57 on the snare

MadHatterTCM said:
The deal is this - the mic picks up what you point it at. Your ears sit a good what.. 2-3 feet above the snare itself. When you hit a snare you hear a snare mic 3 feet below you and the rest of what you hear (a good portion) is how the room reflects the snare sound. When you have a mic an inch away from the snare itself..it's picking up what your ears would hear an inch away from the same space. The snare sound you're used to is compiled of the sounds from the top head, the bottom head, the walls, the ceilings.... and so on and so on.. so one microphone really close, will never sound exactly like what you hear from the drum throne - which is why the 1 single sm57 doesn't sound exactly like a snare, but only part of the snare. This is also why people are telling you the room mics and room play a part of what your snare sounds like in a recording.
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Excellent post! Rep for you! :D
 
MadHatterTCM said:
This is also why people are telling you the room mics and room play a part of what your snare sounds like in a recording.
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Yes thanks Madhatter I know about the room mics and the room. I have both and use them almost on a daily basis. I'm not asking how to get a good snare sound. All I really wanted to know is if a 57 up close on a snare in a $10K/day studio sounded similar in it's raw unprocessed state to how it does at my place.
 
Bulls Hit said:
Yes thanks Madhatter I know about the room mics and the room. I have both and use them almost on a daily basis. I'm not asking how to get a good snare sound. All I really wanted to know is if a 57 up close on a snare in a $10K/day studio sounded similar in it's raw unprocessed state to how it does at my place.
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In my experience, the top snare mic doesn't sound like how a finished snare sounds in a mix, but at the same time, I don't need to compress it or really even eq it to get a decent sound from it "in the mix".

Is that what you were looking for?
 
Although the SM57 is a standard snare mic and it can produce a very decent snare sound, you have to consider this: it sounds a bit boomy close to the snare, so you better put it not too close. But when the drummer is a hat basher you're in trouble because the hat bleed into the 57 doesn't sound good.

A really good drummer is his weight worth in gold here, but when you have to deal with this hat basher, you'd better use another mic like the Beyer M201 or the Sennheiser MD441.

These mics are hyper and super cardioid so there's less bleed plus that bleed is sounding much better.
 
since no one will answer his question....i will:) and the answer is yes it does. but that being said those studios have engineers that have nothing else to do but spend a little time positioning mics' the get a combination of the two.. meaning that pop and a brite snary sound. you can too if you play with positions and not settling with the first place you put it. also if you get that pop sound just put a pencil condencer on the bottom of the snare drum pointed at the snares then get a mixture of the two you could get good results.
 
Yeah I guess small changes in position can make big differences to the recorded sound. I know I'm guilty of setting & forgetting. When I want to do some tracking I'm not interested in fiddling around with mic positions, I just want to get on the kit and catch the vibe while it lasts. It's only later I think damn I wish I'd spent more time on the set that up and captured a better sound. Such is life for the home recordist :D
 
I'll reiterate that the room mic, say 3 feet or so above the snare will make up a good portion of that kickass snare sound your after. A 57 and a good room mic in a good room should get excellent results ...just make sure the drummer hits the snare well ;)
 
mixsit said:
Phooy. There's still the fact that song and vibe trump 'The Sound'
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I believe it's "phooey" :p And yes, what's coming out of the artist and associated instrument 'vibe'-wise is 90% of the sound for sure! I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. What I meant is the difference between a hobby and a profession is the attitude with which you tackle your work. A hobbyist guesses, a pro knows. Yes, that's mostly experience, but you've gotta go at it full-force to gain the knowledge necessary to be a pro.

That said, I'm not a pro by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever, but I'm going at it like I wanna be! :)
 
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