It can be a combination of both, especially on kick. You can use a drum machine kick/snare and real high hat and cymbals. The most obvious 80's drum effect would be to gate the snare and toms. You can also be creative, New Order even used an aerosol can spray as a snare sound.
Recording drums with a few mics is all about the drummer's technique. When listening to the kit in the room the loudest things should be the kick and snare. If the cymbals are too loud he should hit them softer. Placing the overheads closer to the drummer so they are not on top of the cymbals...
Foam works for upper mids and high end. Rigid Fiberglass will do the same but with added low mid and bass absorption. I would at least put some fiberglass in the corners and then use foam for walls and ceiling in a checker pattern.
I like to mix as I go if I have the luxury but I usually don't do anything too drastic to the progress mixes. I just try to keep them as a good representation of what we have so far and to experiment with any arranging or weird ideas. I think they're important if you don't do a lot of note...
When I use a Mackie in live setups I like to keep the pre's as clean as possible and push things up in the mix if I need a little more volume. It's probably just a universal truth that any sound system that has a mackie never has enough power to get a clean vocal above the drums. :D
The right limiter and/or settings will be able to give you more loudness with less harm to the overall mix. That is why a good mastering engineer is worth the money. Play with the attack and release times to try and find the sweet spot for getting more volume without killing the drums.
You...
Yep. If you can't hear the bass properly while mixing you will end up turning it up too high and killing all your headroom.
Putting some Limiting on the bass can also help get it to sit in the mix better.
Tempo is Beats per Minute.
Number of measures x 4 = number of beats
60/BPM = Seconds per beat
Multiply the number of beats by the Seconds per beat and that is the location.
For an 87 BPM it would be 60/87= .68965 seconds per beat
It shouldn't be that hard to just line things up manually...
You can also use an under snare mic to trigger the gate on the upper snare mic. They usually don't have as much hat bleed in them so you can get a cleaner trigger. They also have a little more kick bleed in them so if you want you can use the snare rattle to give your kick a little more...
The MXL V92/2003 is a decent all around mic. I've been using one for years and it's my go to mic whenever I don't have something too specific in mind like a ribbon or dynamic sound.
The size of the room is less important then the sound of the room. Typically small rounds can sound worse but if there is enough diffusion and absorption they can work fine for close miked stuff.
They main advantage of a bigger room is that you can mike from a greater distance with less...
Sounds great but why is it so loud if it's just the mixes? You might take off most of the mix compression/limiting and save some room for the ME to do his job.