Has anyone tried this? PA in drum room

[Seth Munson]

First off sorry if this has been posted but searching on my phone is a huge pita.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=MggVOkabIwE

This seems really interesting and if this works as well as this guy makes it out to be, it makes me think about playing with the sounds coming through the PA like smashing it with a comp or even adding some verbs and other production elements to make it seem "that much bigger". I think my only concern with adding things to the playback signal is latency but I guess that would go with trial and error and what sounds good.

Discuss?

 

[006]

Sounds like a neat idea, would like to see a video or something actually showing them doing it though.

 

[Seth Munson]

The more I think about it, it's not a bad idea to have a PA or extra monitors in your live room even if it's not for drums.

Having these would be a huge plus for gang vocals and you can even pull off the "vocalist in control room" thing if he needs to feel the music or whatever and not have to rape your ears doing so

 

[bryan_kilco]

I think one might benefit more if they used a room mic and recorded the playback from the speakers rather than tracking with the audio coming thru the speakers?

Any time I try tracking vocals in the "control room", there's always a lot of bleed...which most of it can be edited out, but still.....when he screams I still hear the background music since everything is so compressed. Maybe it's time for me to drop some dough on an SM7B.

 

[if6was9]

The more I think about it, it's not a bad idea to have a PA or extra monitors in your live room even if it's not for drums.

Having these would be a huge plus for gang vocals and you can even pull off the "vocalist in control room" thing if he needs to feel the music or whatever and not have to rape your ears doing so

Also means the person tracking can have a listen back throuh these with the phones off to give them a break. Especially with drums where the phones are often at an insanely high level for tracking.

 

[drtizzle]

This seems to be similar to the "wall of sound" technique, but applied while tracking. It would be cool to hear a drumtrack where they slowly add more kick and snare to the PA so you can hear the fatness build up.

 

[egan.]

I've heard of it but not tried it. If you've heard a drumkit through a big PA you can understand the advantage. "Reamping" them would be cool too though and would pose fewer issue with your phase, bleed, etc.

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

I've done this the last 2 productions I did and really liked it. It's a good way to get more drums (and not cymbals) in the room mics and it's also a great way to get the drummer pumped to give a great performance. Everybody can imagine it's more fun to kick or to beat a drum if you hear and feal it responding directly in the room.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Mixerman book

 

[ahjteam]

I have once helped in the set up of a drum tracking that took place in a 600 seat arena with 12kW PA. Sounded cool by itself, but I understood that the room tracks were ditched from final mix. Don't remember the artists tho, I was one of the house engineers of the venue.

 

[Seth Munson]

But a place that big I can understand why.
Too much room/space/area isnt that great either.

I think with the right room and PA/Monitors it could be a cool experiment and may result in an awesome product.

At the same time, I kinda want to trust the guy, He has engineered and mixed some big names and I dont think he would be talking out of his ass about this stuff. haha

 

[Sloan]

I have always heard of running the drums back through a mic'd speaker(s) and setting up some room mics, but i have never bothered with it.

Also, running drums through guitar pedals etc can yield cool effects, i know we add saturation via plugins alot, but try running the snare through a 5150 and see what happens?

 

[JeffTD]

"Reamping" them would be cool too though and would pose fewer issue with your phase, bleed, etc.

This was my first impression - I know Slate recorded some of his room sounds this way, and I can't see any downside to 'reamping' the drums through the room after the fact, especially after all the editing was done.

 

[greyskull]

tried it...
sucked for me... but then again, it wasn't the greatest room.

 

[jastan]

It's a very common technique that engineers have been using for decades. Success depends on several factors...the room, mic selection, and speakers/amps being the most obvious. The most important though is your source audio. Poorly recorded drums are still going to sound like poorly recorded drums. If your mixing at a studio with a good live room and your starting out with good drum sounds give it try. I've used the technique on several rock mixes and always had great results, but I've also had the luxury of working in great studios. Also of note is a similar technique we used back in the day, you younger guys might get a kick out of this. It involves feeding your snare track to a speaker in the live room. The speaker is placed on a snare drum(speaker side down) which is mic'ed and blended in with the original. Works great if you want to add more snare to the sound of your recorded snare drum.