two mics on kick drum phase solution?

[thenewnoise]

Hey there.

Recently did a session and for the first time threw an additional mic in a baffle about 1 1/2 feet from the bass drum. Now I'm not sure if I'm listening to my eyes or not, but when I look at the tracks in pro tools, the baffle mic is later than the track that is inside the kick of course. Now maybe if I never saw this I would have never heard it, but I feel like I do. Is there a more simple way for a solution to this problem instead of actually moving the whole track to match the other?

[andrew haller]

So whats the problem?.Somtimes it will give you more low end. If the second mic is taking away from the first, don't use it, or use it sparingly.

[thenewnoise]

You mean it will give you a bit more low end if it's out of phase like that?

[Howardk]

Microphones a couple of feet apart is nothing compared to the wavelength of the fundemental of a Kick drum. . . EQ and mix the two mics to taste. . . I use a large diaphram condenser in figure 8 pattern inside the kick and another of the same above 1-2 feet outside the front head. . . it works great. . . mind you some condensor mics overload inside the kick drum so be aware. . .

[georgia]

if you mic the kick ( or any other multiple mic setup... listen to the tracks. invert phase on a track and listen again. Does it sound better or worse... sometimes a bit of out of phase material sound good, sometimes not,sometimes out of material damages the sound... if you need to phase invert a mic to match phase withanother, do that. Slip the track a few milliseconds and see if that helps... There are lots of ways to mic and with more mics comes more phase problems that need to be addressed in tracking or in mixing.

cheers
georgia

[Mixchump]

This is a thing that you deal with constantly in recording. With electric bass, if you have a DI signal and you mic the amp, you'll see that the DI is WAY ahead of the amp (4 or 5 mS sometimes if it's a tube amp).

Just change your timescale to read in samples, highlight the beginning of a recognizable waveform and slide the cursor over until you're lined up with the beginning of the same waveform on the other track. Drop in a short TimeAdjuster and set the value to whatever you see in the 'Length' display (in samples). If you are not using Delay Compensation, remember that you'll need to subtract 4 samples (at 44.1) from that amount for the latency of the Timeadjuster plugin.

People do this all the time. If you really want to clean up your drum sounds, check the snare against the OverHeads, and make the necessary adjustments. Check the snare against the toms, etc. You can really make a difference by sliding your room mics earlier to get rid of some of that slap, and still have the ambience.

Generally, I would recommend using Timeadjuster plugins to do this, rather than slipping tracks. It gets really crazy when you're editing and you have to try and remember which track to click on in order to 'Spot' things to their correct location.

By the time you've adjusted the two kick mics to line up, you'll have more low end than you know what to do with. I usually have a high-pass on the kick and bass anyways that I can tweak so that the mix will play back on smaller speakers without blowing up, and the mix bus compressor doesn't react to all that extra low-freq energy. Most times, one mic is better than two...

Happy TimeAdjusting!
Cheers

[Drew Mazurek]

http://www.littlelabs.com/ibpjr.html

try this. very cool for kiks, bass mic vs. DI, and multi mic'ed gtr setups.
drew

[georgia]

just a side piece of trivia... Try an NS-10 as a Microphone for a kick drum.... just wire it like a mic and place it a foot or so from the front of the Kick....

cheers
georgia