delaying room mics

[Machinated]

read about this quite a few times but never actually did it.

try delaying them anywhere between 10ms-30ms. stops them fighting the close sound and you still benefit from the nice roomy tails. simple and works great.

 

[waav studios]

where are you putting your room mics? i always find that room mics do that naturally anyway.

 

[Machinated]

they're usually 15-20 feet away. 30ms starts getting a bit effecty but its a cool trick.

 

[waav studios]

its not a "terrible" idea. i've never tried it but if you aren't getting the tail that you want i dont see why not. the room mics are definitely getting the sound later than the close mics or overheads so its always kinda happened naturally for me, or at least i try to make sure it does going into the box, but doing it digitally is just as viable an option.

 

[Machinated]

its not a "terrible" idea. i've never tried it but if you aren't getting the tail that you want i dont see why not. the room mics are definitely getting the sound later than the close mics or overheads so its always kinda happened naturally for me, or at least i try to make sure it does going into the box, but doing it digitally is just as viable an option.

of course the drums will reach the room mics several ms later than the close mics, thats physics - the trick is pushing them further behind what has been recorded. it shouldn't be confused with micing closer/further away, its a different effect to what that would do. you couldn't make room mics that are (example) 5m away sound like ones 50m away just by delaying them. but delaying ones that are 5m a little bit might give a cool sound.

as with anything it shouldn't be a default reaction to mixing room mics but something different to try to achieve a different sound.

adding a few ms delay is a very common technique that has been used by tons of big names in studios for decades for room mics, reverbs, delays etc

theres also a trick which tchad blake does which is to distort something into oblivion, flip the phase and then nudge a few ms and you get a cool sub octave thing happening.

 

[ze kink]

I've read Albini does this, and honestly his drum sounds do sound like it too. I think I'm going to try it on this one project I'm mixing, as the drums were recorded in a small and quite dead space. As it is, the room mic sounds so boring that I haven't really used it in the raw mixes.

 

[DavePiatek]

Usually you want to keep your room mics within 40 ms of the initial transient. up to about 40 ms, the brain will perceive the sound as one hit, rather than a distinct echo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedence_effect

 

[~BURNY~]

Usually you want to keep your room mics within 40 ms of the initial transient. up to about 40 ms, the brain will perceive the sound as one hit, rather than a distinct echo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedence_effect

You can away with it with a transient designer type of fx removing most of the attack. I've done it on occasions. Makes the room tracks more "verby".

 

[B36arin]

I have been throwing IR reverbs on room mics lately to create room ambience. If you get a cool, full and balanced representation of the kit in the room mics(or something that just sounds cool) you can throw on an IR of a bigger room and blend that in with the dry sound and the rest of the kit sound. You can then compress it to pull out the sustain of the hits and make it pump nicely with the music. It's awesome, especially if your room is too small/dry to get a long enough tail for the room mics to really be fun to work with. You get ambience and glue for the entire kit.

If you're a bit of a geek you can even take your laptop, a small interface and a pair of mics and go ambience hunting. Check out old warehouses, silos etc... You can find awesome and unique sounds that way and it's a lot more fulfilling than just throwing on a DSP verb, at least for me.