overhead processing

  • Thread starter Thread starter orksnork
  • Start date Start date
O

orksnork

New member
i'd just like to hear how a few different people process their drum overheads....

some people i've talked to leave it relatively untouched....other's gate it off the snare and the compress the living hell out of it...

personally....i rub a little poo on my tracks

you?
 
Pretty much untouched here. I get most of the sound I'm looking for from placement. Maybe a touch of EQ but usually not. The most I do is mess with placement til I get "it" and then a 60 and 65 pan. Sounds pretty good so far...
 
No processing..just mic placement.

I send the O/H's and Room mic to a stereo room verb, EQ the lowend mud out, and mix to taste.

Cheers,

-LIMiT
 
Generally, a little reverb or nothing at all.
 
Compression and reverb. that is how most of the overheads are treated on big drum albums. I agree 1000% though with placement. It makes a big difference, but if you are after that BIG drum sound, it rarely gives you what you want without some EQ, compression, and depending on the roimm, other mics etc..., reverb.
 
Slight reverb and compression, but like everyone else said, it's all in the placement. Oh, and the tuning of the drums and how well the cymbals are matched, of course.
 
Usually just a touch of eq but lately I've been experimenting with compression. I never did like using reverb on cymbals, though.
 
maybe a touch of air at 11K Hz

roll off below 500Hz

that's about it...
 
I actually love using my reverb on the overheads. I find it to be a little more natural sounding than on the snare say. Then again, I also like a little verb on the kick to help make the kit really sound like one instrument in one room. I also think a lot of people might be surprised how many rock albums have been donewith quite a bit more compression on the cymbals than they realize. I am not talking about "nuking" them or an 1176 all on type compression, but a good 9 to 18 db of gain reduction with a fairly fast attack and medium release type compression. This is where I love my DBX 165a's. Also, I rarely roll the lows off of my overheads. In fact, if anything i usually attenuate the highs with a shelving EQ in order to turn them up in the mix a little without being harsh.
 
This is just my personal experience, but ...

Too much compression on the overheads, again in my experience, usually only serves to make the cymbals sound really splashy and pumpy. Best place to compress heavily is with the room mics. Granted you'll still get the pumpby cymbal thing, but at least you'll have a relatively untouched overhead track to help balance that out if necessary.

Peak limiting, on the other hand, can be a very good and useful thing for the overhead tracks. You can usually get a lot more carried away with the peak limiting without running in to as much danger of the cymbal pumpage ... especially if you use something of the more transparent variety, like an L1 or L2 type plugin. If I absolutely feel the need to compress the overheads, I generally prefer something of the more tranparent variety like an RNC in Supernice.

If cymbals are really harsh-sounding, then multiband compression or de-essing can help out quite a bit there. If the snare sounds a little too midrangy / thonky, then sometimes multiband compression in the 500-600 hz (with very fast attack time) can work better than EQ ... sometimes EQ'ing out that region can make the cymbals sound thin / harsh.

.
 
High pass at around 150hz

cut some low mids around 300.

cut some harshness around 2-4khz.

add a lil attack around 5 and 10k.

10khz is sharp 12khz is a little sweeter.

no compression, maybe running through one for expansion though or a gain boost. to me compression kills the dyno's of it. you will inevitably have to ride them at some point, too.
 
I compress the OH's as needed, usually just a bit off the top and then compress the entire drum mix on a buss. I like the HH and ride to wrap around the entire sound like a warm blanket. I don't really like that distant cymbal sound.

But like Chess says I usually compress the hell out of the room mic as opposed to the OH's if I have that option.
 
A lot of the "compression" thing to me depends on what comps you are using and how you have them set. With my DBX's I do not worry about hitting them with a little more gain reduction... With and Alesis 3630 though the first thing I would do is push my insert button on the console to bypass the insert:D
 
I don't really consider reverb to be "processing".

I don't usually need to do anything that special to the overheads, unless there was a problem I didn't catch while tracking. However, I do buss all the drums to a stereo submix, and usually use some Sony Oxford Dynamics plug-in on that stereo channel to glue the kit together and add a little punch.
 
i've been boosting at 20K wide bell and cutting some crap outta the middle depending on the room.

it usually sounds horrible anyway. :eek:

Mike
 
I usually do some light limiting then applying some eq to bring out the toms along with the cymbals. Depending on the song, I may use reverb.
 
I've been futzing with this for a few days now. I finally read up on the "compress the crap out of an OH submix to bring out the toms" trick, and tried it myself. It worked perfectly for the sound I was looking for. I EQ'd out the high end and that way I could compress the heck out of the toms and add some reverb, while keeping the original OH tracks clean so the cymbals didn't get all messed up. I just slowly brought up the compressed track until I could hear a bit of a difference. Worked like a charm.
 
when i do compress an overhead it's usually when people are going for a funkier type of sound - but thinking about it- i've done it quite a bit in the past year ...a medium arrack waaaaaaaaaay fast release on an 1176 type thing can RULE. :eek:

MIke
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top