How do you treat your overheads?

I suspect my view is not really the sh*t for you because I mix jazz mostly, but anyway.. I almost never compress OH. Prefer to do paralel comp instead, and if a compressed sound is preferred I blend in more of the paralel. In jazz the OH is a bit special as imo they are the main drum track (I believe most jazz people would agree). In swing/bebop the cymbals are such a big part of the music and has to be quite upfront in the mix, so for my taste I like to keep them not too harsh as you otherwise would get tired of listening. If I feel the need to cut it's usually around 2.5-4kHz. As long as the sound of the cymbals are in harmony with the rest of the mix I'm very moderate with boosting the hi end, much because I mix into a Pultec style eq on the mix bus with quite some treble boost, and then comes mastering.. In any style, when mixing I often exaggerate treble boost for a while just to check if something particular in the mix jumps out in an unpleasant way. After that I usually work thru the vocal track (again... ) taming sibiliance and breaths...

That's my approach too. But obviously there are other views, because every now and then I get material w almost only cymbals on the overs tracks. I'm not sure but perhaps it could be a thing coming from live engineers as I've seen many live engineers micing A/B stereo over the cymbals. jcoutu1 what's your view on that?

Ok, I have some insight too.

I've gone through many years of agony for overheads. being a drummer, I probably overthink it considerably too though.

When I first started recording multitrack stuff with the ability to EQ, I simply twisted knobs to get something that I liked.

Years and many many hours/days of pouring over forum threads from "experts" and others, I attempted the whole "no eq", "no compression", "only cutting EQ", "overheads of purity" type of stuff for a long time. I never really found my mixes to have the drum overhead sound I heard on professional records.

I kinda went through a renaissance period of unlearning what I thought I knew based on the opinions of others.

Now I'm back to twisting knobs until it sounds good and I'm much happier. A better room, better mics and better preamps helped a lot too.  (Now it's usually KM184 through 1272)

But recently, I find myself boosting 6k-8k by 6+dB, and maybe a little bit at 12k+ rather than cutting. I also have found myself HPF at around 300-500 almost always now. Sometimes I cut around 400hz-800hz if it's too boxy.

As for the "overheads are for the overall picture of the drums", I don't buy that.  Maybe it's good enough for jazz, but for dense rock mixes, it never works.  I use the overheads for cymbals AND the attack of the drums.  I use the close mics for the meat and the sustain for the individual drums, which distant mics don't pic up.

For compression, I'm back to using a tad of 1176, fast attack, medium fast release to sort of pre-limit the cymbal transients. At one point I believed that super fast transients automatically meant "detail", but I've since found that belief to have been a fallacy that a lot of people share, that clarity in a mix is a function of frequency ranges gelling together, not impulse response.

In a way I think that I've become a better mixer, rather than expecting the equipment to be perfect and do the work for me.

Also, interesting enough, I found a blurb from a metal mixer, (Mr. Andy Sneap) that said that "cutting eq is for fixing issues, boosting EQ is for making things fit together" or something to that effect.  That changed my way of thinking considerably.

+1, When I read about the long chain of plugins, effects and processing, that are used today to record,
It makes me wonder how we made such great recordings with so little.

My philosophy is not so refined. I'll EQ out any harshness, maybe boost the high end if the cymbals need more presence, sometimes cut some lows, maybe use the Pultec 20 kHz shelf to mute the very top just a tiny bit. If the snare is crazy I might have to limit a bit, or maybe just the close mic and leave the overheads alone. I actually have found I like the sound of lightly compressed overheads sometimes. It gives a little John Bonham or something. More often, though, I'll probably compress the room mics. Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes is a really good example of super pumpy cymbals and drums, I think it's a great, powerful sound for that band. Also interesting is that Mike McCarthy used U47s on the guitar amplifiers, which is something I wouldn't have thought of. They sound aggressive as hell, and very present, makes me want to experiment. The Radiohead song "Nude" is another really good example of compressed overheads (or maybe the drum buss) used to good creative effect. The off center kick drum creates a panning effect in the unlinked stereo compressor pair every time it is struck, and the obvious sound of a volume suck at the same time. Really cool. Those guys are so creative.

An Old hand once asnwerd this question to me this way
" you don't like how the overheads sound? Change the fing mics! If that don't work change or tune the damn drums!"

Usually high passing them aggressively, fast attack and release light compression, for the gelled kit sound it's usually a mono room that's aggressively low passed and brought up to gel the kit and it can also be a great way to move the drums back or forward in the mix. The overs don't do much work on my kit sounds.

I am still learning, but here's my thoughts on overheads as I experiment more:

I first try to determine what overall drum sound I want and then use the overheads as a tool to achieve that end. In some songs, that may mean cutting out all frequencies except the cymbals, and then treating the cymbals (or not) with EQ, reverb and/or compression to achieve the cymbal sound/sustain I want. In other songs, I may use the overheads as the main kick/snare/hi hat sound and riding the fader if I need to boost or cut cymbal crashes. On others I may use the overheads mixed in with the close mics and rooms in a multi micing stew. In that case, I may not compress the overheads at all, or very littl, but compress all the close mics using a bus compressor. Because of multi micing, there are so many choices now. So, its very difficult and takes a lot of work to sculpt the sound you want from the many sources. I think the more experience you gain, and the more you know what end sound you want, the more efficient/proficient you become with micing.

Can't wait to read this thread, tracking now, I'm tracking something this afternoon, just taking a break, I do have to laugh though, the only "overheads" I have in my NYC apartment is a ceiling lamp and a noisy neighbor ;-)

I know how important this is though. Sometimes the difference between a track working or not is the balance of the room mics in Superior Drummer.