if you are in a small room that's the main problem. comb filtering and low frequency build up are jacking up the sound that the mics capture.
Here are the things that have been successful for me in acheiving a nice snare crack in a small room.
1. Use a condensor mic in omni mode behind your left shoulder (assuming you are right handed). I use an AKG 414 with the low cut filter set to cut everthing below 160hz. this picks up a nice snare crack and will provide good overall sound for the entire kit. It also adds fatness to your kick sound. You may need to place a piece of studio foam between the Omni mic and your hi hat to tame it a bit. Make sure the foam isn't blocking the path between the snare and the mic. this works best if your kit is centered in the room.
Use this one mic in place of stereo overheads. Stereo OH's in a small room are just going to produce a crapy sound in most cases...especially cardioids. In your mix, pan this omni mic between 10 and 11 o'clock.
2. The I5 mic is good (I own one) but not in a small room...it's too dark. go get
a Sure beta 57A. It will immediately brighten up your sound. Pan this mic between 1 and 2 o'clock. Use the I5 on one of your toms...killer!
3. Mix these two sources according to the style of music you are recording.
for example, most pop music will require a 50/50 mix. For jazz, back down your top snare mic to almost nothing. For rock or any style requiring a big snare crack, turn down the OMNI slightly and boost your snare mic...40/60.
4. when mixing, you'll need to cut a lot of low end out of your mix so that your snare sound is heard. cut your top snare mic at 180hz. cutting as much as 10db is usually fine and will help define your snare sound. Also, add some high eq between 4k and 8k. use a moderate Q setting so that it covers this range but no more and no less. boost about 4 db.
5. compress the omi mic using a moderately fast attack and a medium release time at about 4:1 ratio. multi band plugs in your DAW might work better than a traditional comp. experiment with cutting some more low end on this track too. often cutting below the 200 - 300hz range works well. this makes your cymbals sustain longer without having to turn them up louder and also further enhances your snare. remember, when compressing drums, the low end gets louder so, the more you compress, the more low end you need to cut with EQ.
6. cutting all of the low end from your snare and omni tracks will clear up your sound considerably but, it also "robs" your tracks of a lot of energy. It is absolutely imperative that you pump them back up to get that crack. You need to do few things to accomplish this.
First, send your entire drum mix (all tracks) to a buss.
Second, you need to run this buss mix into a good pre-amp. this boost your signal back to a nice hot level and adds some distortion. Distortion is part of what makes your snare sound. turn up the gain on the pre-amp until you just start to hear the distortion effect, then back it off one notch.
Third, compress this mix again. some pre-amps will handle both for you.
7. you should now be getting a pretty good sound. If not, it's probably attributable to one, or both, of two things:
Pre-amps and room.
These are the two biggest limiting factors in recording drums...third I would say is mic selection.
Pre-amp suggestions: JLM audio TMP-8. This pre gives a big fat warm and somewhat aggressive sound. it's about 2k from JLM audio. I love mine. you'll find it at jlmaudio.com. Be sure to order both sets of limiter plugs with the unit. These allow you to record straight into a DAW while still leaving headroom for EQ.
Focusrite Red 5. This pre is about the same price but only has 4 pre's instead of 8. Excellent clean pure sound. great for pop,rock and jazz. probably too clean for certain types of music that require more attitude from the drums.
Pre-amps will make a huge difference.
Room: if you are in a small room on carpet, you won't get that snare sound you are looking for. concrete floor or wood floors are best. use as small a rug as you can get away with just to keep your kick from creeping away from you. A hard floor and a soft ceiling is a good combination. Treat a drywalled ceiling with some foam spaced at fairly close intervals accross the ceiling. treat an open rafter ceiling with standard fiberglass insulation. just "spot" treat the walls with foam anywhere you have a drum or cymball nearby...especially if your hi-hat is close to a wall. no more foam is needed. too much foam is not good. If you can afford it, buy some bass traps for the corners. Auralex makes affordable kits, and real-traps makes the high dollar professional units.
Finally - the last thing that makes a good lively snare sound is reverb. In a small room, this is almost impossible to acheive using room mics or digital reverb units. The best method I've come accross is to use "Drumagog" and the Steven Slate Z4 room sounds. You can purchase both from drumagog.com. The way I use it is to place drumagog in an effects bus and load the z4 sample. Turn the mix to 100 percent. Then, key this sound by turning up the effects send knob on your snare drum track. This will give you a high quality room sound to add to your snare track. If you add a compressor pluging to the z4 track, it makes a very nice big reverb sound that you can turn way up in the mix.
Let me know if this helps.
