I am not sure I would recommend the what that guy is suggesting, but the phase reversal button is marked in the image below. You would probably want to sum the tracks to a bus before any effects or panning are applied. Also, I am not sure how well this is going to work with a condenser microphone, and you are probably going to need to have the vocal recorded entirely dry without any compression on the on the mic pre-amps, or you are potentially actually going to increase the background noise on both the vocal passages and the gaps between the vocal passages. If you were recording with a dynamic mic like a Sure SM58 you would probably get a better result by just making sure that the sound source was off it's normal axis, but this approach may still be helpful, I suppose.

Yeah, I can't say I'm keen on the "filter audio out of a dirty track" vs. the "start with a clean track" approach.

Yeah, I can't say I'm keen on the "filter audio out of a dirty track" vs. the "start with a clean track" approach.

I can see where the engineer is coming from, I can see the benefit in creating a recording situation that has less impact on the singer's performance. I just think what he is suggesting is likely to be a little less useful than he is suggesting. Messing about with phase is always a bit of a dodgy game anyway. And for it to come anywhere near working, it would have to be on a completely dry vocal and ambient recording with the mic and pretty much everything in the room kept in identical positions. I would suspect that if the mic moves a few mm, everything would go out of phase and the cancellation effect would start to sound a bit strange.

Surely that low level of bleed won't matter anyway in the final mix since those instruments will be there in the mix at a much higher levels than the bleed IMHO.

It could cause some phase problems. It could also make the mix sound a bit weird, especially if the instrumental mix used for the vocal sessions is changed or elements dropped from the final mix. Say you had a clanging bell in the mix earlier in the production process, and it was dropped in the final mix, you are still probably going to hear some of that bell in the final mix.

I wouldn't have thought that at the level of the breakthrough that it would cause any noticeable phase effects in the final mix with the original instruments at normal level. But, of course, if the instrumental arrangement changes after laying down the vocals then it would be a good idea to reduce any unwanted breakthrough. It all depends on what else is happening during the production.

Another way is to provide two foldback speakers equidistant from the mic with the phase reversed on one of them.

I wouldn't have thought that at the level of the breakthrough that it would cause any noticeable phase effects in the final mix with the original instruments at normal level. But, of course, if the instrumental arrangement changes after laying down the vocals then it would be a good idea to reduce any unwanted breakthrough. It all depends on what else is happening during the production.

It depends on how the mix goes together. I personally would not be too fussed about it because I tend to work phase coherence/incoherence into my mixes, but by the book engineers might struggle with it.

Another way is to provide two foldback speakers equidistant from the mic with the phase reversed on one of them.

When the original post was made, this was what I was expecting the video to describe. Personally i would avoid this method altogether if the aim is to give the singer the most relaxing monitoring experience. Two out of phase mono folddowns bouncing around the room could be nauseating for the singer, and could possible be biases enough to throw them out of tune. If I hear out of phase audio I find my head almost involuntarily turning around to try and bring it back into phase! :)

Thanks for the replies. Sounds way too complicated, and not something I care to get involved with! Will find another way to get the recording done.