Question about drum mic kits

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rockethead

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I'm interested in setting up a small recording set up in my basement for my drums...

I've been looking at drum mic kits from places like musicians friend and I'm seeing these kits by no name companies like cad and audix for $300 are those mics a waste of my money?

Also I'm not going to have the money to get all the drum tracks separately on my computer so is there a cheap mixer or way someone can suggest for me to mix it down onto one track that will get it onto my computer?

Thanx
 
In general, drum mic kits are a waste of money, imo. There may be a couple of decent mics in the package, but the overheads and kick mics usually suck. You'd be better off getting separate mics for you needs that could also handle other recording tasks. Since you say you don't have a multi-input soundcard, I would recommend a simple mic setup (probably mono). You could do 3 or 4 mics. Your budget will determine a lot, but here's a fairly inexpensive setup:

Snare: Shure SM57 ($80)
Kick: AKG D112; ATM 25 ($150); if you have more $, check the EV Re20
Overheads (get a pair if you can): MXL 603s ($80 each); Studio Projects B1 ($99 each); Behringer ECM8000 ($49 each)

Oh, and for a cheap mixer, look at the Yamaha and Soundcraft boards
 
CAD is hardly a no-name company. They've been around awhile and make some very nice gear. But they have started making more "budget" gear lately, none of which I've ever tried.
 
Thanks for all your help and a quick response. I had one more question. The set up you suggested will sound better than having a mic on each drum considering my budget?

Also if I wanted to lets say get a sound card that supported multiple input tracks at the same time how would I go about doing that? I have a laptop is there any way of doing that through usb?
 
rockethead said:
Thanks for all your help and a quick response. I had one more question. The set up you suggested will sound better than having a mic on each drum considering my budget?

Also if I wanted to lets say get a sound card that supported multiple input tracks at the same time how would I go about doing that? I have a laptop is there any way of doing that through usb?
Click to expand...

In general, the fewer mics you have, the less you will have to deal with issues such as phasing & bleed and the easier it would be to "sub-mix" the drums down to a stereo track on the fly. Many great rock albums were recorded with only 3-4 mics on drums. It will somewhat depend on the style of music, but if you're on a budget, you have to do what you have to do. Having more mics will only complicate things and, since you won't have control over the individual drums once you've recorded them, there will be no way to fix problems anyway. Keep it simple.

To answer your second question, there are a couple of USB soundcards with more than 2 inputs, but, imo, the ability of a USB bus to handle lots of signals is sketchy. Does your laptop have firewire? Firewire interfaces, like the Firepod, are more stable with multiple inputs.
 
Don't buy the CAD mic package. I bought the 7 piece kit (bass, 3 toms, 1 snare, 2 overheads) I record with it all the time. IT SUCKS!!!!! I would of been much better off buying a few better qualitity mics, than a package of really cheap ones......

Opps I meant to say... I have some cad mics I could sell you. :)
 
visa said:
audix, a no-name company?!
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree with visa. Audix has great quality. I use and audix d kick drum in my church and i must admit that it sounds great. they have come a long way.
 
I use the Audix D series for snare & toms on live applications.

Recently, I used them for recording session. I wasn't happey with the tom sound at all... I think I might have even traded out the Audix I used for the snare with a 57.

The BD i used the old D112.

Overheads I use the matched pair Rode NT5. I love them.

I wound up running my toms & kick through a triggering device, used very good sampled Toms & assorted kicks (depending on the song).

I kept my OH's... blended them in with the samples and whoa! Man-o-man...

We were so excited with the outcome that we've decided to go back into the studio and write a bunch more music.

Long-live technology!

C
 
Hey, Audix does make some mics that are considered "high-end". I've neer used them, but I know of some pros that do.

Hey, as for Kick mics, Shure Beta52's aren't bad either. they don't usaually) require as much EQing to get them to sounds good.
 
One word of advice... take it or leave it. Nady makes a drum kit mic set... something like 7 pieces.

It is terrible.

I wouldn't ever use it again. Our then drummer bought it about 2 years ago. It was OK... until I had something of quality to compare it to (Audix).

Just terrible.
 
audix makes some excellent mics
but they also make some cheep mics.

it's that simple.
 
scrubs said:
In general, drum mic kits are a waste of money, imo. There may be a couple of decent mics in the package, but the overheads and kick mics usually suck. You'd be better off getting separate mics for you needs that could also handle other recording tasks. Since you say you don't have a multi-input soundcard, I would recommend a simple mic setup (probably mono). You could do 3 or 4 mics. Your budget will determine a lot, but here's a fairly inexpensive setup:

Snare: Shure SM57 ($80)
Kick: AKG D112; ATM 25 ($150); if you have more $, check the EV Re20
Overheads (get a pair if you can): MXL 603s ($80 each); Studio Projects B1 ($99 each); Behringer ECM8000 ($49 each)

Oh, and for a cheap mixer, look at the Yamaha and Soundcraft boards
Click to expand...

this is the post, only thing i may add is maybe add the audix i5 to the possible snare list. (bout 99$)

and nady has a new mic that is exactly the same thing as the behringer ecm8000, but it's slightly cheaper (if that's possible) and has a tiny tiny bit less self noise.

i can't remember the model, maybe someone can help me here.
 
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