Hi Skyline -
Sorry you're having such drum trouble. It sounds like one major problem you may be having is phase cancellation, which is very common when you have multiple mics on the drums. That could well account for the "distant" sound you're experiencing.
To find out if this is the problem, start with just ONE mic (preferably one of the 2 condensers). Have the drummer play while you walk around and determine where the kit sounds best. Stick the mic there - right about level with your ear or a little above. Often times the best placement will be several feet away from the kit, even behind it, near where the drummer sits. Depending on the room, you might be surprised at where the "sweetest" spot is. But, find it, put the mic there, record a few bars and see how it sounds (do not use any reverb or other effects during this experiment). If the level is dramatically better and the "distant" sound goes away, you've got a phasing problem. Try adding more mics one at a time and figure out which one is causing the problem. In any case, you've done yourself a favor to find the sweetest spot in the room.
Also, compression will help a lot in raising the level of your recording, especially with ADAT's or any digital recording. Analog can smooth over transients, but digital just sucks if you record something too hot - and drums are usually recorded too hot, because by the time a meter can register a percussive attack, it's already gone. Compression will smooth out and lengthen the attack, which will allow you to record drums overall at a hotter level.
But then you have to make the choice of applying compression to the overall drum mix or doing it on individual tracks. Ideally, you want to compress the individual tracks, but this would mean buying as many compressors as you have mics. That gets expensive.
Sooo... what I have found (as a solution to both the phasing problem and the budget problem) is that for home recordings, and even for lots of big-studio sessions, it is best to think "less is better" in terms of drum mics. I rarely use more than 3 mics on the drums, 4 at the very most. And keep in mind I'm a drum *fanatic* - I like the biggest, most in-your-face drum sound I can get. The closest I have come to achieving that has NOT been by miking every drum but by starting with a great sounding kit, placing a couple of mics in the best sounding spots in the room, and have at it.
The typical 3-mic setup I generally use is: one in the kick drum (if it has a front head, put the mic INSIDE the hole but not right up against the beater - point it a bit toward the side of the shell so you capture the resonance of the drum), one at about the drummer's chest, pointed toward the snare drum but also picking up a little of the hi-hat (use a boom stand so the drummer doesn't hit the mic), and one room mic at the aforementioned sweetest spot in the room, preferably in a place where the toms really can be heard well. Most of the Beatles' recordings were done with this placement, Led Zeppelin even eliminated the snare mic entirely. If you can rent a compressor for each mic so much the better, but a stereo compressor (or two mono's) for the group will do fine for this setup. I usually pan the snare and room mics SOFT left and right, and the kick in the middle.
But if you can't get the room mic(s) to sound good by itself, the rest of the mics are only likely to make it suck more. Get a good sound from a single mic and then add just enough of the kick and snare mics to bring out a little more of the attack. If you want, add another room mic in a different spot - perhaps one in front of the drummer near the toms, and one behind - but make sure it doesn't introduce any phase problems as you go. If it does, reversing the phase on the offending mic will usually solve the problem.
It should go without saying, then, that the most important part of getting a good drum sound is making sure the kit sounds good and the room sounds good in the first place. Drums should be tuned well, and have new heads or heads in very good shape. DON'T put duct tape on them. If your snare rings, use a studio ring or put one of the new vented heads on it. Do put a pillow or blanket inside the kick drum. If the room is very dead, so dead that the high end sucks, try moving some furniture out of the way or experimenting with positioning sheets of plywood in different places to get a bit of natural reverberation. I can almost guarantee that you can get the drums to sound better by these natural methods than by adding cheesy reverb. If you MUST use any reverb (which I try not to while recording), just a tiny bit on the snare should be all you use. Reverb sounds disastrous on a kick drum and often on overheads and toms as well.
As far as EQ, I try not to use any while recording, but since you are mixing all the drums down to 2 tracks, you may want to use just a bit. If you have an EQ with a sweepable mid, the best thing you can do is to crank it up while the drummer is playing and locate the "boxy" frequency in the snare drum - that is, the one that sounds really crappy - and then cut that frequency. The kick drum likewise may have a particularly yucky sounding frequency where the head may "flub" or the beater creaks. If you can eliminate that during recording, so much the better. It's also good to use a hi-pass filter on the snare mic and/or EQ out anything below 100-150hZ. This prevents the kick from bleeding in too much or causing phase problems with the snare mic. That will also get rid of a lot of muddiness.
Again, these crappy sounding frequencies are generally only amplified because the drums have been close-miked. If you go for a good overall drum sound and there is nothing offensive when you listen to it in the room, and you use mostly the room mics in your mix, you will be less likely to have any nasty sounds in the final product. Once you start putting separate mics on all the toms, the hi-hat, etc, plus putting your overheads very close to the drums, you increase the likelihood of phase problems and mud (since you are combining all those signals), and it takes a lot of expensive equipment to eliminate these problems - often to no really good end. If the drums sound good as a mix to begin with, why go to all the trouble to artificially separate them and then artificially mix them back together? And, if they don't sound good to begin with, isn't it well worth all of your time to MAKE them sound good? A new set of heads - or even some new drums - will be less expensive and a better investment overall than buying 8 more expensive microphones and 8 killer mic pre's, compressors and gates (not to mention an expensive reverb unit), just to record a crappy sounding set of drums and artificially try to make them sound better than they really do.
Well I'll get off my soapbox now - but I hope you do try some of these techniques and don't be afraid to experiment! Good luck!
--Lee
[This message has been edited by flier (edited 02-29-2000).]
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