Drum EQing on a mixing board

  • Thread starter Thread starter Savantchild
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Savantchild

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Hey, another thread...as you can tell i am new to this stuff. Ok so today I got a EUROTRACK U82222FX-PRO which is and 8 channel mixing board. I would like to know like where i should set the Low's, High and Mid range/FREQ EQ's at for the diffrent durms...snare, high/low toms, floor, kick and then the condenser mics. I know it takes just alot of messing around to get good sounds but what is like the standard EQing for each drum? I dont know if that made enough sense since i know little to nothing about the terms and this field. I hope to get into this feild so i gotta start somewhere.
 
The only way to know where to set the EQ would be based on how the drums actually sound. All drum kits sound differntly. There's no one size fits all settings in my experience. For that matter, I don't use much EQ on drums at all with the exception of the kick and snare. I depend on mic choice and placement to get them to sound the way I want them to.
 
Don't EQ while you're recording. That way you won't waste a perfectly good take trying something that turns out to be rubbish. Record a bunch of tracks and then start to fiddle. It's the only way!
 
noisedude said:
Don't EQ while you're recording. That way you won't waste a perfectly good take trying something that turns out to be rubbish. Record a bunch of tracks and then start to fiddle. It's the only way!
Click to expand...
Well, no. There's nothing wrong with EQ while tracking. If you like what you hear, you like what you hear. True, you can't undo damage if you've screwed it up but if you feel you're dialed in, track away. I would just advise to try to get the sound you're looking for AT THE SOURCE first, then with mic choice and placement, THEN EQ if nessassary.
 
Yup - except he's experimenting to find what some good EQs are. The easiest way of doing that is recording one lot of flat drums where he has concentrated on mic placement, then mixing/playing back many times to play with EQ.

One day he'll be able to do it all beforehand if he finds a sound he likes, but this is a beginner!

My 2 pence.
 
While you may be able to get a great drum sound, remember that the drums hafta work with all the other instruments and the vocals, so the "perfect" drum sound may be very wrong when you add the other stuff. Getting it all right is a bitch.
 
leave the EQ alone, it's all about mic placement
 
As you're starting to see, there's no one answer. It's what you find to work best for you and the sound.
 
It is also very difficult to get good eq with the limited controls that come with the typical small scale mixer, these tend to be more suited for live work. The better mixers come with 2 swept mid bands which make it simpler to obtain precise adjustments to achieve the sound that you require.

As Harvey has stated the overall sound mix is very important and one of the real skills is to learn how to integrate the various tracks into a homogeneous sound.

The Berry digi mixer that I use for live work has 4 fully parametric EQ's on each channel and I find that these allow me to fine tune the sound in a way that is just not possible on the smaller Berry mixers
 
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Thanks alot guys. But, for the people who say dont mess with the eq's at all are just telling me to place them right and I can just leave the eq's at what ever they were when i first got it? Sounds good to me.
 
Savantchild said:
Thanks alot guys. But, for the people who say dont mess with the eq's at all are just telling me to place them right and I can just leave the eq's at what ever they were when i first got it? Sounds good to me.
Click to expand...
"No eq" means the gain control is at 'zero' -no gain added or subtracted, otherwise known as 'unity'. Or better yet, have the eq circuit switched completely out if possible.
There are no 'default settings'.
;)
 
Savantchild... here's a ballpark type chart that you may find helpful... http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqfreq.php I recommend using as little EO as you have too... besides a good drummer, kit and room... mic choice, and placement is the key (and more placement than anything), EQ as a last resort. Most of the time I track flat and EQ later.
 
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LemonTree said:
leave the EQ alone, it's all about mic placement
Click to expand...

...and mic selection. I find during mixdown it's either a low end or high end issue when eq'ing but my midrange is generally there with a good sounding source and correct mic selection. Of course all this stuff varies with every source / mic / pre / mix session!!

There's nothing wrong with tracking without EQ and EQ'ing during mixdown, it's how I prefer to work anyhow.

War
 
well you will have to scrub down the mids of the tom 1 and 2 probably...all the rest is allready sayd... in fact it depends on the drums you use...all different.

greets
 
I disagree with always having to scoop the mids on toms but it can be a great thing and is done quite often.

War
 
Quality thread guys. I'm going to be starting to play around with some real equipment for the first time soon, a criteria of one of my pieces of coursework is a track featuring drumkit recorded with 6+ mics. I'm gonna rock the boat and swap out the SM57s for e835/e845s, but other than that it's MD421s, Calrec overheads and that horrible AKG kick mic. I'll tell you all how big a difference mic placement makes then!
 
noisedude, I recommend adding a Beyer M201... it's awesome as a snare mic and etc.
 
DJL - Unfortunately I'm pretty much stuck with what the university will let me use. I'm sure there's at least one of those Beyers around somewhere (they have 300+ mics) but I don't get my hands on those til I take a music tech module in a later year.

Thinking about using an MD 421 instead of a D112 on kick - will that be better? Or a 57/58/e835/e845/545/beyer soundstar?
 
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