Cleaning up drum tracks

[girvan]

Hi,
I have recorded drums using 4 mics, kik, sn, 2 ovrHeads.
I want to get the tightest sound possible. Should I go into the kick and snare track and mute the spill from the other drums? Will it be worth the time?
Thank you as always.
Scott.

 

[gcapel]

absolutely not.

 

[NL5]

I certainly wouldn't say absolutely not, although it would probably be totally unnecessary. If I were dealing with the 4 tracks, I would make sure that the polarity of the tracks were correct, and make sure they are in phase as much as possible. Should provide a pretty tight drum sound.

 

[girvan]

Thank you(s). That saves me a week of work. When you say check polarity and phase. How do I do that in Sonar 6. I plan on aligning the OHeads with the other 2 mics to make sure the sync is dead on.

 

[NL5]

Thank you(s). That saves me a week of work. When you say check polarity and phase. How do I do that in Sonar 6. I plan on aligning the OHeads with the other 2 mics to make sure the sync is dead on.

Zoom in on a clean snare hit - make sure that the waveform is traveling in the same direction (up or down) on the initial hit in the snare and OH tracks. Then make sure they are in phase with each other. Then do the same with the kick track.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Just gate the snare and kick tracks. It will clean them up and it only takes a few minutes.

 

[mixsit]

... I plan on aligning the OHeads with the other 2 mics to make sure the sync is dead on.

That's a fine idea to try out, but IMHO it shouldn't be considered by default 'the better sound'. Depending on you're original tones it can add a bunch of thickness for example to the tone of some of the drums (snare is a good candidate ) that might not necessarily even be an improvement.
Wayne