I would like to say this is slightly OT and more an audio restoration issue, but the sad reality I'm sure is that a lot of ME's get stuck with this problem more often than we'd like. I know I do.

So I'm curious what bag of tricks you guys use to mask the effects of phasey material. I don't mean out of phase stereo information (though that would be interesting to hear about, too), but more the cloud in the mids you often get from home-studio-recorded/mixed projects. Be it from poor mic technique, bad rooms, or poor DAW technique... it seems rather difficult to deal with at the mastering level, but we're so often asked to do so.

So... any tips?

Personally i don't think there's anything you can do to fix this...........that's not to say you can't make improvements in other areas, but you can't take that phasey-ness out........it's just too "deep" in the audio.

Maybe in the future some super-smart software will be able to tackle it....dunno

A few weeks ago I had some classic rock&roll which was pretty good done in a project & home studio ... but when I checked the mono-compatability .. really nothing was left ...... ( they used some stereo spreader on the guitars and saxes ..... )

I asked the band to remix .... and told them what I thought was going on .. and said ... start with mixing in mono .... it took them some time .... but after 8 weeks they showed up with the corrected tracks ....

I think I won some respect from them not just to master and leave them with the trouble .. and think HE who plays mono anyway ....

No tricks .. just help them out and advice them in their recording/mix process ... they'll help you out some other day ...



My kids love the old rock&roll ...we even did some shake rattle and roll all togetheter listening to the finished tracks in the first summer sun ... he thats living the high life heh

greetings Wim

www.inlinemastering.com

Some tc products had a thing where you could introduce a 90 degree phase shift to one channel as a band-aid for mono compatibility, but short of that you're stuck with it.

DC

well, at least it's comforting to know I'm not the only one with no bandaid for this one.

i had a project a few weeks ago, where the drums were completely out of phase. it was insane and made my ears feel funny.

i tried many things.. but they all just made it sound worse.

the closest was summing the sides to mono and mixing the mono drum info back into the track.. but man.. it then sounded really weird...

there's only so much you (mostly i mean, me) can do with a stereo mixdown.