Drum Recording Acoustics?

[saxman72]

Okay guys,

Many of you have looked at or answered my vocal recording question (which I pretty much knew), but what do you prefer for recording drums? A dry, dead environment, or a live environment?

Just jogging your minds and getting some opinions. :>

Thanks,

:>saxman72<:

 

[Proveras]

well,
I like dead, and add digital reverb for the ambience,
I try to keep and not to lose, the natural sound of the drums, but I like it dead, to control the ambience.

 

[jamiecer]

Big Open Spaces

I prefer to track my drums in a large room with plenty of natural reverb. I close mic the drums along with the ride cymb. I get the basic sound of the drums from my overheads adding in the individual tracks for a little more body. Next I'll bring up a pair of room mics to give the drum mix some ambience. To finish up a little extra verb on the snare to make it seem a little bigger.
j

 

[Gear_Junky]

A friend just recently refinished his basement (now it's a long drywalled room with carpet only on the floor). His drums, although not tuned well and not very good cymbals, sound awesome in that room! It's kinda like singing in the shower I figure that recording in that room the drums would sound really nice. That's just intuition, though, I don't have much experience with drums and rooms.

 

[Recording Engineer]

You Know

I've had goods results with both but I must say that probably 75% of the time I decide to use my "live room" (my living room). I like the really short delays from the drums bouncing off the walls and ceiling and especially into the overheads. And if I want even more of that "ambience" but with different delay lengths, I put a mic or a stereo pair somewhere in the room too.