In this free video tutorial for our friends at Sound Radix, our own Julian Rodgers uses Auto-Align to explain what phase is and why it matters when recording with multiple microphones and how the Sound Radix Auto-Align plug-in to show what a difference it can make in multiple mic setups. 

What Is Auto-Align?

Auto-Align is an automatic microphone alignment and phase correction plug-in. When recording an instrument with more than one mic, sound tends to reach each microphone at a slightly different time, causing some frequencies to cancel each other out and other frequencies to build up unnaturally. This phenomenon is known as the comb-filter effect.

Auto-Align will analyse your multi-mic recording and automatically detect and compensate for the delay between the microphones sample-accurately, significantly reducing the comb-filter effect and dramatically improving the resulting sound.

What Can It Fix?

• Properly aligning microphones make an amazing difference in low-end definition and punch. With Auto-Align alignment, it takes only a few seconds, where previously it required spending considerable time trying to time-align and figure out phase issues.

• Auto-Align can automatically detect a reversed polarity mic and compensate for it.

• A unique Spectral Phase Correlation Meter shows the phase correlation between the input and reference mics across the entire frequency spectrum.

• Auto-Align detects and compensates for the delay between the microphones or DI box sample-accurately, significantly reducing the comb-filter effect and dramatically improving the resulting sound.

• When distant microphones are used, or when some delay is desired to enhance the sense of space, Auto-Align can time-place the microphones relative to the close-mic'ed source to minimise the comb filter's effect.

Sound Radix Auto-Align System Requirements

• Mac: Intel Core CPU, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.6 or higher

• Windows: Intel Core CPU, 2GB RAM, graphics card supporting OpenGL 2.1, Windows 7 or higher

• Plug-in formats: AAX, Audio Unit, RTAS, VST, VST3