Drum Aligning

[sgt.pepper]

Hey!

i now this was already discussed in some previous threads but it seems to me that everyone has his own opinion / work flow with that.

Can someone of the professional engineers here give some clarity or talk about the pros and cons? Are you aligning all your drum tracks to one source or not and why?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Morgan C]

Do you mean shifting the OHs and Room tracks back so that its 'perfectly' aligned in phase, or what?

I can see advantages... but also disadvantages. Unless the tom mics are the same distance from the toms as the snare mic is from the snare and kick mic is from the kick.. you'll never get 'perfect' phase even by doing this.

I havent experimented with it much, and when I did I didn't notice much/any difference.

However, I tried delaying my room track by 10-20ms (and then you can send the room track to the snare reverb too), and that's uber cool.

 

[sgt.pepper]

Thanks for your answer.

I mean to align all the drum tracks individually to the snare track for example!

Let the drummer hit the snare once at the beginning of the session. So you have the snare peak on all your single drum tracks captured by the individual mics. After that its no problem to align every track /Kick, Toms, Overhead, Room etc.) to the snare track! You definitely will hear that the volume will increase but I'm not sure if i really like the result or not!

How are you other guys handling this "problem"?

 

[Erkan]

I usually do that "just because" really.. =) I don't notice much of a difference after aligning them but still, it feels kinda nice to do it. I don't shift any tracks though, I measure the distance from the peak of one track to the same peak on another track (hit the snare, the peak is on all mics, then align all other peaks to the snare peak). When I have measured it, I put a delay effect on all other tracks and delay them negatively to match up with the snare, job done. No need to fuck around with moving a bunch of items back and forth.

 

[colonel kurtz]

aligning your tracks to the snare like that will give you more punch(aka hits are louder) but will take away from the depth of the kit as well

that one's a gametime decision based on the materil, IMO

 

[sgt.pepper]

aligning your tracks to the snare like that will give you more punch(aka hits are louder) but will take away from the depth of the kit as well

Yeah it's definitely a decision between punch and depth. But I'm wondering that myself because all my favorite drum sounds have punch + depth.

 

[colonel kurtz]

maybe line up the close mics and OH's together, and leave the room unaffected?

 

[Lasse Lammert]

I'm never doing that...
would kill all the depth etc, no advantages imo...
I do flip the phase though if it sounds better

 

[colonel kurtz]

I'm never doing that...
would kill all the depth etc, no advantages imo...
I do flip the phase though if it sounds better

yea the way i see it people recorded for DECADES in analog without aligning the waveforms on the tracks - seems totally unnecessary to me to do now

 

[freakkguitarist]

ive done it before...ive also slid room mics "further" from the source (ala albini) to get a exaggerated room sound....

sometimes moving the tracks to be phase alligned i find it to collapese the entire drum image.

 

[Trevoire520]

This is something I do sometimes, doesn't work on every session though. Like Erkan I use a delay plug instead of nudging regions, as it's easier to do and also easier to A/B and see if you like the result.

I feel that it makes the snare sound a little more solid, which makes sense as all the mic's are working together at the same time, instead of there being a small delay between each mic. It's not a night and day difference. But I feel that little things can add up.

I think I'll do a comparison, should only take 10 mins or so if that. I'll post back here in a bit.

 

[jacare]

To me, nothing beats a good mic'ed drum kit. I try to keep everything as natural as possible, even with sample replacing. Shifting the phase only if needed.

 

[Trevoire520]

Well here we go, a wee comparison for you all. Here's the two files, 24 Bit WAV's so watch out if you've got a slow internet connection:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1949675/Drums A.wav

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1949675/Drums B.wav

By no means is this the best kit, room or recording in the world, but it's more than adequate for the purpose of this test.
I've not marked which is which but to be honest I think it's pretty obvious so no doubt you'll all get which is which. Let me make it clear that there is absolutely nothing been changed from one track to another apart from the tim adjuster plug in's.

There's absolutely no processing on these drums, just a trim plugin on the bottom snare mic with the polarity switch on to get it in phase with the other mic's, and getting a rough balance with the faders.

Mic's on the kit are:
Snare Top
Snare Side
Snare Bottom
Overheads (spaced cardioids)
Rack Tom
Floor Tom
Kick (not aligned as you can't actually hear much snare in it at all)
Room (the level of this and the Crash are pretty low)
Crash close mic

To take this all in context though, remember that as you mix the kit, adding compressors, eq's, clipper's, reverbs, parallel compression, group compression, and anything on the master bus the phase relationship between the mic's is going to change again, also with guitars, vocals, bass etc all taking up their own space and masking certain frequencies the end result in a mix might not be as obvious as it is with solo'd drums. But I do feel little things like this can all add up.

As others have said, people have made great sounding drum tracks way before you could do any of this stuff, you certainly wouldn't be able to do this on a tape machine and an analogue desk! It's just another technique that you can choose to use if you so wish. I think it would be a pretty good tool for making really punchy drum samples.

 

[AdamWathan]

Damn that second clip sounds HEAPS better to me...

 

[tarnationsauce2]

B must be the phase aligned. More Punch for sure.
depending on the style of music I like phase aligning and leaving room mics alone.

In this post I also have a comparison of phase aligned drums: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/327023-question-about-article.html

 

[greyskull]

I'm never doing that...
would kill all the depth etc, no advantages imo...
I do flip the phase though if it sounds better

yes indeed fritz; thats what i'd do

 

[Trevoire520]

B must be the phase aligned. More Punch for sure.
depending on the style of music I like phase aligning and leaving room mics alone.

In this post I also have a comparison of phase aligned drums: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/327023-question-about-article.html

Cool comparison man, I'm wondering about trying aligning everything to the overheads now as you done, it would sacrifice snare punch a bit (as mine was done for maximum impact on the snare) but would kinda spread the benefits round the kit a bit more.

As you say it all depends on the style, for some stuff delaying the room mic can be really cool as others have mentioned.