healthy looking drum tracks????

[RideTheCrash]

That is way too loud. I had the same looking tracks and after I got set straight in the Cool Edit forum, my mixes come out so much better. I'm not sure what you have, I know a Behringer board into who-knows-what. But your tracks should be roughly -18dBFS, but the transients can be higher, because by driving your soundcard up to 0dB and beyond your overdriving the signal and it doesn't sound good.

0dBVU (mixer) = -18dBFS (computer).

Check out the sticky in the CEP forum called "dbVU vs. dBFS". I know you don't use CEP, but it's still relevant. Try it out man.

 

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

The lining up the tracks thing is not necessarily true. It *might* make things sound better, or it might take all the depth out of the drums. You can't nudge tracks and make sure peaks are aligned in analog, but that doesn't mean analog sucks for multi-miking drums! I've tried it and sometimes it can help but I find that a lot of the time it makes the drums sounds more flat. Try it and see if you like it.

Make sure when tracking that nothing is getting thinned out(phase cancellation) when the different tracks are playing together in mono. This is something I'm going to be very strict on in my future recordings since the drums tend to define the quality of the recording more than anything else IMO. Listen to everything in mono and make sure everything doesn't thin out. And maybe in stereo do something like hard pan 2 mics and slowly pan the mic on the right side(or vice versa) to the opposite side where and see if it loses something as you combine both mics to one speaker. If they don't sound good together move a mic and try again. Do this between all the mics. Or, at the very least make sure all the close mics sound good phase-wise with the overheads, since you might be gating some of the bleed of the close mics anyways. The mics should sound good by themselves but MORE IMPORTANTLY everything must sound good together.

 

[RAMI]

Meh, I flip the phase on my snare mic and everything's just fine.

 

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

Anyone use anything like the Voxengo PHA-979 on drums? Where you can change phase in 1 degree increments from 0-360 degrees instead of just having the 180 degree option?

 

[mixsit]

The lining up the tracks thing is not necessarily true. It *might* make things sound better, or it might take all the depth out of the drums.
...This is something I'm going to be very strict on in my future recordings since the drums tend to define the quality of the recording more than anything else IMO..

I second both of these emotions'.
Even after setting up the kit mics so that they sound strong and good prior to tracking, when it comes time to mix and zeroing in (and finalizing it, with the bass etc..) invariably I'll find that trying further polarity combinations between the kit mics (main pair in my case), snare and kick, there are other combinations that give unique and useful options to push the kit tonally in one direction or the other.
This is a powerful eq' option, even without ever nudging anything, and tells me that none of the combinations are actually ever exactly "correctly" in phase at all.
(And I don't want to give the idea that I think this is easy. I'm still struggling with this in the end.

 

[RAMI]

Besides the fact that some of us don't record with software. I can't align tracks by eye. I'd much rather not start. I believe in good mic placement, followed by playing with the phase if needed. In every recording I've ever done, I flip the phase on my snare and everything's fine.

 

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

I usually try flipping the phase on every single track in the recording to see if it helps. Sometimes it can make things sound a bit more "3d". A lot of times flipping the phase on both overheads makes the drums sound better.