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Old 04-29-2010, 08:09 PM
thebernreuter thebernreuter is offline
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Default 3 not-related questions: ambience, compression, and overheads

This is a little unorthodox, but I have a lot of questions, so I thought it might be better to put them all in one place rather than flooding the board with three separate threads.

1. Tracking live drums: Have you guys had more success with recording them as dry as possible and adding ambience later, or using the room sound? Let's assume you don't have enough inputs to have extra ambience tracks, so you have to commit to one.

2. Overheads: - there's a ton of great discussion all over the DUC about overhead mic placement; which have you guys had the most success with? Some specific things I'm concerned about are minimizing weird phase interference, how high above the kit is so high that it weakens the stereo image, and how low is so low that the mic basically picks up the cymbal directly under it and nothing else.

3. Compression attack and release: Is there a more systematic way of dialing this in than trial and error and just listening? I thought maybe you could measure the length of the envelope of a loud note and set that as the release time - does that even make sense? :) I'm concerned mainly with volume control instead of using a compressor to improve the drum sound, so I've been setting the attack time as short as possible to attenuate the transients - bad idea? I haven't had a ton of success with this strategy yet.

Any and all input on this stuff would be awesome.
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Old 04-29-2010, 08:23 PM
nst7 nst7 is offline
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Default Re: 3 not-related questions: ambience, compression, and overheads

I'll only attempt to answer no. 1:

I'm no expert, but from a lot of stuff I've read, it seems that if you don't have a fairly large room for the drums to breathe, you're better off absorbing the sound as much as possible, and adding reverb later. In other words, take the room out of the equation. It's that in between stage where you can have problems-the room being small enough that the room reflections bounce right back into the mics, giving that cardboard boxy "recorded in my living room" sound.
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Old 04-30-2010, 04:32 PM
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albee1952 albee1952 is offline
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Default Re: 3 not-related questions: ambience, compression, and overheads

1-if the ambiance of the room sounds good, and you have enough inputs, I would record it, just in case(its easy to delete it later of you don't like or need it).

2-how you mic is as important where you mic. An X/Y pair directly over the snare drum should avoid any phase issues(an MS pair, decoded would also work great). Many of us use a simple spaced pair and I find that keeping the mics farther apart from each other than they are to the cymbals helps with phasing. Mine are placed about 5' apart and 2-3' above the cymbals. Sometimes I will pull them down to chest level and put them out in front of the kit(again, keep them farther apart then from the kit). The room size, shape, material and ceiling height will all affect the sound in many ways. If you have a low ceiling and no treatment, I would use SDC and point them upwards at the ceiling and raise them just as close as possible without actually touching the ceiling(creating a PZM effect and avoiding phase splash off the ceiling).

3- experiment to find what works(and explore any presets that might be included). This is something that just doesn't respond well to "paint by numbers", even more so since each compressor will behave differently with what seems like the same settings.
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