drum "room" mics/phase issues

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phosphene
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Phosphene

Phosphene

Horse Diaper
was driving & thinking (dangerous) about drum mics. people using the ambient/room mic..... now dont you get phase problems/freq.cancellations due to the distance of that mic compared to all the others? whats a good fix, just flip the phase? i would think that moving it around woulndt really help fix phase problems because its still so far away from the drum kit (relatively)........
 
You will get a timing delay that can translate into some funky sounding tonalities and a sloppy sound.
If you are using a digital multitracker, you can move the room mics track up in time to where your snare or kick beats line up and it should take care of the problem. Small adjustments at that point can make a world of difference.

Tom
 
Depending on the size of the room, and the location of the microphones, and the tone of the room and how it relates to the drum sound you're trying to achieve... more often than not, there will be no problems at all. The distance will [more often than not] make the 'ambience mics' a "random phase event"... especially if the reflections are outside of the Haas Effect parameters [tmix's post would have you putting random phase events within the scope of Haas Effect anomolies... which can be cool... but more often than not, isn't].

Keep in mind that if you're working in a small and boxy sounding room, then the event is going to sound small and boxy [which isn't necessarily a bad thing... didn't seem to be too much of a negative even on Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On"... but understand what you're walking into].

You can try to do all kinds of funky manipulations in a DAW... in my experience, it usually creates more problems than it solves... but golly, you have the power, might as well abuse it.
 
I stand happily corrected by Fletcher.

What I meant to say is IF your sound is horrible in the ambient mics ( which generally it won't be if far enough away) you can work with it by moving it up in time. But Fletcher brought up a very good point. Once you start moving it up you can create some exceedingly horrible sounds which will probably cause you to dump the ambient track rather than bumping it around. I have found that if you are going to move it, move it all the way up in time and compress the crap out of it, adding it in small amounts under the drum bed tracks as a filler.

After all people add small amounts of delay to their drum tracks all the time to add a little fullness. Add too much and it sounds sloppy.
 
Thanks. i stumbled across your "3 mic placement" document also fletcher....might try that this weekend if i can on this band i'm gonna record. I'm looking to get another pre for drum overheads (as well as another flavor for other things)--all i have is a 737 and ART TPS dual pre...
...been looking at TOFT ATC-2 for $1000 and Great River NV ($1080 a channel i believe)......I tried out BOTH on vocals and acoustic guitar but didnt have the chance to audition them on drums. Its sure tempting to get the Toft (2 channels, good eq, cheaper) VS the Great River (more expensive, but sounds better to me on my vocals and guitar).... any thoughts.?

Jeremiah
 
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