Any recording engineer has probably experienced problems with multi-microphone recordings that, when mixed together, can sound weak and "phasey." Of course you may fix these problems manually in a time consuming process of visually sliding individual tracks ahead or behind in time. Sometimes the differences are initially imperceptible.

I tried Aligner on 15 recorded drum tracks of a drum kit that I did not record that sounded OK but was terribly phasey and not at all mono-compatible.

Nugen Audio's Aligner measures time differences in samples between a selected reference track and the track(s) under scrutiny. I chose the kick drum mic (track) as my reference. Since each mic (track) is a different physical distance from the kick drum mic track, they were all various low numbers of samples late in time. The longest was around 1,000 samples late at a 48kHz sample rate. You can bypass all Aligner plug-ins all at once or only as individual channels.

In the case of this first class-sounding drum recording, the difference with/without Aligner running was very slight but noticeable. The sound was fatter, more full range and you can use as many Aligner instances as you require.

I experimented with bypassing different channels and using a different channel as reference. Aligner features two kinds of bypass controls: one for all tracks at once and another for each individual channel. You can flip polarity and manually change the amount of delay.

I also aligned a distant room mic with a reference for a guitar sound. The room mic had a coloration I liked but its delay times/distances were detrimental. Aligner captured the color and pulled that room mic closer in time.

Nugen Audio Aligner ver 1.1.0.6 (as tested in Pro Tools Ultimate) sells for $49 MSRP.

Nugen Audio Aligner