Jack Joseph Puig | Tracking Drums
‘To maximize impact, drum transients should always begin with a positive pressure waveform.’
I’m somewhat curious about this - should the wave we actually hear is made from the speaker cone moving backwards and forwards, and vibrating the air. What we hear is the speaker moving backwards and forwards for several cycles to do this. Did people care about this before they could see a waveform in a DAW? is it audible if we flip phase on tracks or even entire mixes?
I want to believe it has an impact, but I suspect that the direction the speaker is pushing or pulling for such a short period of time is negligible. I think more of the impact of this is having a system/habit for your drum transients and sticking to it. If you make sure you’re transients are all positive when tracking/mixing… you’re probably also taking the time to make sure everything is in phase with each other
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For me … I’ve noticed that for a kick, absolute polarity (cone pushes first vs pulls first) is generally a very subtle audible difference. On good monitors at meaningful SPL, with a punchy asymmetric kick, you may perceive one polarity as slightly more immediate, punchy, or physical. But it’s nowhere near the difference you get from EQ, compression, transient shaping, or phase alignment between kick layers and with the rest of the drum mics …
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