Recording drums | On a rack or on stands?

[disgruntled-inc]

I have been using a drum rack for as long as I can remember. With a 7-piece kit and 10 cymbals it just makes it quicker and easier for set up and tear down at shows.

Should I be worried about recording with it though? Would the isolation provided by individual cymbal (or even tom) stands make a sonic difference?

We have made recordings in the past with the rack, and they came out alright, but I am really putting the effort in on our next project to remove any huge sonic offenders that I can. If the difference is negligible or non-existent I'll spend my money somewhere else.

I did learn the hard way that you can't mount the mics to the same rack as the drums/cymbals are mounted on. That was an interesting crescendo of death.

Thoughts?

 

[drossfile]

I have been using a drum rack for as long as I can remember. With a 7-piece kit and 10 cymbals it just makes it quicker and easier for set up and tear down at shows.

Should I be worried about recording with it though? Would the isolation provided by individual cymbal (or even tom) stands make a sonic difference?

We have made recordings in the past with the rack, and they came out alright, but I am really putting the effort in on our next project to remove any huge sonic offenders that I can. If the difference is negligible or non-existent I'll spend my money somewhere else.

I did learn the hard way that you can't mount the mics to the same rack as the drums/cymbals are mounted on. That was an interesting crescendo of death.

Thoughts?

yeah, you definitely don't want to mount the mics to the rack or the drums, but my old setup was with stands, and now i'm on a rack (went from a 5-pc to an 8-pc), and i've never noticed anything i'd attribute to either setup. my sound now is way better, but that's because i upgraded the drums, mics, pres, etc, not because i'm on a rack. i think it makes zero difference. i would definitely put the money towards something else.

 

[Farview]

The only problem I run into with racks is that when you hit one drum, the rest will ring.

I have a client that doesn't hit very hard and has 6 toms all mounted to the rack. (including the floor toms) He also liked having 'live' ringy toms, so this turned into a problem because everything would ring all the time.

Some people have this problem and other people dont.