Room micing drums, and then what?

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

So, I'm in the middle of my most ambitious drum recording up to date now.
It's a "Bonham" style Yamaha Recording Custom kit with Sabian AAX and HHX cymbals and a Ludwig Black Beauty snare, micked wit an assortment of Sennheisers, Shures, Rödes and MXR microphones.

I've got the tuning together, got the phase in check and so on but my question now is shall I phase align the room mics with the overheads or keep them as they are???

 

[greyskull]

leave them as they are...
hell even put a delay in front of them (haas effect) to give em more space like you would the predelay on reverb

 

[csholtmeier]

This is totally dependant on what the mix needs, but I usually time align the room mics with the close mics during editing. Adds punch to the drums.

The last album I did, we used a stereo pair of vintage Telefunken ELAM 250's for the room along with a mono room mic.

For the faster songs, I aligned the room mics. For the two slower "moodier" songs, I didn't.

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

We're aiming for a massive, but still acoustic and "garagey" drumsound. I think I'll leave them where they are for starters.

 

[csholtmeier]

For garagy, try compressing heavily and sending to a room verb.

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

I think I have the SSL room comp plugin thingy here around somewhere, perhaps that one will do the trick?

 

[csholtmeier]

The LMC-1? That one's a little too aggressive for me.

I really like the Waves API-2500 for drums, or the Waves SSL E-Channel.

For freeware, try Blockfish.

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

The LMC-1? That one's a little too aggressive for me.

I really like the Waves API-2500 for drums, or the Waves SSL E-Channel.

For freeware, try Blockfish.

Allright, I'll try the blockfish then, I've also got a liquidmix that I'm planning on using pretty heavily

 

[Seizure.]

Just compress the crap out of it.. when ging for something nice and punchy.. go for a hard knee

 

[colonel kurtz]

i sure as shit wouldn't time align the room with the rest of the kit...it'll rob you of the ambience that the room mic is there for in the 1st place

just compress the fuck out of that bitch...maybe some slight EQ on the high or low end, depending on what the mix needs

 

[csholtmeier]

Time-aligning room mics is a pretty common technique. I've even seen some engineers go as far as instructing the drummer to hit a solitary snare hit at the beginning of each take to make alignment easier during editing.

Time-aligning takes away far less ambience than you would think, try it some time.

I find that it adds punch and focuses the drum sound a bit for faster songs