Henry Spragens,
>So what happens if I have a mic with polarity reversed?
>
>Usually, nothing.
>
>If the mic is not paired with another one, for instance a soloist or individual drum mic,
>acoustic phasing is more or less random and varies with frequency (wavelength) in a
>way too complicated to figure out. If you have a ¡°PHASE¡± switch on your mic preamp,
> try it both ways. Chances are neither setting is vastly better.
If I were to believe in the above gospel then there should not be any standard at all as
regards polarity and stereo as we know it today would sound very weird indeed.
Henry Spragens:
>So what happens if I have a mic with polarity reversed?
>
>Usually, nothing.
Polarity, if hot is pin 2 or 3, you check by putting one reference mic from any reputable
manufacturer, Neumann, AKG, Schoeps, R?de, etc as CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TOGETHER
such as to remove the ACOUSTIC TIME DELAYS between capsules then and only then
you use the mono button while listening over headphones and/or looking at a VU meter.
The right polarity comes when the audio is as full sounding, in polarity, compared to the
thin sounding version, out of polarity sounding when pushing the mono button over
HEADPHONES.
As soon as you moves mic apart THEN and ONLY THEN, do I agree with your version
above Henry Spragens but as this is WAVELENGHT dependent then even the 16 feet
pipe on the church organ can be heard to diminish as the mics in a two mic recording
is monitored in mono as mics are moved apart.
YOU decide if that matters to you.
POLARITY do matter as soon as you use any INTENSITY recording techniques also called
XY, that excludes timing differences among microphone PAIRS.
Timing differences occur due to path length differences that is minimized in XY or Stereo
microphone techniques.
WHERE POLARITY REALLY MATTERS:
Using any of the INTENSITY Stereo recording methods that DO excists:
Schoeps CMC301/501, Neumann SM69 etc etc etc.
No wonder that in the age of CD that the old button on Neumann cutters
could be switched to mono everything below 70 Hz, 150 Hz & 300 Hz by rolling off the
difference channel using an inductor between the stereo feed and series resistors in each leg.
The above to avoid having the cutting head sapphire not lift out of the lacquer. so as the final
LP disc unplayable.
-------------
Best regards,
Goran Finnberg
The Mastering Room AB
Goteborg
Sweden
Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to
make them all yourself.??? -?? John Luther
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") Pyret, Ranglet, Aron, VovVov, Nero, Smurfen & Pussin:RIP
John Thaden