Phase/ Polarity Questions

[Juuls_is_cools]

Hey y’all, I’m planning on investing in some hardware to mic up my drum kit, and I’ve learned all about the potential phase issues that come with this. I currently own an Allen and Heath ZED60 10FX mixer and i’m planning on getting a Behringer ADA8200 preamp as a drum bus. The issue is that neither of these have an obvious phase/ polarity switch and I’ve heard from some other sources its best to fix this issue prior to recording instead of in DAW, and I’m really not finding a lot of resources about this online. I’m not by any means professionally trained in this, i’m definitely learning as I go, is there something I am missing here? All my google searches don’t seem to bring up much other than, “Most mixers have a polarity switch”, lol. not helpful. Can this be done in the firmware/software of the devices? can it be done on the mikes themselves? should I just make my own polarity box??? Let me know whats up, and I look forward to the response!

[Brian]

While I am more of a “live engineer” than a “recording engineer”, if this was strictly for recording purposes I think I would just fix it in the DAW software.

However if this was going to be used live or if you just wanted to fix it at the source, it’s certainly easy enough to wire a cable that would flip the polarity. You literally just have to swap the positive and negative wires on one of the connectors in the cable. (Obviously you don’t want to switch both ends/connectors because that would not flip the polarity). I would buy/make a 1 ft XLR cable that I then made this modification to. Just be sure you label that cable very well!

[SteffenR]

The polarity makes a difference when you sum the signals. So it’s easy to do it in the DAW.

[SteffenR]

getting a Behringer ADA8200 preamp as a drum bus

How should that work?
The preamp has no summing bus inside.

It would be better to search for a new mixer instead.
More inputs and a phase reverse switch. 😉
Something like the new CQ mixers, for example.

[Author]

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