In this week’s podcast, Julian is joined by Nir Averbuch and Michael Carnes to explore phase. This fundamental characteristic of audio is much misunderstood and can seem mysterious in a way which other characteristics of audio signals like frequency and amplitude are not. What Is phase and is it really so mysterious?

Michael Carnes

After spending several years on the road as a commercial guitarist, Michael Carnes realized he was more attuned to the classical music he listened to when not on stage. These days he sometimes turns his guitar amp all the way up to ‘1’.

Back to school, eventually earning an advanced degree in composition at Boston University. During this same period of time, he became exposed to computers as a guest of the MIT computer music program. A career in technology was born, even though he continued to compose and receive performances.

Michael eventually found his way to Lexicon and finally formed his own company: Exponential Audio (acquired by iZotope). He made the first reverb plugins suitable for immersive audio and those plugins are now in wide use around the world. Michael has recorded classical music for many years and is active in the musical community around Salt Lake City, where he makes his home. Find out more about Michael at his website.

Nir Averbuch

Nir Averbuch is a Rimon School of Music graduate, music producer, composer and audio engineer who has worked, over the years, with many leading Israeli artists such as Yehuda Poliker, Shlomo Gronich and Efrat Gosh. These days he is possibly better known to the audio community as the CEO of Sound Radix, the innovative software company behind some of the cleverest plugins out there such as Auto Align, Surfer EQ, POWAIR, Pi and of course Auto Align Post.

Talking Points

• So what is phase? Isn’t it just a button on the mixer channel?

• What is the difference between polarity and phase?

• Is phase only an issue when you combine signals together?

• What is an example of a “bad” phase relationship?

• Do phase relationships change with frequency?

• What Is correlation?

• How important are phase and decorrelation are important in reverbs?

• If Phase is a delay why is it measured in degrees? Couldn’t we use milliseconds?

• What about phase shift in equalisers?

• How significant are phase relationships in our monitoring environments?

Find Of The Week

• Julian - Austrian Audio Polar Designer

• Michael - Sound Radix AutoAlign

• Nir - Michael Norris’ Soundmagic Spectral plugins