Do I Have The Right Stuff

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thenightsalive

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i am having a lot of trouble with recording drums. this is what i own and should it give me a good sound.

pres.... api 3124 4 channel
trident s20 2 channel
avalon 747sp

mics..... peavey drum mics with mlx condensors for overheads

and 8 channels worth of cheap compressor and gates.

i am recording using a FIREPOD and CUBASE LE
 
Yes, you have the right stuff.
Yes, you should get a good drum tone out of that.

If you want us to help you, tell us how you're setting things up.
Give us a sample of your drum recordings so we can listen for things to change.

I usually get a pretty good drum sound with using pre's not quite as nice as yours..

equipment unfortunately isn't everything :)
 
and how the hell are you recording with that nice of pre's and only using a firepod for your a/d/a and cubase LE?
 
eh.. and peavy/mxl mics... ????
you spent a lot of money on those pre's and hardly anything in mics?
 
you're not lacking in the pre department so I'm not even going to get into preamps.

the mics could be better, but should do.

these are the things I would worry about:

1. Tuning the drums well and using new heads. check out the drum tuning bible here: http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/

2. The drummer needs to be able to play consistently. Don't take this to mean that dynamics are the devil or that you need to record to a metronome. I just mean the drummer should play like he means it. Speeding up and slowing down is ok, but it needs to sound intentional. Playing louder or softer should sound intentional and fit the song also. For a good recorded sound the drummer should be playing in his comfort zone. Meaning that if they can't consistently play those single foot doubles or triplets they just learned and want to put into every song, they should either dumb it down, or go home and practice until they can. You'll never be able to fix these sorts of issues in the mix without resorting to replacement, beat detective, and all other sorts of trickery.

3. The room would be next: Check out ethan winers site about acoustics here: http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Make sure you really understand those first 3. They are the most important part of getting good drum sounds.

These next things will have an effect on the sounds you get, but not nearly as much as those first 3 steps.

Your mic placement is probably the next most important.

How you treat the drums effect wise (eq, compression, reverb, etc.) will have a pretty big effect on your sounds also. There is a ton of info on this and many other bbs's about mixing drums. All you need is to use the search function.

Converters-- this would personally be the last thing I worried about, but eventually you will probably feel they are the weakest link and will need upgraded.

Eventually you may want to invest in some good eq, compressor, and reverb plugins, or hardware. For the moment though, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to get good sounds with the stock plugins that came with your daw program.

A thing that lots of people forget about, or don't know about is that every plugin you put on your tracks causes a delay on that track. Many DAW's don't compensate for that delay, so if you're mixing drums the track will play back slightly later than you intend. It can cause some phase issue's, especially if you're using an aux track for parallel compression.

You can figure out how much each track is delayed and physically nudge it back in the session so that it plays back where it originally was supposed to play.

Before anyone tries to do the following things, the most accurate way to do it is to switch from minutes/seconds, or bars/beats, or however else you may be seeing your time in your session to samples.

The easiest way I know to check how much delay there is on a track is to assign the track to a bus and record that bus to a new track then figure out how much time has elapsed between the beginning of each track.

The bus will add a certain amount of delay also and you don't want to overcompensate by dragging your drums too far back, so you should figure out how much delay the bus is causing by bussing a track without effects on it and recording it. Then check how much time has elapsed between the beginning of the first track and the bussed track. Subtract this time from the delay on the track that has effects and that is how far you need to nudge the original track to get it to play where it was originally intended.
 
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Any Mics will do if ya know what you're doing...

If you set all your stuff up and are getting a good line level, as well as things are being captured/recorded to your DAW (computer), then you are OK.

If you are not happy with what you are hearing, then you need to re think your mic placement.

If your toms are sounding like paper hits with no tone, then your mics are too close to the drums for the room. Pull them back till you hear what you are looking for.

Digital recording is extremely unforgiving and you need to experiment to capture the sounds you are looking for.

I have recorded drums with "state of the art" mics as well as $10 cheapy instrument mics.

As long as you record the basic sound of the drum with a strong signal that doesn't peak the meters, then you can mix a killer drum track. In digital recording, mixing is the key.

I have found that the key to recording an awesome drum mix, is to mic the kick(s) and snare separately to their own individual tracks, in order to mix them independently. Kick and snare are the most important part of any drum mix. Sometimes hi-hats, but they are usually too loud and can be mixed via proper EQ techniques without having to dedicate a mic or track to them.

Also, overheads and L/R room mics do just as well in recording toms and cymbals. EQing is the key to a good mix and separation. Know your frequency ranges!

Unless you are looking for pristine drum tracks on their own, forget about gating. Gating and sometimes even compression will create a "swooshing" element to your recordings, caused by the opening and closing of the gate. With proper EQ, you can separate things properly. Any minute bleed over will be absorbed by the other instrument tracks.

For example, check out myspace.com/xyravyvol

1st listen to "Antagonus" to hear an average drum mix.

Then listen to "Blood Sister" to hear a complete drum mix.

These were recorded live with the entire band in a studio with no proper separation. If you could hear the drums by themselves, then you would hear guitars and bass due to bleed. I play rythym guitar and mixed these after converting to digital.

On Antagonus, I removed the lead guitar.


On Blood Sister, I removed all guitars and re recorded my guitar part, plus overdubbed another lead guitarists part. I'll admit that you can still hear some ghost leads from the guitarist in the room at time of recording, but you can't hear the rest of the noise from the original live recording.

Plus, the drums sound TIGHT!

Recorded to 24 trk analog 2" tape then converted to digital wav files.
Mixed with ProTools by me.

8 Mics on drums. Kick, Snare, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3, 1 OverHead + 2 Room mics for cymbals.
 
thanks so far

the reason i have the firepod and the drum mics is because i didnt have any money for equipment until i got 2 free avalon 747s and i sold one and got the api. i will be posting a sample of my drums so far today.
 
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