Upgrade Your Sounds with MAutoAlign! Easily Fix Phasing Issues Between Your Tracks

What is Phase?

First lets figure out what exactly phase is.

When we zoom in on a track’s waveform, we can see that it literally looks like waves.
Phase is defined as a given position during a waveform’s cycle.

Let’s duplicate this track, and invert the duplicate while playing both at the same time.

When the inverted waveform is played at the same exact time, both of the sounds cancel out and create silence.

In addition, if we re-invert the duplicate sound,

And slightly change the timing of the waveform,
the sound doesn’t disappear completely, but the attack has been weakened, and the volume is quieter.
This is because the phasing issues between the two tracks have cancelled out these sounds.

Because various tracks are played simultaneously in a song, though the results may not sound as obvious as above, phasing issues are an unavoidable thing. (it is impossible to completely get rid of phasing issues)

However, by tidying up the phasing between “low end tracks” such as the kick and bass, you can achieve a much better sound.

• The frequencies are lower, meaning the waveforms are bigger, and influence the track in a more obvious way
• In comparison to mid/high frequency tracks, there are less low-end tracks in general

These are some of the main reasons.
We will be using ”MAutoAlign” to fix the phasing between the kick and bass tracks.

How to Use MAutoAlign

First apply “MAutoAlign” on a desired track as an insert effect.

Here we will be placing it on Kick, Kick Sub, and Bass.

MIDI tracks don’t have a set sound, and depending on the sound settings, there may be different results every time it is played.
Because of this, when using MAutoAlign we highly recommend that you bounce all MIDI tracks to audio tracks beforehand .

Next, we will set the Group to have the same group name.
This is because MAutoAlign automatically analyzes and edits phase issues between tracks under the same Group.

Click the “ANALYSE” button to analyze the track sounds.
When doing so, rather than clicking this button in all instances of MAutoAlign, you only need to click the button in one of the tracks from the group.

The biggest point of caution is to make sure to play the area that you want to use as the main reference point for phasing issues when clicking the “ANALYSE” button .

After analysis, the timing shift to fix each track’s phasing issues will be displayed below, and will be automatically applied the next time the track is played.
From the left we have sample, millisecond, meter, feet, and invert parameters.

The bass track amount if set to “0” meaning no change has been applied, and this means that the bass track was used as the point of reference with the other tracks being adjusted around it.

This is all you have to do to apply it.
When we check back on the sound, the attack has become clearer, and the sound already has more depth to it.
If your results seem off,

• LENGTH : Change the span of analysis
• MAXIMUM DELAY : Change the max. allowed length of change to fix phase issues
• Hi/Lo-Pass : Narrow down the frequencies that are analyzed
• Noise Floor : Adjust to make sure that sounds below a certain point aren’t included in analysis

Use these different functions and use the “ANALYSE” button again to get new results.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
This is an incredibly useful plugin that allows you to easily optimize phasing between your tracks.

Though we took a look at just the kick/bass, this tool is highly effective on multi-track drums, guitar, and synth tracks as well.

We highly recommend this plugin to those who are looking to elevate their sound!