Possibly our most asked question for Auto-Align is how to go about drums alignment, which microphone should be the reference etc.
First, Auto-Align looks for correlation in the signal to calculate the optimal time and phase correction for the mics. This is important to remember when choosing the SEND and RECV sources for each track. e.g. using the the top tom mic as a reference for the kick mic will probably won’t yield very good results…
Since the snare drum has a rich frequency content and is placed virtually at the center of the drum kit, the top snare mic is a great place to start as the initial reference for the overheads and room mics. Try aligning both left and right overhead and room mics to the top snare for the clearest snare sound and most accurate transients reproduction. Don’t be shy with the Noise Floor settings, as we’d rather miss some beats than feeding Auto-Align with irrelevant bleed.
Next, we’ll align the bottom snare mic to the top snare mic and continue to align the toms and hi-hats to the overheads.
When aligning the toms, hihat and kick mics to the overheads, it’s important to feed Auto-Align with the sound of those drums for the detection process rather than that of the snare, or you will simply be aligning the bleed of the snare into those mics. For best results, align the toms and hi-hat mics to their nearest overheads.
Hi there, just purchased drumleveler and think about purchasing Autoalign.
I think about starting with drum leveler and then auto aligning the kit.
Would this be the right way to start?
Thanks in advance for your tips
Ziggy
Thanks for your purchase! Generally speaking, it’s preferable to start with Auto-Align first then move to other processing. Reason being some plug-ins may introduce latency and phase-shift which may throw off Auto-Align’s detection.
Hi,
I wonder if, once values are found with auto align, is it possible to simply copy these + or - sample values to the user offset field of the delay compensation section of pro tools tracks ? here => pro tools user offset field
By doing this, I mean, in order to remove auto align from the insert slots and then recover CPU resources…
Or maybe auto align is more than sample delay treatment ?
maybe a phase question…
About phase, when a phase rotation is needed, does auto align rotate the phase or just add more samples ?
Maybe because of that, it is impossible to just copying the delay informations to the track’s user offset, or, in this case, take also the phase rotation into consideration…
I’m trying to find an easier option to remove auto align from track inserts once treatment is done, to keep the correction without bouncing tracks…
note : pushing back or forth the audio blocks could also replace user offset in addition with a phase flip when needed…
hello, yair.
i just found this update to a pt expert review: scroll down to “mike thornton”, he apparently was nudging the tracks of a post session using the exact auto align values. don’t really know if i was entering the values to the user offset field as suggested by ultrasteak, or maybe manually nudging (he also talks about a “nudge command”:
furthermore, if AA needs to flip the polarity, could we just add this with a simple plugin after nudging the tracks?
thank you very much.
If this better suits your workflow, you can nudge the tracks in Pro Tools to the sample values detected by Auto-Align and simply flip a polarity of the track when Auto-Align detected so.
Hey i bought auto align recently and im wondering if you have any examples of using AA for a full live band centered around a stereo pair and also just with close mics and no main pair. Typical setup for me: main pair LDC or tri-mono - or not and only clise mics as follows; drums (4 mic), bass (2-3, mic if its acoustic, then amp mic, di), piano (2 mic), guitar amp mic +di, rhodes amp mic + di, 3 horns and vocals miced and split at a pa. Id LOVE to be able to auto snap to the main pair or center of the decca tree, or choose an instrument or mic to be the center…
Thanks for your message! Probably the best way to go about it is to first align all the mics of each of the instruments to themselves then route the mics/di’s of each of the instruments to a bus track so you end up with a drums, bass, piano, etc buses, then align all the instrument busses to your main LDC pair.
If you haven’t already, give Pi (Our Phase Interactions Mixer plug-in) a go. It’s great for dynamically improving phase correlation for live recordings where everything bleeds to everything
Keep us posted on how this worked for you, I’d love to hear the result!
Question: if the drummer is “loose” on the beat and his performance needs some quantizing (aligning the drums to the click), should Auto-Align be used before or after quantizing.
I mix with PreSonus Studio One. When a performance is quantized (or “time stretched” in their vernacular) a new audio file is made of the track and stored as a temp file. This temp file is what is read/played during playback. With this workflow, it seems to me that Auto-Align should be used after a track is time-stretched. (I have not yet experimented with either workflow).
Thanks for your question. It would probably be best to align the drums before stretching the drums because most time stretching algorithms tend to mess with the transients and generate artifact which may throw Auto-Align’s detection off. When quantizing the drums, make sure to phase-lock the tracks to maintain phase correlation.
Hi, I am getting ready to track/mix drums and I plan on using auto align to tighten up any phase/polarity issues from the session. I have a question on how the time adjustments are made:
Say I use the snare top as the reference, then I send that to an overhead mic and align them. Does autoalign move the snare back xx ms or does it move the overhead forward xx ms?
The same question applies for room mics. Lets say I want a mono room to be in phase with the snare but I want to keep the approximate time difference that already exists from the distant placing of the room mic. Will sending the snare as reference for the room make autoalign move the room mic up or delay the snare to match the room?
I read the multi microphone drum recommendations in the FAQ, and from what I understand auto align can either move a track forward or backwards to be in phase with the reference track, but I just wanted to make sure this is what is happening.
And to be clear, you reccomend aligning the kick drum and toms to the overhead after aligning the overheads to the snare? And i assume its user preference as to which overhead you align it to in a stereo pair?
Say I use the snare top as the reference, then I send that to an overhead mic and align them. Does Auto-Align move the snare back xx ms or does it move the overhead forward xx ms?
In this case, the snare won’t be moved. The overheads will be moved in time in order to achieve optimal correlation with the snare.
Will sending the snare as a reference for the room make Auto-Align move the room mic up or delay the snare to match the room?
This will move the room mics. As long as the Snare’s Auto-Align is only sending information and not receiving, the snare won’t be moved.
If you would like to preserve some of the delay between the microphones while still improving phase correlation, use the Next / Previous buttons to move the timing of the mic further or closer in time to the next correlative position.
You Recommend aligning the kick drum and toms to the overhead after aligning the overheads to the snare?
Regarding the Tom mics - yes.
Regarding the Bass Drum - check its polarity against the overheads after they’ve been aligned to the Snare, if needed, reverse the Bass Drum’s phase.
We don’t recommend aligning the Bass Drum to the overheads, as the overheads don’t have much of the Bass Drum’s fundamental frequencies.
If your setup includes a Ribbon mic facing the Bass Drum and Snare, you can align this Ribbon mic to the snare and then align the Bass Drum to the Ribbon mic.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support, we’d be happy to help.
So it sounds like auto align can actually move a track forward in time as well as delay track? It all just depends on what is sending the initial reference signal. Therefor, you want the snare to be the starting ref point since its the loudest/most immediate signal in the kit. If you were to use an overhead as the initial reference and aligned all the close mics to it, you’d actually be shifting the performance back a few miliseconds because of the distance of the microphones from the kit. Am I understanding this correctly?
And then it sounds like the kick drum just needs to be in phase with the kit and left alone since most of the other kit mics aren’t picking up a ton of 60hz to begin with.
Hey there! Loving Auto Align when i can get it to work, but i’ve been running into certain issues. There are times where I’ll use the detection and the sample number that it comes up with doesn’t make sense (because i know where I placed the mics), and then I have to try all manner of different noise floor settings and then after 5 times, i’ll get a number that seems to make sense, AND it sounds better (at least i think?). None of the tutorials or discussions that i’ve seen seem to address that Auto Align will come up with different readings on the same two tracks on different instances. Is there a secret i’m missing? or a specific technique for setting the noise floor?
For instance, today I was lining up a snare top to the OH L - the sample reading was +35, then I sent the snare top to a different channel, and had the snare bottom receive it. The reading for the snare bottom was -1. WTF? and it sounded bad, I did multiple times until I got +10 and that seemed to sound better.
Auto-Align looks for common information between two tracks. It analyses the common information and calculates a delay value that will offer optimal correlation between the two tracks with minimal Comb-filtering.
Ultimately, Auto-Align correlation analysis should be fed with only the sounds that you’re trying to align. For example, if you’re aligning the overheads (receive 1) to the snare (send 1), raise the side chain noise floor slider on the overheads channel until only the snare hits are visible in the main spectral phase correlation display. Then click on the Detect button to let Auto-Align do its magic.
You can think of the Noise floor as a detection trigger to Auto-Align - only when a sound passes the noise floor level, Auto-Align’s correlation detection analysis will kick in.
You don’t have to use both sliders, you can use only the Sidechain slider.
If Auto-Align comes up with different readings on the same two tracks on different instances, there are a few things that could potentially throw Auto-Align’s detection off:
If the Drum part Auto-Align is listening to has Kicks and Snares at the same time (on the same beat), it is better to use a different part of the track. It’s also advised to use the same passage of music for each Auto-Align analysis.
If the mics have a lot of bleed, or if the sound they picked up is very different and there’s little similarity between the two tracks.
If there are other plugins before Auto-Align. Auto-Align should be the first plugin in your chain.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at [email protected].
You can also send us your project and we’d be happy to take a close look.
