Treating Overheads

S

sausy1981

New member
Hi guys,
I'm working on a project but I can seem to get my cymbals to sit nicely in the mix, I'm using addictive drums 2 for my drums. The cymbals sound washy and the highs are piercing. I have tried a few approaches with little success, I've tried volume level, eq, compression, multiband compression and a de-esser, I was just wondering if anyone here can give me some advice on what approach to take when treating overheads that have issues. I do have the overheads routed to a reverb but it's just my room reverb which is quite short, about .6 sec and I have eq'd the send cutting out the lows at 350hz and cutting the highs at 6500Khz so I don't think the reverb is the issue. I'm gonna trawl the net and youtube and read up some of my mixing books on it today but this is always the first port of call for advice.
Thanks guys.
 
sausy1981 said:
Hi guys,
I'm using addictive drums 2 for my drums.
Click to expand...

There's your problem. It seems to me that drum programs always have shitty tin-can-trash-can-lid sounding cymbal samples. I don't know why it is. They can get pretty good drum sounds, but the cymbals are always poo. I have yet to hear a home recording with fake drums that doesn't have cymbals and hi-hats that sound like ass, so you're not alone.
 
sausy1981 said:
Hi guys,
I've tried volume level, eq, compression, multiband compression and a de-esser
I do have the overheads routed to a reverb but it's just my room reverb which is quite short, about .6 sec and I have eq'd the send cutting out the lows at 350hz and cutting the highs at 6500Khz so I don't think the reverb is the issue.
Click to expand...


Try taking all that stuff off.
Almost all of the addictive drum presets are heavily processed. Sure, the recorded samples are raw but the eq/comp/pitch/reverb settings are almost always overkill so turn them off for now.
Watch out for their vertical frequency filters as well. Quite often the cymbals are rolled off very high which doesn't help.

When you click onto a natural sounding kit it usually sounds dull by comparison, so no one picks it.


Start off with a completely dry kit with all addictive drums effects and processes turned off for every drum, OH, room and master.
You might want to pull the room mic fader down too, to start with.
See how you get on with that.


Basically, treat the drums like you recorded them. Start off raw.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Try taking all that stuff off.
Almost all of the addictive drum presets are heavily processed. Sure, the recorded samples are raw but the eq/comp/pitch/reverb settings are almost always overkill so turn them off for now.
Watch out for their vertical frequency filters as well. Quite often the cymbals are rolled off very high which doesn't help.

When you click onto a natural sounding kit it usually sounds dull by comparison, so no one picks it.


Start off with a completely dry kit with all addictive drums effects and processes turned off for every drum, OH, room and master.
You might want to pull the room mic fader down too, to start with.
See how you get on with that.


Basically, treat the drums like you recorded them. Start off raw.
Click to expand...

Thats exactly what I do man, I turn all Addictive drums proccessing off and go ahead as if they were recorded raw, the processing I was talking about is the processing I did on the channel in my DAW. I think Greg is right tho, the cymbals are always a giveaway on fake drums, I think I may be pissing against the wind on this one, it's always be a pain trying to get my overheads and in particular the cymbals sounding right. More experimentation needed I think.
Thanks Guys.
 
The best thing I can do with fake drums is keep the velocities out of the highest range, especially on cymbals. The full 127 velocity on sampled cymbals is always pretty ridiculous sounding to me. So I tend to keep the hits below 100, even down in the 40s or 50s so they don't sound so irritatingly clangy.
 
Tadpui said:
The best thing I can do with fake drums is keep the velocities out of the highest range, especially on cymbals. The full 127 velocity on sampled cymbals is always pretty ridiculous sounding to me. So I tend to keep the hits below 100, even down in the 40s or 50s so they don't sound so irritatingly clangy.
Click to expand...

This is the second time in the couple days I heard about drums velocity. Where can I set it in Addictive Drums?
 
YanKleber said:
This is the second time in the couple days I heard about drums velocity. Where can I set it in Addictive Drums?
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How do you program your drums? Like with a mouse, clicking in the piano roll/cell editor, or with a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI controller?

If I remember correctly, you're using Reaper. Here in a few minutes I'll go downstairs and open it up so I can detail how I edit note velocities. Basically just double-click your MIDI item in the track lane, and it'll open the piano roll/MIDI editor. I think that velocity is one of the default things it shows you in that view.
 
Tadpui said:
How do you program your drums? Like with a mouse, clicking in the piano roll/cell editor, or with a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI controller?

If I remember correctly, you're using Reaper.
Click to expand...

Yah, good memory of you! I used to use AD into FL but now I am moving completely to Reaper and should abandon FL for good very soon.

Yes, I use the piano roll and the mouse. Now I got it. The velocity are that controls that acts as if they were an independent volume for each beat, right? Got it now. I just got a bit confused because you mentioned the velocity of 127 as defaulf for cymbals so I thought that it was some kind of AD default setup.

Anyway, normally I use AD factory pattern presets and tweak them. But to tell you the truth I never have seen a single beat reaching the maximum velocity. Normally in the factory presets they come at most at 80% of the maximum. Also, when I draw my patterns and/or add a custom beat its velocity will depend on the key position that I click in the piano roll. The more at the edge of the key I click the more bigger will be the velocity. But it is always possible to click the velocity speed and drag it up and down to adjust it.

Thanks for clearify the matter!

:)
 
sausy1981 said:
Thats exactly what I do man, I turn all Addictive drums proccessing off and go ahead as if they were recorded raw, the processing I was talking about is the processing I did on the channel in my DAW. I think Greg is right tho, the cymbals are always a giveaway on fake drums, I think I may be pissing against the wind on this one, it's always be a pain trying to get my overheads and in particular the cymbals sounding right. More experimentation needed I think.
Thanks Guys.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that they're recorded in isolation.
There's no doubt that they're using the best quality gear in the best of environments, but cymbals on a recording are never (exceptions noted) recorded without the natural bleed from the rest of the kit.


YanKleber said:
This is the second time in the couple days I heard about drums velocity. Where can I set it in Addictive Drums?
Click to expand...

You don't set it in Addictive Drums. You set it in your notation editor.

Usually you'll have a view option for notes, velocity, volume, etc on the timeline.
 
Treating overheads - About the only thing I do is shelve the lows at about 150hz, this is mainly to kill any mud that may arise from the kick drum shell. If the overheads don't sound good with that setup I move them until they do sound good.

Alan.
 
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