Question about moving drum tracks

[Harley Barley]

What is standard practice when it comes to moving drum tracks to be time aligned with each other?

Do you move your kick and snare to match up with the overheads?
Do you moved the overheads to match up with the kick and snare tracks?
Or do you you just leave them?
Do you move the room mics at all?

I've searched and i haven't found a straight answer yet, I hope somebody can explain this!

 

[Trevoire520]

When I do it I tend to either:

A: Move everything to get the snare hit in each mic lined up. As with kick being sample replaced most of the time and snare being the other most commonly hit drum in a kit it makes sense to optimize this as best you can.
or
B: Line everything up to itself in the overheads.

Not done it for a while mind you, but it can sometimes make a noticeable difference, especially if you're keeping the drums natural.

 

[Fandus]

you should move everything together, otherwise you will run into phase problems, aswell as weird flams. think about it, if you move the snare track and don't move the overheads track, there will be an audible delay between the snares mic and the overheads mics.

i use protools so i just group all the drum tracks and treat them as one.

if you need to move stuff so drasticly between seperate tracks, chances are the drummer should have replayed it.

EDIT: if you are talking about transients not lining up perfectly while zoomed in between a close mic and a distant mic, thats normal and you should move them. that gap is the time it takes for the sound to reach the further mic.

 

[Trevoire520]

Yeah we're talking about time aligning mic's for sonic purposes. Using the spill from other mic's to reinforce the sound of your snare, stuff like that. Essentially just playing with phase. Not something I do on every project but sometimes it works really well.

 

[Heabow]

What I usually do is align the room mic's. Sometimes their a little bit too much delayed, it depends on the room and their placement. Other than that, I don't touch the tracks.

 

[C-Martin]

I move each individual tracks to align with itself on the overheads. I find this opens up the drums and gives you bigger fatter sounding overall sound. I used to not pay attention to phase as much because i kind of liked how certain elements sounded when out of phase but learned to really dislike the chaos it creates when mixing. I try to use samples as last resort though, usually only to blend/enhance the recorded tracks. I try to keep drums as natural as possible, i find it more challenging and i tend to learn more that way.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

http://audiogeekzine.com/2011/12/time-adjusting-a-multi-mic-performance/

I've found time adjusting individual mics on a drum set to result in an overall smaller sound.
The overheads and room mics should be delayed, the mics are actually further away from the sound source.

 

[::XeS::]

^ Exactly! Room and OH tracks should be delayed because it's the delay and the "phase" inaccuracy that give add something to the sound.