how hard do you guys pan your overheads?

[ze kink]

Always depends on the stereo technique I'm using, but generally about as wide as I can get away with. I find I'm most commonly using ORTF now and end up with 70/70, 80/80 or so. I feel like the middle starts to sound weird if I hard pan, though with XY hard panning seems to work pretty well more often.

Room mics I pretty much always hard pan.

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

I almost always have the OH's hard panned since the room mics are usually louder in my mixes than the OH's, so the OH's are just to give more detail

 

[jangoux]

Usually hard pan l/r if it's rock/metal. Otherwise I can go as further as 50/50.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

If I'm using only two I usually have them all the way L/R.
I'm sometimes using an omni pattern mic above the head of the drummer or in front of the kit, just add it in a little to keep the kit more centered.
my plan is to use 4 spot mics instead of two overhead mics in the future, I guess then I'll be panning according to how the cymbals are actually layed out...so it'll probably be something like 80% for one pair and 40% for the inner pair or so...we'll see.
how are you guys doing it (assuming you're using spot mics for the cymbals only)?

for rock stuff I'm often using XY, in that case you can easily go100%L/R and still have a very realistic and somewhat narrower image.

 

[egan.]

Hard.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Hard L/R, but every now and then I bring them in a bit to make the center a bit fuller.

 

[ahjteam]

since it is a stereo source, hard left and hard right. By adjusting the stereo micing technique I impact how wide the stereo effect is

 

[AudioGeekZine]

since it is a stereo source, hard left and hard right. By adjusting the stereo micing technique I impact how wide the stereo effect is

what I was going to say.

 

[Pxz]

Necrobumping like a motherfucker but yeah haha. How are you guys panning your cymbals ? i know there are no rules set on stone regarding to audio but to me hard panned cymbals never felt quite right . Are you guys hard panning because you like it that way or just because it makes sense from a logical standpoint ?

 

[Korwent]

By panning cthe cymbals do you mean spots mics for cymbals, or overheads as was the question before?

 

[Heabow]

I'd say it depends on the kit/cymbal set and the context but most of the time, I'd pan them hard left/right using spaced pair. I pan hi-hat spot mic almost in the center tho, 15% or so and the ride spot mic around 30/50% works well for me in most cases.

 

[Machinated]

hard, unless it sounds weird in which case I'll bring them in. The closer mic'd they are, the weirder they sound hard panned IMO (I'm not really a fan of the sound of close mic'd cymbals anyway, a bit of distance makes the attack far nicer to me).

 

[~BURNY~]

Lately, I try to get a realistic picture of the whole drums with my OH so I use a Massenburg type of placement with LDC, 100/100 is generally to wide for me so it's more around 75/75, pretty often it's slightly uneven because I like the snare to be fully centered.
I use an additional AB stereo couple above the main cymbal groups with SDC which could be described as an auxiliary overhead setup panned to reinforce the image in the main overheads.
It might seem convoluted but it works for me.

 

[Jormyn]

I'm working with EZD, so my opinion may not count for much, but I've found that bringing the OHs in to around 60 or 70 sounds way better - hearing a crash cymbal way off on the left is just odd, IMO. The room mics can get away with being wider though.

 

[bryan_kilco]

I'm working with EZD, so my opinion may not count for much, but I've found that bringing the OHs in to around 60 or 70 sounds way better - hearing a crash cymbal way off on the left is just odd, IMO. The room mics can get away with being wider though.

I use EZD as well and I have a really hard time getting the OH's panned properly because there's no number value when you move the slider, so I'm basically guessing at around 75% L/R but one could be off a bit from the other because I have no way of actually telling for sure. And....not being able to increase the size of the window kills me.

 

[Jormyn]

Just leave them at 100 and then reduce the width in your DAW.

 

[Pxz]

I know a lot of producers, Andy for example, that prefer to work a lot with spot mics for the cymbals instead or both together with the overheads. What do you think of spot mics ?
If a band wants only a certain cymbal to be louder i just add an extra cymbal sample from my collection that matches the cymbal in question. It's a pain in the ass but works if you don't have the extra options, and can't rise the overheads no more in that section.

 

[allanqa]

80% L/R

Hard panning for guitars only