Is phase important with samples and soft synths.

I was wondering if when mixing drum samples and soft synth's I should be looking at phase issues.
If so, what do I need to be looking out for?
Also what's the best way to fix any problems?

Cheers
Steve.

Thanks for a very helpful reply, could I get issue's between a kick sample and a VST synth bass for example?

Cheers
Steve.

What Mike is saying is pretty on the money. If you are using a soft synth and it is represented over a stereo or two channel signal then as long it is sounding great don't worry but at some point you may hear something that involves phase relationships and it might not sound good for whatever reason. Most samples and if they are stereo and usually pretty phase coherent.

It is important to get quite involved with the effects processor of any soft synth. They are usually present and often engaged in the total sound making process. Sometimes they might program a silly chorus effect that could be making a preset sound phasey or actually worse than it could be or drenched reverb sound. There might be stereo imaging effects being used. Often all it takes is to either alter the wet/dry setting of any given internal effect or something I like doing is to switch off that chorus or reverb effect say and re apply it later with something much cooler like Dimension D or a way better reverb.

The quality of internal effects processors inside many soft synths varies. Some of them are better than others. Often they are programmed too heavily on the wet side or inappropriate effects may be applied which does not help the original patch. In one Korg Wavestation patch I have they have polarity reversed on side of the stereo image. It is a wide patch and because of this it seems to get a bit wider and less focused. But it was a silly programming concept in some ways. I had to put the polarity back to normal on that side and then the patch sounded way better and also narrow down the stereo image somewhat before this sound sat much better in a mix.

If you hear a tight reverb over a snare or something check into it to see if they are not adding this stuff in later down the track. Many drum VST's feature complex mixing pages with lots of sends and returns for fx etc...Often you will not even know these pages are there. You have to navigate your way to them. FX processors are often not that noticeable on the main front page of a soft synth.

If you are hearing some sort of ambience on a drum hit it might also be in the sample and no effects are being applied. Often in those cases the phase relationships of the ambience are good. You can always use a gate as well to remove unwanted extended ambiences that might be present in a sample and new ambiences can be substituted.

steve@psbnoe.wanadoo


Thanks for a very helpful reply, could I get issue's between a kick sample and a VST synth bass for example?

Cheers
Steve.

In this scenario rather than a bona fide 'phase' issue you are more likely to run across conflicting harmonics causing similar comb filtering artifacts, again it's more of a case of choosing nice complementary sounds at the outset rather than getting into solving phase issues IMO

But any scenario I can think of would be quite atypical.

LOL, now Bit's said pretty much the same thing I guess it's official.

Having said all that and not worry about 'issues' per se I do often like to make timing alignments and frequency domain phase adjustments just for the sake of maximum impact and sometimes for creative effect there is a great tool I use for that kind of thing.

Which is this!

It is free, works a treat and you can download it...

Here

"If I'm layering kicks or snares should the waveforms be pointing up or down together and at the same time?"

It's hard to say that matching the kick and snare matters without looking at a specific situation. It's routine to check both ways when working with a acoustic kits and a multi mic setup to decide what sounds better.

What probably matters more when layering drum tones is that both sources of any single "instrument" are matched.

best regards,
mike

I love looking at waveforms. And I love watching meters. But I would only ever judge phase or polarity issues by ear. Waveforms and phase meters don't actually tell you if there's a problem or not. They might clue you in that there might be a problem and lead you to do a sum-to-mono phase check, but the final call is the listening test. Your waveform and meter might show radically out-of-phase signals, but on listening to the stereo and mono mix you might not hear any problems.