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Post by ragan on Dec 4, 2017 16:28:16 GMT -6
True bu I clipped a previous recording with this drummer so did not want to make that mistake twice Also, first time recording in the upstairs room so I wanted to keep it simple and see what the volume in the room was like to work in. Every session is a learning opportunity. I'll work with the wav files I got, plus use sd3 tracker and see how that works out. It's really easy to clip the convertors with 312 style mic pres on drums in particular. I highly recommend the "yellow is the new red" mindset for working in a DAW. The output trims on the WA are such a great feature coming from using a vintage 3124+ and BAE racked API 312s. I can't say it enough! Indeed. They're such hot amps (312 style in general) I can't see why they'd ever be without output trim. Plus they sound so good clipped. Should be mandatory. The WA412 packs a lot of punch.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 5, 2017 4:20:29 GMT -6
I prefer a deader sound for modern drums. It's a lot easier to add synthetic reverb and ambience than it is to take away too much captured during recording. Also, you have to remember that the amount of compression added during the mix will make the ambience you do capture sound more up front in the mix. I've heard plenty of recordings where folks recorded in a very "live" room but then once they added compression to get the modern "smack" of the drums, the room tone was unbearable.. So I always say less is more. Get your ambience from crushed room mics and reverb boxes, or reamp the overhead/room mics through speakers in a large room and add your ambience that way. Couldn't have a more opposite approach. Synthetic reverb on its own, to me, sounds synthetic and on slammed to death spot mics is a very stylized sound. It's like saying every dish in your kitchen is going to come with BBQ sauce. It's just not always appropriate in my view. The decisions on sonics and how the production is approach should all flow from the aesthetic of the band. If you set up your overheads and ambient mics well you can give instruments a sense of distance and panning from the get go. If you want less ambiance - turn down your ambient mics and keep your overheads closer on the kit. They're basic tracking decisions for me, I'm making that call with the band in the room after 30 minutes. Most of the time recording drums I'll be in the same studio and I typically use ribbon overheads, with the nulls angled at the guitar cabs to keep the isolation good (a lot of the time the cabs are *blasting* - last big day session had a 100W guitar amp and a 200W bass amp dimed). If they like big room-y or more natural stuff then I'll go for higher up overheads (maybe 6 feet above the snare), and if not I'll bring them down to maybe 4 feet. If that's still not dry enough I'll swap my ribbons out for something cardioid, but that's a rarity and there's a tradeoff in drum bleed. I generally wouldn't factor the parlor trick stuff - compression, synthetic reverb. They're a modifier to the existing sound, like some plate on a room mic sound to soften it or a parallel for the cymbals for a heavy section. Going back to what others said. The main difference to me for under vs. overhead room mics is the ratio of the resonant heads of the drums (particularly the snare sound) to the top head. I tend to prefer the overhead stuff, but something less aggressive I could see going high working better. For anyone who wants to try it, any pair of omnis put on the floor and roughly equidistant to the kick and snare will give you a good idea of that. I'm a cheapskate, so I'm still running ECM8000's for that.
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Post by kcatthedog on Dec 5, 2017 5:01:34 GMT -6
Interesting points all: it seems there are always differences in approach but that comes down to sonic choices and workflow which are two constants in our recording hobby, passion and or business !
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Post by svart on Dec 5, 2017 8:41:47 GMT -6
I prefer a deader sound for modern drums. It's a lot easier to add synthetic reverb and ambience than it is to take away too much captured during recording. Also, you have to remember that the amount of compression added during the mix will make the ambience you do capture sound more up front in the mix. I've heard plenty of recordings where folks recorded in a very "live" room but then once they added compression to get the modern "smack" of the drums, the room tone was unbearable.. So I always say less is more. Get your ambience from crushed room mics and reverb boxes, or reamp the overhead/room mics through speakers in a large room and add your ambience that way. Couldn't have a more opposite approach. Synthetic reverb on its own, to me, sounds synthetic and on slammed to death spot mics is a very stylized sound. It's like saying every dish in your kitchen is going to come with BBQ sauce. It's just not always appropriate in my view. The decisions on sonics and how the production is approach should all flow from the aesthetic of the band. If you set up your overheads and ambient mics well you can give instruments a sense of distance and panning from the get go. If you want less ambiance - turn down your ambient mics and keep your overheads closer on the kit. They're basic tracking decisions for me, I'm making that call with the band in the room after 30 minutes. Most of the time recording drums I'll be in the same studio and I typically use ribbon overheads, with the nulls angled at the guitar cabs to keep the isolation good (a lot of the time the cabs are *blasting* - last big day session had a 100W guitar amp and a 200W bass amp dimed). If they like big room-y or more natural stuff then I'll go for higher up overheads (maybe 6 feet above the snare), and if not I'll bring them down to maybe 4 feet. If that's still not dry enough I'll swap my ribbons out for something cardioid, but that's a rarity and there's a tradeoff in drum bleed. I generally wouldn't factor the parlor trick stuff - compression, synthetic reverb. They're a modifier to the existing sound, like some plate on a room mic sound to soften it or a parallel for the cymbals for a heavy section. Going back to what others said. The main difference to me for under vs. overhead room mics is the ratio of the resonant heads of the drums (particularly the snare sound) to the top head. I tend to prefer the overhead stuff, but something less aggressive I could see going high working better. For anyone who wants to try it, any pair of omnis put on the floor and roughly equidistant to the kick and snare will give you a good idea of that. I'm a cheapskate, so I'm still running ECM8000's for that. That's what makes recording great. So many options. I appreciate your viewpoint, but I still have reasons for my thoughts. However, I used to believe as you did, that purity was the best option. I did that for at least a decade. One day it dawned on me that there were multiple reasons that I wasn't progressing as a recordist/mixer.. And one of those was holding firm beliefs on how to do things. Things like "don't use EQ" or "only do cutting EQ" or "never let it get into the red" and all that, those restrain a person's ability to get what they want. Rigid beliefs have no place in recording if you want to play at a pro level. The other belief was that I didn't need high-end gear to make a professional sounding recording.. Which is total BS, but that's for another thread. Once I let myself "wander" into just twisting knobs until things sounded good, I found myself making leaps and bounds. Letting go was the only way forward and the only thing that ends up mattering is whether the result was right for the song and the situation. To me at least, I've found that even though a record might sound "natural" to the listener, it's very likely that the original tracks were mangled and brought to a new life through copious processing. The professionalism of a mixer is mainly defined as being able to make those tracks sound both natural in tone, but super-natural in their clarity, cut, and punch. So now, the only belief I have is to plan out the outcome and make moves to get there during tracking and mixing. Besides, it's a rookie move to use too much of one reverb.. Layering is the key. A little of a few different reverbs generally keeps the digital sound in check.
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Post by notneeson on Dec 5, 2017 11:07:20 GMT -6
Couldn't have a more opposite approach. Synthetic reverb on its own, to me, sounds synthetic and on slammed to death spot mics is a very stylized sound. It's like saying every dish in your kitchen is going to come with BBQ sauce. It's just not always appropriate in my view. The decisions on sonics and how the production is approach should all flow from the aesthetic of the band. If you set up your overheads and ambient mics well you can give instruments a sense of distance and panning from the get go. If you want less ambiance - turn down your ambient mics and keep your overheads closer on the kit. They're basic tracking decisions for me, I'm making that call with the band in the room after 30 minutes. Most of the time recording drums I'll be in the same studio and I typically use ribbon overheads, with the nulls angled at the guitar cabs to keep the isolation good (a lot of the time the cabs are *blasting* - last big day session had a 100W guitar amp and a 200W bass amp dimed). If they like big room-y or more natural stuff then I'll go for higher up overheads (maybe 6 feet above the snare), and if not I'll bring them down to maybe 4 feet. If that's still not dry enough I'll swap my ribbons out for something cardioid, but that's a rarity and there's a tradeoff in drum bleed. I generally wouldn't factor the parlor trick stuff - compression, synthetic reverb. They're a modifier to the existing sound, like some plate on a room mic sound to soften it or a parallel for the cymbals for a heavy section. Going back to what others said. The main difference to me for under vs. overhead room mics is the ratio of the resonant heads of the drums (particularly the snare sound) to the top head. I tend to prefer the overhead stuff, but something less aggressive I could see going high working better. For anyone who wants to try it, any pair of omnis put on the floor and roughly equidistant to the kick and snare will give you a good idea of that. I'm a cheapskate, so I'm still running ECM8000's for that. That's what makes recording great. So many options. I appreciate your viewpoint, but I still have reasons for my thoughts. However, I used to believe as you did, that purity was the best option. I did that for at least a decade. One day it dawned on me that there were multiple reasons that I wasn't progressing as a recordist/mixer.. And one of those was holding firm beliefs on how to do things. Things like "don't use EQ" or "only do cutting EQ" or "never let it get into the red" and all that, those restrain a person's ability to get what they want. Rigid beliefs have no place in recording if you want to play at a pro level. The other belief was that I didn't need high-end gear to make a professional sounding recording.. Which is total BS, but that's for another thread. Once I let myself "wander" into just twisting knobs until things sounded good, I found myself making leaps and bounds. Letting go was the only way forward and the only thing that ends up mattering is whether the result was right for the song and the situation. To me at least, I've found that even though a record might sound "natural" to the listener, it's very likely that the original tracks were mangled and brought to a new life through copious processing. The professionalism of a mixer is mainly defined as being able to make those tracks sound both natural in tone, but super-natural in their clarity, cut, and punch. So now, the only belief I have is to plan out the outcome and make moves to get there during tracking and mixing. Besides, it's a rookie move to use too much of one reverb.. Layering is the key. A little of a few different reverbs generally keeps the digital sound in check. My approach is generally a lot closer to that of jazznoise, I think, and partly because I rarely get to do metal, heavy stuff etc. (but love the technical challenges). That said... This is so important, could not agree more— well said, Svart: "One day it dawned on me that there were multiple reasons that I wasn't progressing as a recordist/mixer. And one of those was holding firm beliefs on how to do things."
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Post by joseph on Dec 5, 2017 11:20:56 GMT -6
Dec 5, 2017 5:20:29 GMT -5 jazznoise said: Most of the time recording drums I'll be in the same studio and I typically use ribbon overheads, with the nulls angled at the guitar cabs to keep the isolation good (a lot of the time the cabs are *blasting* - last big day session had a 100W guitar amp and a 200W bass amp dimed). If they like big room-y or more natural stuff then I'll go for higher up overheads (maybe 6 feet above the snare), and if not I'll bring them down to maybe 4 feet. If that's still not dry enough I'll swap my ribbons out for something cardioid, but that's a rarity and there's a tradeoff in drum bleed. I generally wouldn't factor the parlor trick stuff - compression, synthetic reverb. They're a modifier to the existing sound, like some plate on a room mic sound to soften it or a parallel for the cymbals for a heavy section. I do the same thing now. I will note that with not so reflective ceilings, fig 8 coles pick up a fair amount of pleasant malleable room compared to cardioid condensers which can pick up more problematic boxiness (wonder if it's standing waves), or m160s which are just tighter altogether, but as you said the fig 8 nulls help control amp bleed. So ironically I end up using less of the room mics. Also I do like to track live for performance and bleed reasons, things don't sound as canned. I don't entirely agree with what you said about synthetic reverb. Reverbs are not at all equal in my experience but the very best, like Bricasti TC 6000/Relab VSR or Exponential Nimbus can do a good job of softening and blending with captured early reflections and servings as "room" enhancement. Reverbs without sophisticated early reflection handling, not so much. They can enhance and lengthen tails/sustain, but don't do a good job with changing impression of early reflections which is half the battle. Likewise, if a room is no good and has poor early reflections, there's really not much you can do about it. Doesn't matter if it's a big or small room. Also I like parallel compression on the shells and a little master bus comp because it lets you leave the overheads sounding more open, and the drums sound bigger in the mix.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 5, 2017 13:51:33 GMT -6
I do the same thing now. I will note that with not so reflective ceilings, fig 8 coles pick up a fair amount of pleasant malleable room compared to cardioid condensers which can pick up more problematic boxiness (wonder if it's standing waves), or m160s which are just tighter altogether, but as you said the fig 8 nulls help control amp bleed. So ironically I end up using less of the room mics. Also I do like to track live for performance and bleed reasons, things don't sound as canned. I don't entirely agree with what you said about synthetic reverb. Reverbs are not at all equal in my experience but the very best, like Bricasti TC 6000/Relab VSR or Exponential Nimbus can do a good job of softening and blending with captured early reflections and servings as "room" enhancement. Reverbs without sophisticated early reflection handling, not so much. They can enhance and lengthen tails/sustain, but don't do a good job with changing impression of early reflections which is half the battle. Likewise, if a room is no good and has poor early reflections, there's really not much you can do about it. Doesn't matter if it's a big or small room. Also I like parallel compression on the shells and a little master bus comp because it lets you leave the overheads sounding more open, and the drums sound bigger in the mix. Sorry, I think we actually do agree on reverbs but I might have misworded myself. I think synthetic reverb is fine to augment a room or overhead sound, but it's very hard to get it to work well on close mics. I'll add a reverb to give a room sound a smoother tail. Recently also started using parallels for close mics and sometimes for things like vocals where a boost in volume sounds too obvious. Not sure why cardioids are often so unflattered to room sounds. I sometimes wonder is it low frequency buildup at the rear of the capsule make it feel like the room response is lumpier than it is!
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Post by joseph on Dec 5, 2017 14:21:37 GMT -6
Yes I agree with you then about reverb!
Interesting.
Do you find yourself using omnis much and if so what applications?
I don't use omnis at all, but have been tempted recently to try them, obviously beyond the usual outrigger/organ/piano stuff.
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Post by svart on Dec 5, 2017 15:08:59 GMT -6
I do the same thing now. I will note that with not so reflective ceilings, fig 8 coles pick up a fair amount of pleasant malleable room compared to cardioid condensers which can pick up more problematic boxiness (wonder if it's standing waves), or m160s which are just tighter altogether, but as you said the fig 8 nulls help control amp bleed. So ironically I end up using less of the room mics. Also I do like to track live for performance and bleed reasons, things don't sound as canned. I don't entirely agree with what you said about synthetic reverb. Reverbs are not at all equal in my experience but the very best, like Bricasti TC 6000/Relab VSR or Exponential Nimbus can do a good job of softening and blending with captured early reflections and servings as "room" enhancement. Reverbs without sophisticated early reflection handling, not so much. They can enhance and lengthen tails/sustain, but don't do a good job with changing impression of early reflections which is half the battle. Likewise, if a room is no good and has poor early reflections, there's really not much you can do about it. Doesn't matter if it's a big or small room. Also I like parallel compression on the shells and a little master bus comp because it lets you leave the overheads sounding more open, and the drums sound bigger in the mix. Sorry, I think we actually do agree on reverbs but I might have misworded myself. I think synthetic reverb is fine to augment a room or overhead sound, but it's very hard to get it to work well on close mics. I'll add a reverb to give a room sound a smoother tail. Recently also started using parallels for close mics and sometimes for things like vocals where a boost in volume sounds too obvious. Not sure why cardioids are often so unflattered to room sounds. I sometimes wonder is it low frequency buildup at the rear of the capsule make it feel like the room response is lumpier than it is! The off-axis response of cardioids tends to be frequency dependent, so some frequencies start to build and some to null, and it tends to make things sound strange. This is one of the reasons I like dead drum rooms OR huge drum rooms. The dead ones don't let errant reflections change the off-axis response much, and huge ones allow the time delay to be so great that the reflection doesn't cause comb filtering and other anomalies.
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Post by jazznoise on Dec 6, 2017 4:16:00 GMT -6
Yes I agree with you then about reverb! Interesting. Do you find yourself using omnis much and if so what applications? I don't use omnis at all, but have been tempted recently to try them, obviously beyond the usual outrigger/organ/piano stuff. I think Omnis are a pretty essential part of my setup. Most commonly I use them as ambient microphones - AB pair on the floor in front of a drum kit, 6+ feet out from a singer during vocals but I also use them as close mics when I don't want a lot of proximity effect - That can be good for things like Cello or Double Bass where F holes start to quickly dictate placement if you're using cardioids or even just when you want a sort of photorealistic recording of a close instrument like a guitar cab. Probably very good on bass cab too if you're an RE20 fan. I also like things like the EV635a on vocals and brass where I want easy placement and flexibility in terms of distance. The off-axis response of cardioids tends to be frequency dependent, so some frequencies start to build and some to null, and it tends to make things sound strange. This is one of the reasons I like dead drum rooms OR huge drum rooms. The dead ones don't let errant reflections change the off-axis response much, and huge ones allow the time delay to be so great that the reflection doesn't cause comb filtering and other anomalies. Or just don't use cardioids in situations where they're not suited My view would be that I can't change the room, so I should be using the mics to 'work' it. You can do a lot to modify the early reflections with boundary microphones or the nulls of the figure 8 mics. Dead rooms are the nuclear option to me - controlling the reflections is very doable. It's in many ways down to topology and unfortunately cardioids are fussy about placement and in many scenarios the cons just outweigh the pros - the off axis response, the proximity effect.
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Post by jampa on Dec 7, 2017 18:16:26 GMT -6
tip I picked up from the john sayers forum plastic sacks filled with sheet batts cheap to make keeps the air, eats the mud move em when you need em or don't Attachments:
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Post by Guitar on Dec 7, 2017 18:20:50 GMT -6
That's a good look. I went as trash last halloween. Just put a trashbag over my torso, everybody loved it.
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Post by jampa on Dec 7, 2017 18:23:12 GMT -6
thanks man now i'll never get anything done waiting for you to jump out from one of those
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Post by wiz on Dec 7, 2017 18:38:10 GMT -6
tip I picked up from the john sayers forum plastic sacks filled with sheet batts cheap to make keeps the air, eats the mud move em when you need em or don't I used to have two 4ft bags of insulation stacked on top of each other, in the corners of my old control room, so floor to ceiling, with black material hung over them. My wife christened them, Grim Reapers... which was a fitting and great name..... Easy to move, cheap, effective bang for buck bass trapping cheers Wiz
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Post by jampa on Dec 7, 2017 18:50:38 GMT -6
These are the reduced version... trim reapers?
they're in the practice room and have made it easier for us to hear each other
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