Absolute beginner trying to invert phase of an imported clip; not working

[Kai Young]

As title says, I'm trying to invert a clip and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but the phase invert button on the audio track strip does nothing I notice, and using the 3rd party VST RS Phase Reverse has also done nothing.

[Colin Nicholls]

@Kai Young, you should be able to do this by:

1. Loading a clip into a new track
2. Pressing the "invert phase" button as you have done
3. bounce to a new track

The button doesn't invert the clip itself, it inverts the phase of the output of the track. So, by Bouncing to a new track, you are effectively taking the output of the first track and saving it into a new track. The new track will have the phase inverted.

[Kai Young]

7 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

@Kai Young, you should be able to do this by:

1. Loading a clip into a new track
2. Pressing the "invert phase" button as you have done
3. bounce to a new track

The button doesn't invert the clip itself, it inverts the phase of the output of the track. So, by Bouncing to a new track, you are effectively taking the output of the first track and saving it into a new track. The new track will have the phase inverted.

I tried doing what you said, but I do not think it has worked.
I am trying to isolate the synth from the second 8 bars of Cabinet Man (linked below) (drums already excluded due to being in a seperate track already).
I got the .flac stem from a dropbox linked by the artist, that had the synth and guitar.
I split the first 16 bars into 8 with the guitar, and 8 with the guitar and synth.
However, when I bounced the phase inverted track 1 (in the image below, with track two muted,) I believe that due to track one being phase inverted, it should have acted as a negative waveform to the original guitar sample and therefore cancelled it out, making me able to isolate the synth. Instead, it acted (as far as i can tell,) as a duplicate track to the guitar, irregardless of whether the original was phase inverted or not.
The only thing phase inverting did, was if track 1 was inverted and the other not, (or vice versa), it would sound the same as if there was only one track playing the guitar. If both were inverted, it sounded the same as if neither were inverted, (which makes sense, i guess.)
My question now is why does it sound like there are one or two tracks playing guitar, instead of zero or one? (excluding the track with the synth and guitar, which made no difference to the rest of it)

 

[Colin Nicholls]

EDIT: Is it possible you are just bouncing the selected track? You need to do the entire mix. Does it sound right when you just play back the two tracks?

ORIGINAL:

Well, this technique definitely works because I've used it to detect differences between mixes, and other stuff. Here's what I would do achieve what you want:

So, we have CLIP_1 (guitar) and CLIP_2 (guitar+synth), imported to a unique track each, say TRACK_1 and TRACK_2.

I'd make sure they were aligned correctly. Obvious, but I'd zoom in to check to make sure they were in sync.

Then I would flip the phase on one TRACK_1.

Then I would BOUNCE TO TRACK (entire mix) to create a third TRACK_3 that will contain the SUM of TRACK_1 and TRACK_2. Actually you shouldn't need to bounce, just listen to the mix and you'd hear it.

If your starting clips are what you think they are, this should leave you with the (guitar+synth)-(guitar) which should just be the synth part.

Now, from your screen shot, it sure looks like this is what you are doing. So I'd question a) your source clips, b) sync/alignment, or even c) try flipping the phase on each track in case the clips are not the phase you think they are

Edited October 21, 2020 by Colin Nicholls