So if you are talking wind phasing rather than wind rumble there is nothing that I have heard of that can be done in post and wind screens or dead rats would not have helped. Wind phasing sounds like the music swirling from side to side and the only thing that can be done is to get closer to the source at the show. Generally you can hear music swirling while you are standing at the show and the mics are going to pick this up.
Yep, gusty wind modulates the sound waves by pushing the air around which they are traveling through, producing the swirly sound. You bring up a good point in drawing a distinction between wind phasing and wind rumble.
The more directional your mics are the more the phasing will be an issue. It generally does not come through as much with omnis.
I have to differ here,
choice of pattern won't make much difference with wind phasing. The phasy sound happens in the air before the sound even reaches the mics. The only significant way of combating it is to move closer so there is less air blowing around between the mics and the source and therefore less phasing. As you mentioned, if you can hear it you'll record it, regardless of pattern.
Now, wind rumble or noise is a different story. This can be avoided at the show with wind screens and dead rats. It can also be reduced, sometimes significantly, in post by using a high pass filter. Most of the rumble is usually in the extremely low frequencies. You will then have to strike a balance between removing the rumble and removing the bass from your recording. I have done this a few times recently with what I considered decent but not great results. The recordings ended up with a lot less bass than I wanted but the wind rumble was so annoying to me it was worth it.
This is spot on. But I'll add that
wind rumble is where using a less directional mic does help- and is the most basic way of reducing susceptibility. From that basic susceptibility, other measures such as foam screens, furry covers, hollow screened 'blimps' further improve wind rumble resistance from that by creating 'dead air' space around the mic, isolating the capsule from the chaotic wind pressure immediately around it. If that is still not sufficient, low-cut can help but sacrifices the bass.
To contrast wind phasing and wind rumble, the difference is that wind phasing is caused by chaotic air motions blowing sound pressure variations around ‘out there' between the source and the mic. Wind rumble is also a disruption in sound wave pressure variations, but is chaotic pressure variations acting locally on the mic capsule, where we can do things to minimize it. Windscreens, rats and blimps would work against wind phasing too.. if they were scaled up to the size of a room and calmed the motion of all the air between the mic and the sound source!
I was looking for a link to an excellent article AES article on wind noise by Jörg Wuttke explaining much of this in detail and going further in some interesting details about how wind screens affect not just frequency response, but also compromise directional polar patterns but it isn’t available online anymore. Here’s a
WaybackMachine archive of it. I also found
this article by another author while searching for it, which looks similar if less in depth technically, but I haven’t read that one.
OK, enough of this noise..