I have to ask this because it happened to me today and I had no explanation, please read.
I had batch exported a project and reloaded it into a new mixer. The drums didn’t sound right. As I soloed the track, it sounded great until it got to approximately bar 16. At this point a really ugly thing happened, like a bad phasing issue. I thought,OK, since its just a loop, I’ll split the track at bar 14, copy the earlier bars that sound great, paste them together and get on with things. When I did this, the same phase sound happened at the same bar position. Next I moved the 14 bars that did sound great into the bar 16 position, played it and found the same issue.
I had not added any EQ or effects to the track and hadn’t routed it to any other channel.
Next I dragged it down to an unused track, played it and it sounded great. What do you think could have caused this and is this anything that anyone else has experienced?
Was there any automation active in that bar on the original track that wouldn’t have gotten copied to the new track? My 2c is that it’s not a tempo change thing, if that would affect the track below it just as much, but I’m just guessing here …
OK, I see where you are both going but no to all your questions. It was not a timing or tempo track issue that caused the phased sound because the click was right there. And remember I dragged it to another track and it sounded fine. Also btw it was track 1 in my mixer.
Honestly, as odd as it seems, it sounded like the track was either suddenly doubled and the second track was offset a few clicks, something like that. Btw, it was more than EQ, ha, because at first I thought, not understanding that the first 15 bars were perfect, I would try to EQ around what I was hearing. It showed up pretty clearly in the cymbal/high hat work of the track, such that I thought for a minute or two that I could tame some treble and be back on course. So the track was soloed and there were no other tracks playing. And don’t forget - I dragged it to another track and it sounded fine. I will also add that the wave itself looked fine, perfect.
What bothers me most is that I have not spent any time looking for something like this.
Collapsing to mono. Hm, maybe it did sound something like this. That might explain why the meter was still correct and the file looked correct. I will try that right now and see. (OK, I just did this using the CR switching and I think you are right, this is the sound, from stereo to mono. Buggers, I hadn’t engaged this and for that matter, at the time, that CR window wasn’t open to the extended view. It was somehow locked onto that position in the track, bar 16.)
And now I will add that I went back to the original saved project and soloed the drum track in question: It played and sounded fine, no problems. Crazy. This must mean that it was not a feature that could be saved.
I guess my take away with this experience is that I will solo all my tracks for a while before mixdown.
OK, I see where you are both going but no to all your questions. It was not a timing or tempo track issue that caused the phased sound because the click was right there.
Or you didn’t…Elastic audio on multimic’d drums cause momentary and some times not repeatable phasing…dragging it to another channel may cause it to recalculate that.
Any time you’re working with multimic’d sources, elastic audio should not be used, IME.