All Pop on my Snare

  • Thread starter Thread starter BeniRose
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BeniRose

BeniRose

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I'm currently micing my snare with an Audix i5 through my Presonus Firepod. No matter what I do and what snare I use, I can't seem to get anything but a real nice pop out of my snare. I have no low end or snare to work with.

Listen to this clip of a song I recorded here. The snare doesn't sound horrible, but it just sounds thin and not so ballsy. Granted I only added a short reverb and no long ones, but I still feel like I'm missing something in the actual recording. Any advice?
 
Throw an SM57 or something under the snare and reverse the polarity.

As for the song...the hats are way too loud. I'm assuming you turned the drums up so we could hear them. If not, the drums are generally just overpowering the mix.
 
Tune the drum too... it sounds pretty "boxy". If I had to guess... some tuning and mic placement tweaking will help a lot too.

So speaking of that... where are you placing the mic on the snare? Also, are your overheads placed such that they are in a good phase relationship? You might be getting some phase weirdness too that will make your snare sound whimpy. I always use a string to measure the distance from my snare and kick to the OHs to be certain that they are an equal distance from both the kick and snare. This gives a good phase relationship by making sure the sound from both the snare and the kick reach both over heads at the same time also putting them in the center of the stereo image.
 
What type of snare is it?
If it is a 13 x 3 piccolo you won't get a big sound.
 
Thanks guys. I know the drums are too loud, I only took 5 minutes to mix that when I did it. It's a standard snare that came with a pretty crappy Tama Swingstar set. The set itself isn't stellar, but I know I'm not capturing the entire sound of that snare. I don't remember where my overheads were placed, but I'm not so sure I am placing them properly. Do you have any good links to how to place your overheads right to make sure they aren't out of phase. I also just found a good tuning tutorial so i'll give that a try once I move into my new appartment.
 
The room, the kit, and mic placement all are crucial.
If the kit sounds decent, that is a good start. It does not have to be a expensive kit to sound good.

Next is the room, if the room is boomy or has other acoustic probs, the fewer mics and the closer miced (but not right up on it), the better.
You might start off with a kick,snare,single overhead combo first.
Try looking on YouTube for the "RecorderMan" Method, it uses 4 mics.

Generally speaking I find a mic can use a little air between it and the object it is recording, putting a mic right up on the drum head most often sounds horrid to me.
Often times setting the snare mic where the body of the mic is parallel to the surface of the snare head can add a little life to it and relieve some of the boxy sound.
That will ge you started.

Tom
 
Where you pointing that mic? You angling it down to the center of the head? Try pointing it across the head parrallel to the ground do it doesn't get smooshed with all the 400Hz head smack. Next, put an under mic to catch the rattle of the snares.

Then eq those puppies. Take the muck out of the close mics and overheads, muck is usually found in that 400-600 range. Then add some sparkle on the to and some fatness on the bottom.

Also don't expect to get a snare sound just from the close mic, because you won't. The leakage in the overheads will surely help, and you can setup a mic right in front of the kit which you gate and trigger open via the snare's close mic so you can have a dedicated roomier snare that you can process just to accentuate the snare drum.
 
I know this was quite a bit ago, but I moved in September and just finally set up my gear in the basement of my new place. Anyways, I tried all your tips, in particular using a string to make sure the overheads are equidistant from the snare (I wasn't too concerned with the kick since I had two mics on that already) and it ended up sounding great! I think that was the main problem. I used the same NT1a mics I used in that recording, but I'm going to try it with my Samson C02s soon as well. Thanks guys!
 
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