Stereo Guitar Help!

Fro

Experienced
I stumbled across something as I was messing with a recording in Pro Tools. When I muted one of my tracks, left or right, my guitar got louder. Now I'm suspicious that I was careless in programing my patches and have something horribly out of phase. Otherwise, is there a chance I have a bad XLR cable wired backwards? Or is what I'm hearing normal? I'm just looking for some help on what to check for.

Below is a recording I bounced down in my DAW. I added an EQ to one of the channels and then automated inverting the phase. It starts out normal, and then I go back and forth with inverting it. I'm also including my patch, which is from the last backup I did when I backed up individual patches. I don't think I've changed anything since. I am using the pitch block and shifting the pitch a few cents left and right. I'm not surprised if I'm screwing things up by doing that.

I've done most of my tweaking recently with one speaker plugged in at home. However, I do run stereo on stage, and I honestly don't know if it has sounded strange and I'm just dumb enough to not catch it. Nothing has jumped out at me at FOH either, but then again I've never experimented with it during sound check. I'm running into an X32, so it will be easy enough the next time we play to invert one of the channels.

The most recent backup I have is with the whole bank. I'm not sure how to extract the individual patch from that with having the Axe Fx with me. I'll export the individual patch when I get home. The patch I'm uploading now should be the same, or extremely similar, but it is from Firmware 18 something, and I am on 19.2 now.

The cab I'm using is from cab pack 8. I'm sure you could insert any cab to test it for possible phase issues.

I have the channels panned hard left and right in the DAW. It's weird how the wave form looks smaller when it actually sounds louder. I got a very similar result when I muted a channel, which is how I noticed this in the first place. I could bounce anther version down with muting one of the channels if anyone wants to hear that. I know I'm just not understanding how the stereo field works. A little education would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the help!

 

Attachments

  • RS-1 Regular SC (5).syx
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Nothing seems unusual about the clip. Most of the sound is your non-detuned, centered guitar. When you invert one channel it sounds thinner as expected since it's mostly mono. Muting one channel shouldn't make it louder.

The soundcloud waveform is drawn from a L+R sum so the lower amplitude is expected when inverting one channel. If the recording was completely mono there would be nothing to draw but you'd still hear the part about as well as in this example.

Were you listening in stereo? All I can think of is checking whether one speaker is out of phase.
 
Keeping in mind that I didn't look very closely at your audio...
Is it possible that one of your speakers or something downstream is out of phase?
Here, the parts that look quieter also SOUND quieter.
 
Oddly enough, I think it might be my headphones. I was listening on headphones earlier, and it was just really odd when I was flipping back and forth. Now that I'm back home listening on my monitors, I'm hearing what I would normally expect. Good to know it's not my patches or live set up. I will have to keep this in mind when mixing, or fix the problem. Sometimes I'll mix on my headphones when I'm not at home. I won't be able to do that until I figure this out. Thanks for taking a listen! It was really freaking me out!
 
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