Microphone For Room Recording Drum Kit?

I used to record rehearsals with a couple of SM57's into a cassette recorder and a small mixer. If you pay attention to the input gain and properly balance it with whats going on in the room, there's no reason at all not to get recordings that will tell you what is going on with the band.

But that doesn't really answer your question about whether this mic you have would make a good room mic for recording drums......So here's a take on that. First..I record a lot of drums and have for many years. In bad basements, quality studios, home built rooms, outside at a festival, on a back porch, under an awning, in a garage with the door open and the door closed etc etc etc...

For a "room" mic to be an effective use of a separate track, the room needs to have some quality to it. There can't be a bunch of comb filtering going on, there can't be a standing wave at some set frequency, there can't be an uncontrollable slap echo......That being said, a condenser with the ability to to have several patterns can be useful. THAT being said, a recordist has to know what things sound like in their room at different spots. You do this by spending the time with someone playing the instrument you want to add a "room" sound to, and moving the mic while listening to it. If you have a control room , and an apprentice, and a second person to play stuff, this is an easy thing to do. If you are recording in the same room as the instrument (drums) are housed in, it's not easy at all. No matter how much help you have. You simply won't be able to isolate your ears in a way that the only thing you hear will be the instrument being played through said mic at different locations.

But wait! There's more! Getting things to sound good requires work and sometimes it's 'work-around-problems' work.

This where it gets to be fun. Trying all sorts of things. If you find you're alone in trying to experiment on stuff because your band is more interested in other things, you will do well to recruit someone else to help. But it is easier with help.

I get good "room" sounds sometimes by leaving open a door to the drum area and putting the mic in a hallway. Sometimes the adjacent bathroom has the perfect ambience for a track. In cases like this it makes very little difference in the type of mic you use but makes a HUGE difference in the quality of the mic preamp and the converters since you're asking for them to reproduce information that will be lacking in presence and gain at the source.You have to be able to add gain without noise in oreder for this to work as well as you'd like. Adding a track with a bunch of noise floor isn't really adding anything at all.
 
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A few years ago I setup a pair of AKG P150s about 2 mtrs in front of a stage . Guitars,bass,keys and a micc'ed up singer PLUS a loud drummer. I had to set levels (NI KA6) to handle his snare cracks. In fact, 30mtrs away behind a wall, in the bogs the sound was still very audible and the drum balance a hell of a lot better!

The P150 are a competent cap' mic but nothing special but they handled that level easily, without the 10dB pad engaged either. So, either your front end is cracking up chap or that mic is faulty.

Dave.
 
Thanks for that guys. I'll get the specifics posted shortly. I think you're probably right that it's not the mic as it doesn't feel that loud to me.
 
There aren’t that many variables fortunately. Here’s how I did it …

With the mic on the -20db setting and trying it out with just a drum kit and the mic is quite a long way from the kit …

The mic goes into a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer (into an XLR input) with the gain dial centred. This is the little black dial right under the inputs, and the “level” dial at 0 (also centred). The main mix dial is also centred at 0.

Then from the main outputs (1/4” jacks) it goes into a Tascam Porta 2 four track cassette tape recorder, with the setting gain/level dial at “line” far left (the lowest possible), and faders at 3, pretty low down. It goes up to 10 and down to 0.

I suppose it is possible that the distortion could be coming into the signal at the Tascam but I suspected the mic was the culprit! However, it could be the Behringer, or the Tascam at the end of the day! The distortion was not that bad but was much worse with the Behringer “level” dial up to 90º right (3pm).
 
This where it gets to be fun. Trying all sorts of things. If you find you're alone in trying to experiment on stuff because your band is more interested in other things, you will do well to recruit someone else to help. But it is easier with help.

I think you’re damn right Cavedog! The band aren’t interested and just want to get on with it! To me it’s a really shame not to record and listen back later because we’ve spent all that time practicing the songs and all that money on the gear and then have no bloody idea what we sounded like! I am seriously thinking about getting someone in to help sort this out. We’d actually need four people. We’re a three piece band and we’d need another person to fiddle with the settings while we’re actually playing.
 
The mixer may be it. The gain on the mixer is pretty good, so centre is probably way too much. Does the little red clip light come on?
 
The mic goes into a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer (into an XLR input) with the gain dial centred.

First thing to do if your signal is distorting is turn down the mic preamp gain.
If turning the gain right down to minimum still results in distortion, introduce a pad.

If your biggest pad and minimum gain still results in distortion, something funny is going on.
 
Aha! I have a Xenyx 802 and used it for a time driving a 2496 sound card. The mic inputs have a headroom of +12dBu (at 10dB gain) that's about 3V rms and so you are not going to clip that IF you are sensible with the gain trim pot.

The mixer also puts out "pro" level, the 0 LED indicates a main output of +4dBu iirc but the Tascam is I bet a neg ten device? You should not have the mixer LED strip going much about the -20dB mark much of the time.

Also, how does the mic sound from the headphone output of the mixer?

Dave.
 
Thanks guys. It could be the mixer gain being to high then.

Back in the days when I was playing by myself and standing near the PA speakers and mixer unit, (which is what the mixer is right next to) I used to be able to see the lights on the mixer but not very well. I had to sort of stand side on to the vocal mic, do a vocal into the side of the mic (while playing the guitar) and glance at the mixer. It looked to me like it was flashing just the green lights but I couldn’t really see it properly.

Now I play with a drummer I have to stand at the other side of the room and haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of seeing the lights. There are two ways of sorting this out, 1) would be put the mixer in front of me on the floor where I can see the lights properly and set the input gain accordingly, but the easier option now is to ask the guy who runs the practice room to help us with set up.

That's what I think is going to be the easiest way of doing it. It’s promising that you guys don’t think it is the mic that is the cause of the distortion. That’s good news! If all we have to do is turn the mixer gain down. That’s music to my ears, and my wallet!
 
I am pleased Gareth that a solution now seems very close at hand.

Input overload of "simple" microphone amplifiers (truly professional desks have comprehensive attenuators as well as massive headroom) can be a problem, especially for audio interfaces.
One solution is a coulple of inline XLR attenuators. 10dB types are usually adequate. These are readily available and, if you shop around, fairly cheap.
I doubt you will need them in this situation but their existance is always useful to bear in mind.

Dave.
 
Years ago, I had a Realistic PZM boundary mic that I used for this sort of thing. Wherever I put the mic, the recording sounding exactly like that position in the room. I would take the mic and a cassette recorder to shows, lay the mic on top of my amp, and the recording would sound just like it sounded where I stood while playing.

We also would sometimes mic up and have the sound guy mix us at practice. We stuck 2 SM 57's, left and right, on stands near the board and we got fairly good recordings.

Any time I've ever had distortion while using a modern mic, it's been due to overloaded preamps. It's never been the mic.
 
Thanks Partonkevin, you're the second person to say you've used SM57s for this. Actually I use one of those to mic my amp. It's good to know they would work to mic the room as well. If I have to change the mic I'll give it a go with one of these.
 
Now I play with a drummer I have to stand at the other side of the room and haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of seeing the lights. There are two ways of sorting this out, 1) would be put the mixer in front of me on the floor where I can see the lights properly and set the input gain accordingly, but the easier option now is to ask the guy who runs the practice room to help us with set up.

The drums are going to be the loudest thing going on; Certainly I'd expect the peaks to exceed those of any other instrument.
I'd get the drummer to bang away on the snare and do a quick level check.
If there are guitarists/bassists available too you may as well get them to thrash away too.

If you get them playing their absolute loudest and do a quick check at the mixer to determine that there's wiggle room, it should be a case of set and forget.
 
Thanks. When I tested the mic out on just the drums I was hammering the two rack toms (together) and then the snare and floor tom (together) alternatively, and kick peddling the bass drum at the same time. That was pretty loud. If I ask her to do that I think that will be as loud as the kit gets. Then if me and our bassist play a chord at the same time to make it the maximum loud it's going to be I can look down at the lights if I place the mixer by my feet. However, if I do a vocal as well it will be even louder! For this I will have to put the mic lower than normal so I can look down at the lights when I'm doing it. But to be honest we might as well just play a song! This whole performance will waste about half the practice time but at least we will only have to do it once!
 
Thanks. When I tested the mic out on just the drums I was hammering the two rack toms (together) and then the snare and floor tom (together) alternatively, and kick peddling the bass drum at the same time. That was pretty loud. If I ask her to do that I think that will be as loud as the kit gets. Then if me and our bassist play a chord at the same time to make it the maximum loud it's going to be I can look down at the lights if I place the mixer by my feet. However, if I do a vocal as well it will be even louder! For this I will have to put the mic lower than normal so I can look down at the lights when I'm doing it. But to be honest we might as well just play a song! This whole performance will waste about half the practice time but at least we will only have to do it once!

A sound check doesn't need to take half the practice although quick pointer - When you need someone to play as loud as they're going to get, make sure they go for it. ;)
Repeating individual or paired drums is never going to be as loud as just kicking into a chorus at full vol.


Anyway...This should be a five minute job.
If the mixer isn't convenient to you while you're performing I'd either move things around, or just do a test record and check it.

Gain down - Pad on - Band ready - Kick into a loud chorus - Play for 8 bars - Stop - Check recording.
If it sounds good, you're done. If it doesn't, all you can really do is try pulling the mixer faders down a bit and try again.
If that's still no good then maybe the band are just too loud or the mic can't handle it - I'd turn down or try a dynamic.

Not sure if mic position has been mentioned but I'd have the speakers on one side and the mic on the other, so the mic isn't unnecessarily close.
 
Sorry about the delayed reply. I’m a bit worried about some of the advice I’ve had on this thread! We have not tried recording a practice again since posting this question but we are going to try it again next week. What I’m worried about is, according to it's spec, the Aston Spirit can take a maximum SPL of 138db, and a Google search of “how loud is a drum kit?” says it’s 130dB! So with guitars and vocals on top of that, it’s going to go over the max of what the Aston can handle, isn’t it?

Would I be better off just getting a different Mic for this job? Thanks for any advice.
 
"So with guitars and vocals on top of that, it’s going to go over the max of what the Aston can handle, isn’t it?"

No. One car going down the M1 might put put 90dB SPL but 100 identical cars do NOT put out 100 TIMES 90dB!

Poeple have been recording rabid, meat eating drummers and rock bands for decades without headroom problems (or if they did have one an XLR attn' slug soon fixed its wagon!)

Dave.
 
the Aston Spirit can take a maximum SPL of 138db, and a Google search of “how loud is a drum kit?” says it’s 130dB!

If you walked around the room, with the band playing, holding an SPL meter, the figure would vary pretty wildly based on your distance from the source and the direction the meter is pointing.
I have microphones that probably wouldn't take being one inch from a snare head without clipping,
but I don't think I have any that wouldn't happily record the room from several feet, or meters, away from any particular instrument.
 
The Aston has both -10 and -20dB pads which should give you plenty of headroom.

Its very common to record drums with the mic about 5cm from the drum head itself. Putting the same mic 3m away won't be close to the same level, as sound pressure drops 6dB with each doubling of distance.

If you REALLY want to know how loud you are playing, the easiest way is to get an SPL meter. They aren't that expensive, and will instantly let you know if things are getting insanely loud.

Then there's the other option.... DON'T PLAY SO FRIGGIN' LOUD. The last time I played out, I had a whopping 15 Princeton Reverb, and it was plenty loud, outside in a field for an audience of about 40-50 people. For band practice, you don't need to set your 100watt Marshall stack on 10 in a 3x3m square room. If you're playing in a gymnasium with 500 people, then crank it up.
 
The Aston has both -10 and -20dB pads which should give you plenty of headroom.

Its very common to record drums with the mic about 5cm from the drum head itself. Putting the same mic 3m away won't be close to the same level, as sound pressure drops 6dB with each doubling of distance.

If you REALLY want to know how loud you are playing, the easiest way is to get an SPL meter. They aren't that expensive, and will instantly let you know if things are getting insanely loud.

Then there's the other option.... DON'T PLAY SO FRIGGIN' LOUD. The last time I played out, I had a whopping 15 Princeton Reverb, and it was plenty loud, outside in a field for an audience of about 40-50 people. For band practice, you don't need to set your 100watt Marshall stack on 10 in a 3x3m square room. If you're playing in a gymnasium with 500 people, then crank it up.

Plus One. To get 'Old Fart' again. For centuries people got together and played and sang, Because they were MUSICIANS they instinctively produced an internal balance and created a pleasant 'mix' in the room.

When serious recording, i.e. with mics and pre amps came along, virtually all the engineers had to do was stick mic where it sounded good and push REC. (ok, bit simplified but many here will KWIM)

Even when big bands started using amps for guitar and possibly bass and Hammond organs, because these were comsumate musicians they still created a nice sound in the room.

It was the coming of the rock god with the 100W stack and the ego the size of a planet that started the rot. Drummers tried to keep up but there is a bit of 'chicken or egg' going on there.

Dave.
 
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