Recording drums with 2 mics

Phase issues with the kick?

m.g. eddie said:
When you use the recorder man method, do the mic's have to be equal distance from both the snare and kick?.
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Ideally, sure. But I don't know if a lot of people do that. I sure don't, equidistant from the snare is fine.
 
eddie,

Slight movements of the mics make a huge difference. Snare and Kick should be equal distance to the mics.

1. Place the "Left" overhead mic directly over the center of the snare at the hieght of two drum sticks-held end-to-end(from the center of the snare, straight up, to the capsule of the mic).
2. Next; take the drum sticks (still held end-to-end) from the center of the snare over to above your ( i.e." the drummers") right shoulder and place your "right" overhead mic here.
3. Fine tune the placement by using a mic cable or string and measuring the distance from the center of the Kick to each of these mics is also equidistant from the kick and snare.
4. listen with headphones and have the drummer lightly hit his kick drum, and adjust the "right" mics angle until the kick is in the middle of your "image".
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Hope this helps.
 
It was weird because when we first started out we would record the drums and it sounded fine, It wasn't until later in the evening that during playback there appeared to be phasing issues. I thought that with phasing issues that you'd hear it during the sound check as well but we only heard it during playback. Also note that halfway through the song(last half) the drums came together perfectly and the drummer was hearing any of this phasing issue while he was playing.
 
m.g. eddie said:
It was weird because when we first started out we would record the drums and it sounded fine, It wasn't until later in the evening that during playback there appeared to be phasing issues. I thought that with phasing issues that you'd hear it during the sound check as well but we only heard it during playback. Also note that halfway through the song(last half) the drums came together perfectly and the drummer was hearing any of this phasing issue while he was playing.
Click to expand...

Yes, if you have phase issues you'll hear them durring your set up/sound testing. If you recorded them to two seperate mono tracks (as opposed to a stereo track) it is possible that you accidentilly nudged one of the tracks out of line. This would (possibly) give you phase issues.

This video goes over a few really good drum micing techniques. I think he explains everything really well.

You might also try an M/S recording. I've heard some really nice recordings of drums done this way. Just a though.
 
It now appears that its not anything with our playing but with latency. We are using reaper plugged into a fast track pro, with dell c700 presario laptop. Does any know how to adjust the latency or have any other ideas?

When we record we start off with a guitar and voice scratch track to a click track and at the start of that the singer yells 1 2 3 4, just to keep everyone in time. Then we mute the click track and the drummer plays along to the scratch track. Once the drums are finished I redo the guitar and voice. The issue is that the count off is no longer accurate and is behind by a half step.
 
Latency is common with any digital recording set up. Most interfaces have a 0-latency hardware direct monitoring capability. Since I don't use computers much I can't give you too much info on minimizing latency, but yes it's common. You should be able to get it down to about 8-10 ms which would be almost un-noticeable. But it takes some studying/work to get it done. Sorry I don't have more info.
 
When tracking, I notice any latency more than 6-8 ms. I usually set my Firepod to 6. For mixing though, I put to the max to save computer power. I've never messed with Reaper latency, if there even is any. I think it's a hardware thing. Every interface I've ever used had adjustable latency settings. Go to the settings of your interface and see what you can find.
 
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