How do you use "room" tracks?

[AndrewB]

Usually I'll just compress them a lot, and boost the bass and the treble. Volume wise it depends on the song, and the sound of the rest of the kit. Sometime I won't use it at all.

A cool trick that I learned was if you need a fatter snare sound (or it could probably work on toms, too) is putting a gate on the room mic, and sidechaining the snare mic in, so that the room mic only plays the snare sound.

Any other cool tricks you guys have come up with?
Oh, and how do you EQ your room track(s)? I've seen people EQ it many different ways.

 

[chrisjmp]

Eq wise I usually do the opposite for rooms mics on real drums, clean up the low end a bit to keep the kit sounding tight and pull out some of the highs to minimize the cymbals, depending on mic placement. For sampled rooms, I audition ones to sit in the mix properly, so usually very little eq is needed. If there is a little too much low end "bloom" I might pull that out a bit. Saturation can be really cool on rooms, but it's easy to make the cymbals sound pretty nasty if you go overboard.

 

[guitarguru777]

I compress the shit out of em, clean up the Mud with EQ and just add it to give the kit some space.

 

[if6was9]

I usually compress enough to get a nice thick snare and a good bit of pumping and blend it in. Sometimes I add some distortion/saturation but not always.
Sometimes I need an EQ to tame the cymbals and cut some mud so I can get a bit more room into the mix. That idea for sidechaining it is cool, must give that a go as it would solve the cymbals problem some more.
I've found myself using more and more room mic in my mixes, really adds a depth to the kit that can't be gotten any other way like with reverb.

How are you guys adding samples of room sounds? Using a snare hit from a room mic along with your samples when triggering?

 

[Trevoire520]

I find rooms to be a pain sometimes personally. If you've edited the kick seperate to the rest of the kit on faster stuff then you'll need to cut the lows from the room to stop it becoming a big blur. Cymbal spill is often a big problem aswell so the highs tend to get cut out aswell. Smash it with a compressor and put it in under the rest of the kit. If it sounds cool then keep it, if not then I ditch it.

 

[AndrewB]

Yeah, sometimes I find the mids to be a problem, especially on the kick. I usually end up doing a wide Q cut on the mids to get rid of some of the "flatness".

 

[tempe]

I belt the living crap out of them, usually with some sort of 1176 emulation, then just scoop out the boxyness of the kick and snare and shelf down the highs until the cymbals stop being overbearing. Then I usually highpass just the super muddy stuff so up to around 50 - 60Hz then low shelf where the snare starts getting some body.

I love room mics, but unfortunately if its faster metal stuff and you've had to edit the kick separately, you're pretty much screwed.

 

[Charles J]

i LOVE room mics.... in our new live room (which has a drum canopy type of thing similar to what Eric Valentine I believe has(?) but not nearly as fancy....

but anyways, i always HP/LP and smash them to hell with anything 1176 like or even something like the SSL LMC....

im always looking more for the WIDTH these tracks add and how the snare sounds... ill sacrifice as much low-end ans high-end as I need to get the snare sounding really nice in the rooms tracks...

 

[jeid]

I love room mics.

I smash them with a comp, LP them to around 5kHz, give them a bit of a low shelf and then do a 50Hz HP. Cut some mud and anything harsh and then send to the reverb that I'm using on the drums. I blend it in to taste depending on the sound I'm going for. It's like a glue for me on drums.