advice on this drum sound?

[bryan_kilco]

Hey all. Getting ready to begin recording my band soon and I've been just tinkering with a rough bullshit drum track and trying to just get it to sound as big and clean as possible. Take a listen and any suggestions would be awesome.

Everything is real drums except 2 samples. Kit is a Pearl Export.

Anything I can EQ differently or compress differently? I'm not working with any crazy gear, just a ProFire 2626 and decent mics into Reaper.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443251/Drum Mix Test.wav

A bit of info on my mixer:

Kick is blended with a sample.
Top snare is blended with a sample, bottom snare just EQ'd.
Both snares sent to Snare Bus with a bit of comp, reverb, etc.
3 Toms, all sent to a bus with EQ, comp, reverb, etc.
and each Tom track has some slight eq I think as well.
OH's are panned I think 60% or so L/R. Sliiiiight comp on them and I EQ'd most of the low-end bleed from them and boosted some higher "air".
All drums sent to a Parallel Comp bus.

Am I doing something wrong? Obviously I feel the source sounds could be a bit better, but we did spend a fair amount of time tweaking and tuning toms.

Any advice would be totally awesome!

 

[Customisbetter]

That is a sexy snare sound.

 

[bryan_kilco]

That is a sexy snare sound.

Thanks! I didnt like it at first. Top mic was catching too much of the over ring/ PIIIING sound. So......I replaced it. I just want to hear some opinions on this from some of the "bigger" or better guys and see if I'm heading in somewhat the right direction. I seem to still have issues getting a full mix to sit together and "glue". I just can not get everything to sound right up front and in your face, huge fat guitars and thick drums....everything seems spacey and kinda jumbled. Mind you, this is just a bullshit drum track and will never see our demo, but I just like to practice with what I'll be dealing with a bunch beforehand to know how to go about mixing it when its time for the real deal.

 

[Sam Bottner]

Not into the kick personally and the snare sounds like you're hitting it twice most of the time.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Not into the kick personally and the snare sounds like you're hitting it twice most of the time.

Might be because the kick and snare are hitting at the same time or should I say...slightly off time, causing it to sound doubled? Or maybe because the sampled snare's wave is hitting the mic before the real one? If you heard my raw kick....ugh....this is a huge improvement. I just can NOT seem to get a good kick sound without pumping TONS of high end into it to cut.

Edit: yep, went into the session and soloed the snares....sound fine there. must be the "illusion" of kick/snare hitting at roughly the same time.

 

[Sam Bottner]

Yeah kick is easily the hardest thing to record, but just replace it with a different sample.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah kick is easily the hardest thing to record, but just replace it with a different sample.

Just realized that my snare trigger/sample attack and release was all screwed up. I think I may have fixed it. Had some embarrassingly strange shit happening in there that I couldnt really hear in the mix.