is it a huge problem if...

...your mix is not in phase

*i read that if your reading a phase-scope and the marker is in between 0 and +1 then you're good.

*how does this translate to some dude listening on a ipod though, will they even notice?

i've been trying to understand this and what i've got through research so far is that if you have a good balance on the left and the right then your good
but then i read that this only really matters if the mix is summed to mono or something which is not really done nowadays or something like that

any info is amazing.

-Copper Tony

at the end of the day, you're producing a recording. that recording corresponds directly to physical movement in your speaker cones. the cone moves in and out very quickly, creating waves of pressure we hear as sound. when people talk about a sine wave or a square wave, they're talking about a graph of the speaker cone's movement over time.

take a squarewave synth noise. pulses are sent out like this to your speakers



at the high (positive) points in that graph, your speaker cone is pushed out as far as it'll go.
at the low (negative) points, the speaker cone is pulled in as far as it'll go.
in the middle (zero), the speaker cone is at its natural resting spot, in the center of the push/pull range.

flip that graph upside-down, so the high and low points are swapped. add it back to the original graph. +1 adds with -1 and you get zero -- a flat line, silence. no signal. mutual destruction. this is what happens when two identical signals that are completely out of phase are mixed together.

if you mix together two identical signals that are perfectly in phase, instead of cancelling out, it'll get twice as loud. in between, it sounds like a flanger (yes, that's what a flanger does!!).


if your track gets played on AM radio (lol), AM radio is mono. rather than just use the left or right channel, they mix both together and broadcast that. it can make your bass disappear, flange, get louder, etc. it's possible to mix a track so that it collapses down to mono gracefully, but it's quite hard; very technical. people don't listen to AM much these days, so phase worries are increasingly irrelevant. but if you go back and listen to the beatles, they'll put bass guitar on the left side of the mix, guitar on the right, etc. to dodge the phase issue as AM was much more important back then.

at the end of the day: you should understand this shit, but i wouldn't lose any sleep over it. the dude on the ipod won't notice at all. but if an AM radio station wants your beats, send them a mono mix!

a mate had his hi-fi running mono the other day for some reason. some records had a very sweet comb-filtering type sound.

I don't think it should matter but a good way to check is to bounce your mix out and try it on different systems. iPod, car, studio, other friends studio. If that is all good then you are good to go...

thetechniquetv wrote:I don't think it should matter but a good way to check is to bounce your mix out and try it on different systems. iPod, car, studio, other friends studio. If that is all good then you are good to go...

cool, yea i always test my tracks on everything i have to check that it sounds good everywhere
it's good to know that if it's not perfectly in phase it's not the end of the world
i guess as long as it's sounding good and i'm not playing it on AM radio then i'm golden

thanks guys
solid info

if ur making shit off key out of tune or in phase and it dont sound good then correct it, if u hear something wrong then its down to u as the producer to make it sound right

Isn't there a phase video on MPC-Tutors youtube channel?

Mono compatibility is still important as radio, whether it is FM or AM, still uses mono summed.

FM is transmitted using M/S and in areas where the signal is weak FM reverts to mono. Additionally, a lot of radios only transmit in mono, especially boom box portables. Even DAB radios sum to mono.

Most TVs are still in mono even if their signal is transmitted via FM. However, the digital transfer will soon render that null and void.

There is also club systems to take into account. They are in mono., So, mixing or referencing in mono is critical.

Zukan wrote:Mono compatibility is still important as radio, whether it is FM or AM, still uses mono summed.

FM is transmitted using M/S and in areas where the signal is weak FM reverts to mono. Additionally, a lot of radios only transmit in mono, especially boom box portables. Even DAB radios sum to mono.

Most TVs are still in mono even if their signal is transmitted via FM. However, the digital transfer will soon render that null and void.

There is also club systems to take into account. They are in mono., So, mixing or referencing in mono is critical.

cool, thanks Zukan

Zukan wrote:Mono compatibility is still important as radio, whether it is FM or AM, still uses mono summed.

FM is transmitted using M/S and in areas where the signal is weak FM reverts to mono. Additionally, a lot of radios only transmit in mono, especially boom box portables. Even DAB radios sum to mono.

Most TVs are still in mono even if their signal is transmitted via FM. However, the digital transfer will soon render that null and void.

yeah, now that you mention it, there's that "stereo" LED on radios. on some TVs, too.

i need to go learn more about how FM broadcasting works. does it sum the two channels, or just lock onto the stronger one, or what?

Zukan wrote:There is also club systems to take into account. They are in mono., So, mixing or referencing in mono is critical.

really ?? i'm certain i've heard stereo effects used at clubs before.

maybe you just mean it's so loud as to effectively be mono, e.g. the waves of bass meeting in the middle of teh club.

Clubs still play in mono and live sound PA systems. They do this so that people on one side of the venue/club don't hear half of the music and therefore an imbalanced mix. DAB systems output in mono too by summing the stereo signal. FM radio is the only exception and that is because where the signal is weaker it reverts to mono to lock onto a stronger signal. Add to that iPhones, iTouches and mobile phones: they all play in mono.