Behringer ADA8000 & dbx 1074 - Ideal Drum Rack?

L

LaserGyroscope

New member
Greetings,

I'm currently experiencing one of those sleepless nights, thinking whether an ADA8000 and a dbx Quad Gate would do a not good, but a great job recording drums.
I still don't have my kit purchased, mics, too, but I know my setup.
2x 22"x18" Tama Bass Drum
1x 10"x8" Tama Tom
1x 12"x9" Tama Tom
1x 16"x14" Tama Floor Tom
1x 18"x16" Tama Floor Tom
1x 14"x6.5" Tama Metalwork Steel Snare
1x 14" Zildjian ZHT Rock HiHat
2x 16" Zildjian ZHT Rock Crash
2x 18" Zildjian ZHT Rock Crash
1x 16" Zildjian Oriental China Thrash
1x 20" Zildjian ZHT Rock Ride

Now, I was thinking of miking each piece individually, along with two overheads. That's why I'm thinking of running them all through two ADA8000s, four Quad Gates and than lastly into an Allen & Heath ZED Mixer into my iMac (Logic Studio). Should that do the job?

P.S. Any mic recommendations? Budget is not too large, up to max. $200,00.

Best regards,

Thomas
 
Hmm... so you wouldn't be using the ADAT capabilities of the ADA8000s at all? You'd just be using the ADA8000s for their pres? And why are you using all those gates? I doubt the gates would be active very often, except maybe for the tom mics. Do you think it would be more beneficial and cost-effective to use software gates in your DAW rather than a bunch of hardware gates?

I think it might be a bit overkill to mic each cymbal separately, as well as having two overheads. Also, what ZED mixer do you have?

May I suggest an alternate plan for your drum recording setup? How about this: Get a simple eight channel interface to start off. For mics get two overheads, a kick mic, snare mic, and four tom mics. Run these mics straight into the interface. I think you'll be surprised at how great a kit can sound with fewer mics. You could also, if you wanted, run the four tom mics into your mixer, mix the mics down to two channels (do all your necessary panning on the board), and run those two channels into your interface. This will free up two other channels on your interface, so you could try out a room mic, hihat mic, or another snare mic (bottom or side shell). You could also, if you wanted, skip the tom mics all together and put some more money into some good overheads that will do a nice job picking up the toms by themselves.

Once you get your eight channel drum recording setup all solid, then I think you could branch out and get an ADA8000 to go ADAT into your interface, allowing you to expand some more. But definitely don't cheap out on your mics along the way.
 
Well, yeah. Honestly, I don't even know what ADAT is or does. I figured that the ADA8000 would be a good pre. It has eight channels, it has beyond good reviews and it's cost effective.
I wanted to mic each cymbal, yeah, along with the overheads. Lars Ulrich does that, too, and I'm a tremendous fan of his drum sound, especially on "Lulu".
I still haven't exactly bought the mixer, but I'm a step away from it. The Allen & Heath ZED-436.
Regarding the Quad Gates, yeah, well, the toms, the snare, the kicks, the overheads and the hihat are mandatory. About the other cymbals, I don't know. What do you suggest about the crashes, the ride and the China?
I don't know what you mean by the interface. I thought of going direct with the USB port on the ZED into my iMac. Is that good enough?

P.S. Here is a list of the mics I'm having in mind:
Sennheiser e602 II - €148,00 (Bass Drum)
Sennheiser e602 II - €148,00*(Bass Drum)
Shure SM57 - €93,00 (Snare)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Tom Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00*(Tom Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Floor Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Floor Tom)
Rode NT5 S - €164,00 (Overhead)
Rode NT5 S - €164,00 (Overhead)
AKG C451 B - €333,00 (Hi Hat)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (16" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(16" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(18" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(18" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (16" Oriental China Trash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (20" Ride)
 
My opinion: I have a strong feeling that Lars cymbals may be mic'd separately in the studio. But they are probably recorded one at a time. Even in live Metallica videos, you only see a few overheads. I'm not sure much of Lars drums are actually recorded live in studio to be honest. Getting a sound that solid without samples and manipulation, is damned near impossible. Micing each cymbal, drum, and overheads creates a huge amount of phase issues that are next to impossible to work out, even for a very experienced engineer.

I'm with GP82 on starting out with less at first.
 
LaserGyroscope said:
Well, yeah. Honestly, I don't even know what ADAT is or does. I figured that the ADA8000 would be a good pre. It has eight channels, it has beyond good reviews and it's cost effective.
I wanted to mic each cymbal, yeah, along with the overheads. Lars Ulrich does that, too, and I'm a tremendous fan of his drum sound, especially on "Lulu".
I still haven't exactly bought the mixer, but I'm a step away from it. The Allen & Heath ZED-436.
Regarding the Quad Gates, yeah, well, the toms, the snare, the kicks, the overheads and the hihat are mandatory. About the other cymbals, I don't know. What do you suggest about the crashes, the ride and the China?
I don't know what you mean by the interface. I thought of going direct with the USB port on the ZED into my iMac. Is that good enough?

P.S. Here is a list of the mics I'm having in mind:
Sennheiser e602 II - €148,00 (Bass Drum)
Sennheiser e602 II - €148,00*(Bass Drum)
Shure SM57 - €93,00 (Snare)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Tom Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00*(Tom Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Floor Tom)
Sennheiser e604 - €111,00 (Floor Tom)
Rode NT5 S - €164,00 (Overhead)
Rode NT5 S - €164,00 (Overhead)
AKG C451 B - €333,00 (Hi Hat)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (16" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(16" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(18" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00*(18" Crash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (16" Oriental China Trash)
Audio Technica PRO35 - €199,00 (20" Ride)
Click to expand...

ADAT allows you to "add" extra channels to your interface. You can't plug ADAT straight into your computer - you first have to go through a USB or FireWire interface. If you have an ADA8000 plugged into an eight channel FireWire interface, you would be able to plug mics into all the channels on both the ADA8000 and the FireWire interface, and all the mics would be send to the computer as separate channels. It's a pretty cool concept.

Your mic selection looks good. If you have decided to ditch the cymbal mics, rather than adding two more overheads (for a total of four), may I suggest that you use the extra money saved to get a pair of much nicer overheads that will last you twice as long? Maybe think about swapping out the NT5s for some MK-012s.
 
The Oktava MK 012-01 you mean?
Anyhow, since the Oktavas aren't too expensive, I can use them along with the NT5, right?
A quick question, I'll be using the China a dozen times, would it be alright if I miked the China up, too?
 
LaserGyroscope said:
The Oktava MK 012-01 you mean?
Anyhow, since the Oktavas aren't too expensive, I can use them along with the NT5, right?
A quick question, I'll be using the China a dozen times, would it be alright if I miked the China up, too?
Click to expand...

You've gotta get this set if you're going for the Oktavas: Oktava MK-012-01 MSP2 Factory Matched Pair | Alto Music

You're probably going to run into problems using two sets of overheads. I think it's just quite unnecessary. You'll have a great representation of the kit just by setting up one pair of OH in a spaced pair setup. It wouldn't hurt to mic up the china, but, like I said before, it would be best for you to start out with a smaller setup and grow from there. You never know... depending on your kit and your room, you might only need a pair of OH, a kick mic, and a snare mic to get a GREAT sound from your drums. Mess with the positioning of the china and the OH - the china might come in the OH louder than you expect and there may be absolutely no need for a china mic.
 
Alright than, guys! Thank you a thousand for your tremendous help! What you're saying is that, it's not worth buying the Behringer since the pres in the ZED are better than the Behringer's?
 
if you are on a budget i would go for quality over quantity. I use the recorder-man technique which uses 4 mics and sounds awesome. Really good interface for the price: Amazon.com: Tascam US-800 8 Input USB 2.0 Computer Audio Interface: Musical Instruments SM 57 Clone for snare: Amazon.com: GLS Audio Professional Microphone ES-57 & Mic Clip: Electronics This leaves you extra cash to spend on overheads and kick mics. I have shure sm 81s as overheads and a D12 on kick but I believe that is out of your price range.
 
LaserGyroscope said:
Alright than, guys! Thank you a thousand for your tremendous help! What you're saying is that, it's not worth buying the Behringer since the pres in the ZED are better than the Behringer's?
Click to expand...

and there's no need at all!

You're trying to paint a picture with three brushes at once in my opinion.

Kick, snare, overhead left and overhead right could very well be all you need, like Jimmy said.
If you think it's necessary, then add three mics for toms, but honestly, anymore than that is going to be difficult work and not necessarily sound better.
 
Damn, you have a 36 ch mixer that's nice enough to have a dir out on each channel. Yeah for now I would just roll with the usb out on the zed, but down the road if it was me I would get a separate interface that would allow you to get some channel separation (I can only assume with the usb out you only get a stereo and maybe some aux send mixdowns, could be wrong but I doubt the usb port streams all 36 channels separatly).

Personally though with drums larger than a 5 piece I don't subscribe to the 4 mic method. If you have the budget for a decent mic setup then I say go with that especially if we are talking a 7 piece kit.

I'm recording a 7 piece kit this Thursday and I fully intend to mic it like so (it's a thrash band, the 4 mic method wouldn't work):

kick: going to use 2 mics on each (so 4 mics on the kick)
snare: using 2 mics
toms: using 4 mics
OH: using 2 mics
Ride/China: using 2 more mics to spot just these
Hats: using a mic
Room: Maybe doing a room mic, but might not. This mic and the hat mic are expendable

So a total of 16-17 mics for this. The difference with my setup and yours is that I can record each to it's own track and ditch anything I don't want later. I would rather record with what I have and ditch something later than not record it and regret not having it for use.
 
I was talking to tom newman THIS one, not the American guy once and we were talking about tracking and he was telling me he was tracking in a studio next to Metallica and he reckons that Lars used 70 tracks on a 72 track Neve desk, which to be honest kinda seemed then and still does seem like overkill.

I'm honestly of the school of treat drums as one instrument (albeit a stereo instrument) and a good four mic setup works, but if the drummer insists I will add tom mics aswell, (and generally sometimes I don't even use them) fader pushed hard gain @ zero :P makes drummers more confident thinking that its all getting miced,

But things is Everything IS recorded, with the overheads, the snare and kick just help get that extra punch through, I also like room mics but hell if I have a terrible room to record drums I find it can be better to take the mix home solo the drum tracks play it at "real life" volumes in a nice sounding room, with a pair of mics in the back of the room for.. well room :P just my opinion on drum tracking :P
 
You cannot use an ADA8000 without using the ADAT. The preamps do not pass signal to the XLR's on the rear panel. (Just saying.)
 
RawDepth said:
You cannot use an ADA8000 without using the ADAT. The preamps do not pass signal to the XLR's on the rear panel. (Just saying.)
Click to expand...

That's good to know actually.

And an incredibly dumb design IMO, but for how much they cost it's good to know. I was thinking of adding one just to get up to 26 ins and 18 outs so I can add some outboard and run some triggers.
 
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