Ian, actually, two mics that are properly aligned will capture the same phase. Whether or not they capture the same frequencies in the same amounts is another story.
I do not agree that time aligning is a suitable method for curing unwanted comb filtering. Moving your microphones is a suitable method.
And I disagree that you cannot ever have two mics in phase. If the two mics are in phase, you are going to achieve constructive interference over all. When you move the mics, you are going to achieve a combination of constructive and destructive interference at various frequencies. By moving a waveform, you have eliminated both of these aspects of combining the signal.
It's not semantics, btw. If you find yourself doing this to make things sound good, you didn't mic your instrument properly. If you have multiple mics on a source, you should always be listening to the combination of them and checking to make sure that they are in phase enough, so that you are not experiencing cancellation of any frequencies that you want to hear. In fact, the whole point of spacing mics off a single source is to take advantage of combined phase, as dcgzr said.
But more importantly, if somebody has accidentally discovered that they are recording things out of phase, it's much more important for them to learn how to properly mic things, rather than to be told that all they need to do is shift things around in PT. You are putting a band-aid on a symptom without curing the fundamental problem. I keep reading people suggesting this on the Net, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. It's bad advice. That's like telling people who say, "Whenever I put my hand in the oven, I burn it," to use Aloe Vera on the burns, rather than saying, "Use an oven mit, so you don't burn your hand."
