When I did my 2014/15 remixes I basically had to take every track (2009 remaster WAVs), split them into L/R only tracks, load those into the DAW, shift the right channel back or forth 1 sample and output the WAV so that the L/R were now as synced as possible.urasam2 wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 5:44 pm While doing this I found there is a slight playback head alignment issue on the original stereo mix - the right channel lags one sample behind the left. I have found this same azimuth issue on a number of other original stereo mixes. One of the stereo machines at Abbey Road was misaligned.
Why would I go to the trouble fixing a one (or sometimes two) sample offset?? Because that offset was interfering with getting a clean extraction (and therefore L/R isolations) with the Center Channel plugin. Before fixing the sync I was getting noticeable vocal leakage and sibilance. After fixing the sync the extractions and isolations were far better. The worst was "Money" which I think is actually 9 samples offset. Other problem tracks that also might had phase issues along with azimuth were "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "Everybody's Trying to be My Baby". The REDD desk actually had phase adjustment knob maybe they had that up by accident. Sometimes you have to tweak the phase if you are getting phase cancellation between microphones.
I bet the actual offset might be a little more or less than 1 sample but digital sampling only has so much resolution.
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My channels isolation technique was to get a good center channel extract, invert the file and add back to the original mix in the DAW to effectively cancel out the center. I panned everything Left/Right to create discrete Left/Right channels. I NEVER ran the Center Channel plugin (via WinAmp) in "side extract mode" I always manually subtracted in the DAW so I could control the levels. I also didn't trust "side extract" would do a perfect invert of "center extract". In the end I got really good L/C/R isolations and that helped with some of my newer spectral mixes.
