[Ardour-Users] delay matching (aka time alignment)

[Ross Johnson]

Axel Müller wrote:
> Am Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:06:00 -0800 schrieb Kevin Cosgrove:
>
>   
>>> Maybe these?
>>> http://www.recdiy.com/TimeAlign/TimeAlign1.html
>>>       
>> YES!  That's it exactly.  Thank you!  I've saved the URL this time.
>>     
>
> I just tried aligning snares and toms to the overheads on one of my older 
> drum recordings. In some cases like my 14" Snare it had a big effect then 
> again on the 12" Snare the effect was very small. But I think it's worth 
> a try.
>
> I also tried it on a dual miked guitar amp where one mike was close and 
> the other in about one meter distance. The effect was great - it sounded 
> very big, fat and more present.
>
> I used the "Echo Delay Line (Maximum Delay 0.01s)" from the cmt-plugins 
> for that.
>   
I've been experimenting with delays on live drums for many years on my 
Yamaha O2R, which has built-in delay adjustment on all tracks, and I 
totally agree with previous posts describing the gains and losses. It's 
not a cure-all but may possibly be used to optimise some sources if you 
don't have the opportunity to fix it during recording. As you would 
expect, it works best with fewer mics, and is best where there is only 
one source that you're interested in.

One of the best sounding drum kit recordings I have was recorded (not by 
me) using three mics: one overhead, one snare and one bass drum. The 
whole group was recorded to 8 track ADAT in a live public radio studio 
session and I was given the raw 8 tracks to remix several years later. 
The kit included two high toms and a floor tom being picked up by the 
overhead. I used delay to time-align the toms through the overhead with 
the snare and the bass drum mics. The toms retained a really nice open 
sound but the time align and some careful EQ brought out more depth, 
presence and resonance. Effectively, the time align allowed me to do 
more with less EQ. The cymbals didn't lose too much thanks to the single 
overhead but I really needed to get a lot more out of the toms, which 
were sounding bland.

One final note: multi-millisecond delays are not uncommon when doing 
this (1 metre = 2.94 ms), and delays of this magnitude can be noticed. I 
was doing a live mix with digital drums when the drummer, hearing 
himself though his foldback, complained of a delay in his snare. I 
checked and found a 3 ms delay set for that track. It's possible that he 
only noticed it because it was added to the overall delay through the 
digital desk, which could have blown it out to up to 6 ms total.