Phase Inverting

[Guest Kits]

Hi

 

Haven't seen any disscusion on this forum abou phase invertion and its artistic uses. any thoughts?

 

Kits

[Guest etherdesign]

It's very good for making stereo samples sound very wide or making stereo samples out of mono samples.. that's the only use I have found for it for far although I'm sure there are lots of other technical uses for it.

[Guest random]

also good for removing mono components out of stereo samples

[Guest E.T.]

And it's easy to kill all invert-phased trax on mono output (radio, etc.) So rather do not use it as a permanent effect.

[Guest etherdesign]

Eh, it's a nice stereo effect.. quite frankly I'm not too concerned about people listening to my music on a system with only one speaker since they are already losing quite a bit of the track in the lower and upper frequencies anyways.

[Guest coriolis]

imho, i wouldn't suggest using direct phase inverting as a stereo enhancer effect. it seems common to me for a stereo signal to be summed into mono, even on a pa or other live sound system, and a signal mixed with its phased inverse will produce silence. Additionally, on a stereo playback system playing into a room, phase inversion can create weird "holes" in the soundfield of the room, especially if your normal/inverted signal pair contains lower frequencies which have longer wavelengths and thus, bigger cancellation areas.

 

as far as i know, phase inversion is most often used in stereo or multiple microphone scenarios where the mixed mic signals are creating cancellation effects, in which case the signals are out of phase and one of them needs to be inverted.

 

as for creating a stereo sound, i myself am fond of a simple spreader effect, where a small delay (on the order of 10ms and smaller) on one channel will create a directional stereo spread. better yet, use two variable delays, one on each channel, with phase-inverted lfos controlling delay time from 0 to 15ms or so. there are more complex plugins where you can assign different frequency ranges to different pan positions. with breathy sounds this can do a good job adding stereo spread. then there is also adding the touch of other stereo effects like reverb, chorus, delay, flange, phaser, etc.

 

but the best stereo sounds are the ones recorded with a really well executed stereo mic setup, or better yet - tiny microphones placed directly in a test subjects ear canals (this is indeed actually done, especially for research dealing with human hearing). those sounds, esp. when heard in headphones, are so deceptively real you feel like its actually physically happening... and thats the mark of a really good stereo sound (when you don't hear the "stereo," you just hear the "realism")