I'm not sure what they're trying to show with that animation, really. Is there a site associated with it?
Phase gets kind of confusing. You can only really talk about it in relation to a specific frequency. Sine waves make things look both easy and confusing, because something 360 degrees off appears to be in phase. 720's in phase too, and so on. You can have 2 sine wave signals that are delayed by hours but seem to be "in-phase", as long as the peaks and valleys align. But in real music, where the signal isn't a neat little sine wave, we're really talking about delay overall, and phase only between certain frequencies. And if you have two mics that aren't exactly in the same location, a full-spectrum sound hitting them is going to have some frequencies in phase, and others won't be. Even the components of the sounds coming from the guitar aren't all in phase, since the sound is coming from different locations, and the tops of guitars don't vibrate in a single phase. It all gets too complex to wrap your head around. So people drop back to sine waves to explain the concept, which may or may not be all that helpful in dialing in a sound or mic placement.
That left-right mic setup's worth trying, tho the idea is basically like the 2 mic demo I posted earlier in the week - a mid mic, plus two side mics. The side mics are just aimed hard left and right instead of separated and aimed at the guitar. Placement will make a difference of course. I'm not sure why this would be more attractive than MS.
I think part of the beauty of MS is that it actually achieves true coherence and mono-compatibility. With an XY setup, theoretically, the capsules are in the same place. But in the real world that's impossible. Close, but not identical. And the mics may be close to "matched", but not identical. The "mid", in-phase component of XY is what you get if you mix XY to mono. In the real world, that mix will include some phase cancellation and also be affected by any differences between the 2 mics. Maybe not enough to matter, but it's two different mics in not exactly the same place.
In MS, the coherent part is coming from the same exact capsule, so it's perfectly in the same place, and the mid mic is perfectly matched with itself!. The side part of the stereo image is also close to theoretical perfection, since again, the sound of both sides is being picked up by the same exact capsule. Put them together, and there's something really stable and solid-sounding about MS, while still being able to be as wide as you like. I don't hear that, even with XY.
|