room mic comb filtering

[earthboundrec]

Hey all,

I'm recording drums and am only using one room mic (besides individual mics on each drum) about 6ft off of the kit. Is it advisable to take a measurement from the room mic to say, the kick mic or snare mic and then to adjust the track back x amount of milliseconds to acount for the speed of sound and to possibly tighten up the kick or the snare? Does anyone do this when mixing? I haven't tried it yet, and I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference, but when mixdown time comes I was thinking about giving it a shot.

My guess is that it wouldn't make all that much of a difference at all just b/c a closely placed dynamic mic should drown out a further off room LDC and that the difference in the sound captured would vary greatly enough between the two mics as to not have comb filtering affect the overall sound of the mix. Just wanted some more professional opinions on it though. Thanks!

 

[earthboundrec]

any thoughts or other techniques to share on the subject?

 

[Halion]

That would be my guess aswell; it's probably not needed. Sound like a situation where you need to trust your ears. Slide the room mic track a little bit forward and see if it sounds better. If not, move it back.

 

[mixsit]

My guess is that it wouldn't make all that much of a difference at all just b/c a closely placed dynamic mic should drown out a further off room LDC and that the difference in the sound captured would vary greatly enough between the two mics as to not have comb filtering affect the overall sound of the mix. Just wanted some more professional opinions on it though. Thanks!

If you haven't yet, definitely try moving that track around. Try, kick to snare, to overheads...too.
You have the ability to create sounds the can't happen with mic placement. (I.E. a 'semi-aligned' far mic. These make for some very potent tone variations, particularly on percussion instruments where so much of the volume and tone changes happen in just a few ms window.
Here are a few points that are at play here. Relative volume of the close and delayed source determines the depth of the combing'. If (or as) the far mic is brought up near the volume of the close mics, it becomes more of a factor. The time differences make for your pick of comb-tone changes. One other thing a far mic can have going for it is an 'averaging' of the reflections that can help fill in the combing from the time difference and starts acting more like a reverb instead of hard time shift.

Have fun there in the tool box.
Wayne

 

[earthboundrec]

Hey, great info... I'm going to have to try some techniques out here. Thanks!