]

I got a bunch of stuff searching for MAutoAlign...

Thanks so much, mibby, as ever, you've got it.

Thanks also for the PM'd tips.

I only ever use it on stereo mic'ing, like drum overheads, acoustic guitar, acoustic piano. I'm not feeding it that diverse a signal. I get that it likes a good strong level, but should I be doing my analyses on sections where I'm doing fills across toms and cymbals, or on sections where I'm keeping a simple, steady beat?

[MeldaProduction]

That depends on the entire setup. Personally I'd only group closemikes of the same instrument, otherwise it doesn't seem to work that well. And if this is about snare group, than obviously use a part, where the snare is playing etc.

[Starship Krupa]

I am using an idiosyncratic overhead mic placement, my take on the "recorderman" or "Glyn Johns." The left one is over the snare and hi hat, the right one over the floor tom. They're placed so that the diaphragms are equidistant from the snare head.

[MeldaProduction]

Aaaaha, that explains it. The 2 mikes are very far from each other. Now think about it - what the plugin does basically is to try to make all mikes receive the sound at the same moment. But that is only possible if there is a single sound source. Here the distance from snare drum to each mike is very different from the distances to say a tom.

[Starship Krupa]

Ah, I see. Still, I do get some pretty cool results, it can really open up the drum soundstage in a pleasing way. The Haas Effect perhaps.

Of course it does sound great when used as designed on close mic'd acoustic guitar and piano.