mixing tip: snare sound and room mics

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mindsound

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Hi folks,

Here is a mixing trick I like to use for a better snare sound and that I share with some of you that may not know it.

When I have a room mic for the drum (added to the other kit'mics), most of the time, as you bring the room fader, there is always a sublte comb filtering effect. We think at first that it's the room sound blending with the direct sound. But it have lot to do with the phase coherence. Even if your room mic "seems" in phase with the snare and overhead mics. What I noticed, most of the time is that as you pushed the room fader, something happen to the mids (and even low-mids). The mids doesn't sound as tick as when the room mic is not present.

Remedy: phase alignement plugin. With this plug you can delay by few ms the signal and more, you can rotate the phase (360 degree if you want). Juggling with these 2 controls at the same time, you will hear your snare sound changing dramatically....to the point that you can get back your low-mids and mids of the snare into the mix. It's as if you were tweaking the room sound. So, you end up with a snare that have more dimensions (thanks to the room mic) but improving at the same time his tone. If not improving, it could be also for finding a new tone that suits better the mix. For sure, it's a micing issue as well, but even when you're 100% happy of your drum micing, there is always more you can get in the phase domain.

You can even transfer that concept to reverb channels. Sometimes, placing a phase alignement plugins after a verb plug, may improve the 3d of the verb and his tone as well. It can even makes the dry and wet sound merging better. It is subtle....but as you know it, a mix is made of a lot of subtle elements brought together.
 
i dig. is there a specific plug in you use? or can i just use a standard sample delay?

also check out the john glyns method of drum mic'ing for your overheads. its great.
 
Yeah the Glyn john method is very cool!

As for the plug I use, it's the Voxengo....cheap and do the job very well.
he delay track your talking is just a part of the solution. The tone tweaking I'm talking about is achieve more with the phase rotation control on the plugins, even if I may use the delay track as well. Think of the delay as coarse and the rotation as fine tune. So the subtle changes are found with phase rotation.

Finally, the idea is certainly not to align all mics (all transients). In some way the subtle (and it have to stay subtle!) phasing between drum mics contribute a lot to the overall sound. Aligning all transients makes just things souding flat and less textured....unless your mixing 60 tracks power metal song where you obviously dont' want that textures.
But for the room mics, tweaking the phase (delay and rotation) instead of simply flipping it, do a better job at "linking" it with the direct sound, making your snare sounding more cohesive.
I have to say that I'm using this tool also for bass drum when I have more than one mic. Again, it's as if you were almost changing your kick sound....going to the more soft and deep to the more punchy one.

Glad you dig it.
 
Have you tried simply flipping the polarity on the room track?

Also, how far is the room mike from the snare? My question is, didn't you hear the comb-filtering when you were tracking? Why not make the adjustments to the room mike then?

I'm not too fond of phase plugin trickery and would way rather remedy the situation at the onset.

But that's just me.

Cheers :)
 
Why would you align a room mic anyway? Isn't the whole point of the room mic to capture the room? A big part of the captured "room sound" and how it fits in is the difference in time that it takes the sound to get to that room mic as opposed to a close mic an inch or so away from the source.
 
Greg_L said:
Why would you align a room mic anyway? Isn't the whole point of the room mic to capture the room? A big part of the captured "room sound" and how it fits in is the difference in time that it takes the sound to get to that room mic as opposed to a close mic an inch or so away from the source.
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You're probably right. I've never used a room mic, so I have no idea how it should really sound.

But the plug-in that took 4 paragraphs to describe above seems to accomplish pretty much the same thing as flipping polarity and/or lining up the tracks.
 
RAMI said:
You're probably right. I've never used a room mic, so I have no idea how it should really sound.

But the plug-in that took 4 paragraphs to describe above seems to accomplish pretty much the same thing as flipping polarity and/or lining up the tracks.
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Yup. It's funny cuz I was just looking at these types of plugs a few days ago. Mainly for multiple miking a guitar cab. I didn't see any that were worth the trouble.

As for room mics, I think they can be cool.....if you're in a badass room or space. Sticking up a room mic in your mom's untreated basement because that's what you think you're supposed to do is not a good use of a room mic. And then if you're having to use plug-ins and time shifting to make it all sound decent, you're doing something wrong.
 
Greg_L said:
As for room mics, I think they can be cool.....if you're in a badass room or space..
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You know, I never considered using a room mic because I always knew I was in ok rooms, but not great rooms. Now that I have this space treated and sounding good, I might try it. Don't really have a good room mic, though. My only condensors are the 2 AKG C-1000's for overheads and the C-3000b which wouldn't sound good as a room mic. Might fuck around with it anyway.
 
RAMI said:
You know, I never considered using a room mic because I always knew I was in ok rooms, but not great rooms. Now that I have this space treated and sounding good, I might try it. Don't really have a good room mic, though. My only condensors are the 2 AKG C-1000's for overheads and the C-3000b which wouldn't sound good as a room mic. Might fuck around with it anyway.
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I think it depends on how the room is "great". Is it a great tracking environment for clean sounds and minimal wongo reflections? Or is it great in the sense that it's big and open with a lively sound? The latter to me is a good candidate for a room mic.
 
Ok guys,

The point is not to align the room mic at all! bland and flat result for sure.
Secondly, if you have a subtle (and I mean subtle!) comb filtering effect (and it can happen even if you've respcted the rule of 3-1 micing distances), flipping the phase is doing nothing but reversing the problem (except if it's really out of phase).
Third, by delaying tracks, you don't get all the incremental adjustments that phase rotation give you. Completely not.
fourth: For sure, phase it's an issue that should always addressed at the micing stage....no doubt about that!

But even when it was all good in the recording, there is most of the time some little improvments that we can gain with such a tool.
And if it's all perfect, there is further tonal shaping that can be done with phase rotation, but that can't be done with either aligning the tracks or worse, eq'ing.
And don't forget, that the process I'm speaking about may take 2-5 minutes....and that sometimes may save you 10 minutes eq'ing your tracks to finally get the tone you really want.

For those who doubt, get a demo of this plugin (whatever the company) and try it, you'll see that there is a whole world of possibilities out of the traditional things that we were used to do.
 
I tried the Voxengo version. Meh. I wasn't too impressed. For me, I don't want to "shape" any tones. I want it to sound like it's supposed to sound. That's just me. Some people enjoy the flexibility and options of signal processing. They might like fiddling with something like this.

I try to keep things simple.
 
it have lot to do with the phase coherence. Even if your room mic "seems" in phase with the snare and overhead mics
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To toss in a few more thoughts here.

It'd probably be good in these kind of micing refrences not to use therms like phase alignment' or 'coherence as if that's what's at work here. Phase alignemt, rotation, is for one pitch (or a few select pitches) at a time, or maybe to some extent if it were only the direct path only (no reflections) -pure time alignment.
We have a sound source here that has depth, some parts of it's sound from slightly different times, plus all the room bounce- No way are you aligning much of anything. We'd be simply picking diferent effects out of the phase mosh, different in and out of phase tones.

Or is it great in the sense that it's big and open with a lively sound? The latter to me is a good candidate for a room mic. ...
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Yep. Part of the story is for the direct line of sight comb filtering to swamped by enough random/diffuse and perhaps time-detached signal from the distant mic.
Not sure that's effective in fairly small rooms. Maybe go the other way as an option and delay the room mic at least could get you out of the Hass < 15ms zone.
 
mindsound said:
For those who doubt, get a demo of this plugin (whatever the company) and try it, you'll see that there is a whole world of possibilities out of the traditional things that we were used to do.
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Not doubting. What you're talking about is clearer in the last post. I originally thought you were simply talking about getting the same results you would get from aligning.
 
Greg_L said:
Why would you align a room mic anyway? Isn't the whole point of the room mic to capture the room? A big part of the captured "room sound" and how it fits in is the difference in time that it takes the sound to get to that room mic as opposed to a close mic an inch or so away from the source.
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Exactly!

Cheers :)
 
mindsound said:
Ok guys,

The point is not to align the room mic at all! bland and flat result for sure.
Secondly, if you have a subtle (and I mean subtle!) comb filtering effect (and it can happen even if you've respcted the rule of 3-1 micing distances), flipping the phase is doing nothing but reversing the problem (except if it's really out of phase).
Click to expand...

Firstly, the correct term is flipping polarity. By nature a room mike (depending on the distance) will be vastly out of phase with the close mikes and, as Greg_L pointed out, this is part and parcel of how we achieve the sound. The delay is crucial to this. I'm pretty sure you're confusing ideas here since comb-filtering is most obvious when two mics are in close proximity. We're dealing with milliseconds, sometimes 10000ths of a second here. Remember a 100hz wave is 11 feet long so anything beyond a few feet (depending on the distance of the close mike) is almost always negligible.

I suspect what you call "comb filtering" might just be a the tonal change you're hearing when you combine the room and the close mikes.

mindsound said:
Third, by delaying tracks, you don't get all the incremental adjustments that phase rotation give you. Completely not.
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Still sounds like clownfuckery to me.

mindsound said:
fourth: For sure, phase it's an issue that should always addressed at the micing stage....no doubt about that!
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Glad we can agree!

mindsound said:
But even when it was all good in the recording, there is most of the time some little improvments that we can gain with such a tool.
And if it's all perfect, there is further tonal shaping that can be done with phase rotation, but that can't be done with either aligning the tracks or worse, eq'ing.
And don't forget, that the process I'm speaking about may take 2-5 minutes....and that sometimes may save you 10 minutes eq'ing your tracks to finally get the tone you really want.
Click to expand...

Sure, a phase tool will give you tonal variation but I doubt that is the reason it was invented, which is obviously to fix phase problems, not to enhance an already good recording. It's a patch processor. I'm just of the opinion that many a great album has been made WITHOUT a phase tool and the best recordings are simple. That's just me, though.

mindsound said:
For those who doubt, get a demo of this plugin (whatever the company) and try it, you'll see that there is a whole world of possibilities out of the traditional things that we were used to do.
Click to expand...

I have many phase tool plugins. And I see your point. But after making records for thirteen years, it just still seems like clownfuckery to me.

Sorry.

Cheers :)
 
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I don't know who this mo facta guy is, but I like the cut of his jib in this thread.
 
"Clownfuckery"....oh, how I'm impressed! Mofacta
C'mon, we are talking about a something like 2 minutes process that can allow you to go further on the tonal side of a track and/or even help fixing a problem coming from the recording session (even, if it's especially the role of a room mics to bring differences in timing and coloration coming from room reflections) and surely makes you use less eq, so...less time probably, in the end. That's what you described "clownfuckery"?

I imagine you in a studio, with Radiohead or someone like Sufjan Stevens, telling them that they are doing too much "clownfuckery". Oh, It's true....thay are probanly wrongs.

I think that with technology, you can have a narrow vision, always looking to the good ol' past or keep it wide, having a foot in the past and the other one in the present (to not say the future). I'm from the latter. And my contribution here, is not to negate the tried and true techniques (proper micing techniques i.e) we all rely on, but to suggest other ideas to the ones who has screw his room mic or his overhead micing, or to the ones who want to achieve a different tone with his recording.
and don't forget, that it's more rare,now, that an engineer will have an assistant moving and turning a room mics for minutes, letting him hear all the subtles changes in the placement variations.
 
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