I use a Nady
DM 80 mic to record with too. For the price, it's an awesome mic and it covers the same 20Hz-20Khz as any AKG mic but with a slight boost in the 80hz frequency right where you need it! When it comes down to nuts and bolts, the microphone isn't going to make or break the mix unless you're recording with $10.00 radio shak mics so you're barking up the wrong tree there, but if you have the money to burn, sure go ahead and get a D112.
First, let's discuss the room. Is it padded down? Most "drumrooms" I've been in and gotten the best recorded sound in were usually wood-backed walls 10'x10' but no bigger than 25'x25' but had plenty of "good" reflection in there as opposed to a gymnasium that has what I call "bad reflection". The walls and corners were not padded down anywhere in the room and the walls were lined with smooth surfaces like linolium and a sliding glass door to get in. Just watch out for certain concrete walled rooms....they can have the bad reverb in them that bounces around the walls for too long. Any room you can find where a clap or your voice sounds like it does in a good reverberant bathroom where your voice sounds awesome is a preferrable room to record in. The more reflection in the smaller rooms, the better for drums I've found. Take the bass drum around to different available recording rooms and actually listen to it in there. If the bass drum sounds good in a room by itself, the rest of the kit will too. As for those who worry about sound reflections in the room messing with the mix, for the most part, it's a non-issue 99.9% of the time when you bring the mic levels down under clipping and you're using limited close mics.
Ok, it depends on the size of the room the bass drum is in, how padded down it is and if it's a double headed bass drum with a mic hole in the front head. The best configuration in my opinion to record with is a double-headed bass drum with a mic hole and NO PADDING after recording drums over 10 years and much experimentation. You can get many versatile sounds out of the kick that way for a wide range of styles. Also the beaters on the bass drum pedal will determine whether you're going to get a muffled sound or a tight attck on the bass drum batter head. Most modern recordings call for a tight attack on the bass drum, so be sure that the beaters on the pedal are wood or some other solid material instead of felt.
For a tight bass drum sound with a full bottom in any room and head configuration, I wouldn't pad down the bass drum with towels or pillows...you're only rubbing salt into the wound. When drum manufacturers start shipping studio drums with padding already in them for optimal recording sound, I *may* consider it. It deadens the front and/or back heads too much already espescially in a dead room. What I'll do is take a split or broken snare drum head (
remo ambassador heads work best), loop duct tape into 4 individual 6" stickyside out loops, attatch them symetrically to the batter side of the snare drumhead and stick it to the batter side of the bass drum so that the beaters hit the stuck on drumhead dead center. You choose to either place the mic outside or inside. Experiment if you must but inside is usually preferrable for good separation and defined attack of the batter head. I've tried just cutting out a "patch" of drumhead, duct-taped it dead center of the beater(s) but it just isn't the same cool sound it gets as opposed to using the full drum head.
For double headed bass drums in dead rooms, if you can, again place the mic INSIDE the bass drum. If there is padding, then pull it out and tune both the front and batter heads of the bass drum where it sounds good in the room by itself. Tuning is everything and one-headed bass drums give only half the sound that is possible. You can actually tune most drums to compliment the room you're in if the room isn't too dead or reverbs too much for more than 1-2 seconds.
On your compressor, if you have a "softknee" setting, then by all means, use it. If you can see the amount of noise reduction it is applying, then set it so that it's just "kissing" the noise reduction. Any compressor or limiter should just be kissing reduction or else you'll squash the sound too much.
Now for EQ settings:
Bring down the bass frequency. Most "noobs" think you should have it booming in the lower frequencies but you can end up hurting the mix in the long run because it'll take up the same space of the bass guitar. You shouldn't have to boost any low frequencies at all if you have your EQ dial on your mixer set straight up at 12 o'clock. If anything, you should play with bringing down your lows and boosting the mids and/or highs. Most overlooked frequencies in recording bass drums are the highs and mids in the 1 to 6Khz range so be sure to boost your high frequency for more definition and attack. If you can, also rolloff your low frequencies below 60Hz because it's just uncontrollable rumble from there on down.
Record a "test" track of just the bass drum alone then send it to a wave editor where you can zoom in and inspect the waveform of each bass drum hit. If you're getting a huge spike but little body to the waveform, you'll want to bring down the high frequencies and maybe add them later in the mixdown process through a harmonic exciter. Just be sure to get a good solid waveform to start off. That's all I can tell you now with what information you gave, so good luck and hope this helps.
but for those of us in small rooms and typically crappy drums ... triggers help _alot_