Mixing in that powerful kick and snare without clipping

[Bulls Hit]

Looks like the kick & snare are OK together, but they're out of phase with the overheads.

Flip the phase on the overheads, should improve things a lot.

I have the same issue on my kit. I always record with the ohead phase flipped

 

[masteringhouse]

Looks like the kick & snare are OK together, but they're out of phase with the overheads.

Flip the phase on the overheads, should improve things a lot.

I have the same issue on my kit. I always record with the ohead phase flipped

I agree, the overheads are out of phase with the other 2 tracks, I don't "get" the kick track though. It seems to lack transients and looks more like a bass guitar track. Was this image at the same scale as the others?

Additionally it looks the the snare track is being clipped.

 

[ecktronic]

Try double tracking the kick and snare and adding seperate eq on each.
For the kik 1 you could put some low mid eq and for the kik 2 you could put some high mid on. Maybe compress the kik 2 alot to get nice punchy sound. and compress kik 1 a bit less.
Same idea for snare. or you could use two mics for kik and two for snare placed differently.

 

[robin watson]

Waveforms and phase

Interesting. So by simply looking these waveforms, you can draw conclusions such as the above. On the other hand, if the cymbals were also being played at the time the samples were taken, wouldn't it naturally appear like this anyway (i.e., overhead signals peaking in the drum waveform troughs)? I don't even use DAW (HD24 + analog desk), so this is all new to me, but this caught my eye.

 

[Bulls Hit]

It doesn't matter whether the cymbals are being played or not. It has to do with the different lengths of time it takes a sonic signal to reach 2 mics at different distances from the sound source.

In this case , when the overhead tracks are mixed with the kick & snare tracks, wave cancellation will occur which robs the kick & snare drums of their full sonic potential.

This can happen any time you use more than one mic

 

[boingoman]

Do the phasing problems occur even if you stick to the 3 to 1 rule?

 

[mixsit]

Do the phasing problems occur even if you stick to the 3 to 1 rule?

The relative distances set which frequencies add and cancel, but their volumes determine the depth of the interference. The 3/1 guideline applies to mics at similar volumes. So, yes, all you have to do is bring the 'distant' mic up to make the combing audible again.
Part of moving the mics around is to get whatever interference there is to sound complementary.

 

[boingoman]

Part of moving the mics around is to get whatever interference there is to sound complementary.

Right-o. So is it the same kind of thing when deciding whether or nor to invert phase on overheads? See if it sounds better, move things around, etc?

 

[mixsit]

Absolutely.

 

[masteringhouse]

Interesting. So by simply looking these waveforms, you can draw conclusions such as the above. On the other hand, if the cymbals were also being played at the time the samples were taken, wouldn't it naturally appear like this anyway (i.e., overhead signals peaking in the drum waveform troughs)? I don't even use DAW (HD24 + analog desk), so this is all new to me, but this caught my eye.

Keep in mind that we're making certain assumptions, for example all of the wave forms represent the same period of time, are aligned the same, and the scale is the same between all of the graphs.

If this isn't the case, forget what I said ...