drums and rooms

[2dark]

Hi guys,

I need some help regarding drum recording. Especially regarding
the room for tracking.
What would you suggest to go for:
a dead iso booth or more something like a 'live' room.

Soundwise I want the drums to go into a Mavolent Creation/Vader
direction with a touch of In Flames and Dismember (very precise, I know).

I'm going to choose between 3 studios in my area (all of them have different
rooms for tracking) for my bands next album, and honestly, my knowledge
about drumrecording is not that good when it comes to the choice of the
tracking room.

Thanks for any input on this.

 

[jamesboyd]

personally I would go for a large acoustically treated room if possible.
Set up a least one 'smash' mic as well as a larger stereo pair of room mics 2-6 metres away from the kit, as well as your usual close mics obviously.

that way during mixing you'll have options, and trying to make drums recorded in shit, dead little rooms sound big, punchy, and have depth and space is not as lot of fun in my book.

Have perhaps more than you need for mixing, the more options the better.
and personally I absolutely love room mics, even in less the perfect rooms- it just adds something that I can't get with plugins in pt's.

just my 2 cents

good luck

 

[DIOBOLIC5150]

Hi guys,
Soundwise I want the drums to go into a Mavolent Creation/Vader
direction with a touch of In Flames and Dismember (very precise, I know).

Can the drummer throw down on skins like Dave Culross for Malevolent? Or does he have a bad ass kit like he does? That guy is incredible..actually, next to Hoglan, he is my favorite. Big time Malevolent fan here.

 

[Exsanguis]

OK. . . The sound that it appears that you're looking for is tight and very controlled sound, but with a fair amount of live sounding cymbals and toms. My advice would be to go with the bigger room AS LONG AS IT IS ACOUSTICALLY TREATED! I cannot stress that enough. A big, untreated room sounds sooooo horrible. And by treatment, I don't mean a few little sound absorbers thrown on random places on the walls, but something that appears to have been actually thought out. Always go for the studio with the best treatment, unless the levels of quality of treatment are pretty much the same. In this circumstance, always opt for the larger room. For the sound that you suggested, I wouldn't recommend using room mics as they tend to cover up a lot of the detail and tightness that it appears you're going after. Just rely on well placed and hopefully more than two overhead mics, along with close mics on every drum(try to achieve the best possible isolation of each drum from each other. It makes everything soooo much easier. Good luck recording, and try to post the outcome or at least a description of your whole experience.

 

[2dark]

thanks for the input.

unfortunatly my drummer is not as good as Dave Culross because that sucker doesn't
pratices enough. The potential is there, but that doesn't mean I have to make him
sound bad ;-)
even we don't play
@DIOBOLIC5150: do you know what skins Dave Culross uses?

Well this sorts out at least one studio which wasn't my favorite anyway.
The others have nice large rooms too. The one I know allready has an excelent
room acoustic. But is also highend payment on that.
I'll have a budget discussion with the recordlabel next week. Since we record/mix
at my place we just need the studio for the drum tracking und another one for
mastering, we save a lot of money.

And off course I'll post somestuff here. I would love to get some critics/applause ;-)

 

[Andy Sneap]

check the height of the ceiling also, try and get a fairly high natural sounding room. Clap your hands in there, make sure there's no nasty flutter echo between either the floor and ceiling or walls. Ask the engineer (if youre not doing it) what mics etc they have, how they mic overheads (if he says xy pair behind drummers head this is not the right studio for you).
Skins, I tend to use clear emperors on toms, powerstroke 3 coated on snare and clear Power stroke 3 on kicks, though I'm quite liking Evans Eq3's at the mo.