Practical workflows

These starting points cover the most common PhaseLock jobs. Each one assumes you have read Quick start.

Multi-mic drums

1. Insert PhaseLock on every drum microphone you want to compare.
2. Keep the drum tracks in one group.
3. Link stereo overhead and room pairs.
4. Start with an overhead as the Phase Reference.
5. Analyze a section with clear kick and snare hits plus cymbal information.
6. Listen with Phase Coherence on and Time Alignment off.
7. Check polarity on snare-bottom and other microphones commonly inverted during recording.
8. Add Time Alignment to close-mic pairs only when you want a tighter arrival relationship.
9. Compare before and after in the full drum balance, then in the song.

Do not judge a room mic only by whether its transient lines up with the close mic. Its delay carries distance information. Phase Coherence may improve the blend while Original Timing keeps the room sounding like a room.

Guitar and bass cabinets

For two microphones on one speaker, either mic can be the Phase Reference. Start with the microphone that supplies most of the tone. Analyze a representative passage, then compare Phase Coherence before enabling Time Alignment.

Time Alignment is often useful when the microphones sit at different distances from the same speaker. Adjust the offset while listening for low-frequency weight and attack, not only a matching waveform.

When a cabinet has several speakers, different cone behavior can create frequency-dependent differences that a fixed offset does not solve. This is where the coherence graph is informative.

Room and close microphones

Use Phase Coherence first. Leave Align To at Off / Original Timing if the room delay contributes to depth.

If the room track is late because of a recorder or an edit rather than acoustic distance, Time Alignment may be appropriate. Compare the result carefully; pulling a room mic all the way forward changes the perceived room size.

Dialogue with several microphones

For a short DAW section, group the boom, lavalier, plant, and camera microphones that recorded the same performance. Choose the cleanest and most continuous track as the reference.

For a long take with a moving actor or boom, analyze shorter representative regions and reanalyze when the microphone relationship changes materially.

Moving sources and clock drift

A fixed plugin analysis cannot follow a relationship that changes across a long recording. Split the work into sections with stable timing relationships, or correct recorder drift before using PhaseLock.

Preserving a stereo image

Set the MODE to LINKED before analysis on stereo overheads, rooms, keyboards, and field recordings whose left-to-right timing must remain intact. Independent corrections can shift one side relative to the other and move the apparent image.

If the channels are unrelated mono sources stored on a stereo track, leave the MODE UNLINKED and treat them as separate lanes.