Reversing Polarity

[Frankv3]

When I engage the “reverse polarity” button on the channel strip the wave form does not reverse on the track. Am I doing something wrong?

[Anthony Alves]

My guess is that you are zooming in to a waveform and then taping the phase reverse switch found beside the channel strip fader and your not seing the waveform peak switch polarity. The reason you don’t see this is because this reverse phase is applied at the mixer channel output and not from the waveform itself. In other words it is post fader, after the audio has passed the fader. There are daws that do the waveform phase reverse such as ProTools but this is actually a ProTools plugin tool that provides this function and comes with protools. Other desktop daws do this as well. Rest assurred that the phase is indeed being applied to that channel and that channel will now be flipped 180 degrees. Unfortunately it is not a waveform phase switch but a mixer phase switch so you won’t see any change to the waveform peaks. Cheers and good luck.

[Frankv3]

Thanks. Yeah, I was looking for the wave form to flip. I can deal with this. Just have to use my ears to see if it needs switching.

[Anthony Alves]

No problem. I use the polarity switch all the time and there really is no right or wrong polarity it is only what sounds good in the mix. Many mix engineers switch polarity just to achieve a different sound. If two tracks are conflicting like say overhead mic's than you will hear a phase shifting sound and that certainly will need a polarity shift. So in reality it is your ears that will dictate if the polarity needs reversing. Cheers.