Mic Placement

For open sound is better to put the mic like 4" above the toms for example or like 1"? Whats the best in terms of wid open sound?

Thanks,

RC

That's impossible to answer without knowing what your setup looks like and what room you are recording in.

In general, the farther away from the drums the mics are, the more 'room' sound is introduced. The 'room' sound gives the drums a more 'airy' or 'open' sound. But this also has a lot to do with how the drums are tuned and/or dampened. Less dampening on the drumhead will give more of an open sound.

In general, you don't want to mic drums from 4 inches away because that will creat phase/imaging problems.

If you want a tight, focused sound, close mic the drums and dampen them to kill any unwanted ringing or overtones.

If you want an 'open' sound, I would use no dampening on the drums and use less mics. I would use a stereo pair overhead, kick, and maybe a snare mic.

There was a decent article in Modern Drummer in recent times about home recording. It covered mic placement in enough detail to get you moving in the right direction.

On a recent session I did we did a lot of experimentation. I got the most killer sound with:

Kick: Shure Beta52 placed inside kick (slightly off center) half way between batter and resonant head.

Overheads: Nueman KM184's. Placed in a coincident pair (i think its called), about 6 feet in front of the drums and about 6 feet high. Positioned at a 90 degree angle from one another and both were parallel to the floor. These were crucial to getting a really ambient feel on tape.

Toms: Shure SM57's. Using the three finger spacing method. Pointing to the middle of the top head slightly off center.

Snare: Nueman KM184. Same mic placement as toms. I got the most wonderful snare sound using a condensor mic. I've always used an SM57 and was never happy with the snare sound.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert but happened to acheive good results with this config on this occaison.

Trial and error is good.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 09, 2005 05:44 PM: Message edited by: GrooovePig ]</font>

Those Nuemanns are top-of-the range, Groovepig. Of course your gonna get a better sound with them. They cost like ?800, whereas i can get an SM57 for about ?60. I reckon SM57s are pretty wicked for what they are, though.

LDGuy,

I hear what you're saying. Perhaps one could conclude that mike selection, if it's in ones budget, makes as much difference as mic placement.

Cheers, JOe

Quality of mics, room sound, natural drum sound, etc. all play into the quality of the recorded drum sound. Toss in all of the recording gear, compression, etc, and now you have even more variables.

If you look at some of the pros, it's interesting to see how diverse the approaches are. For example, Dave Weckl close mikes everythhing, as does Simon Phillips. They are also both excellend audio engineers though. Compare that to Bonzo: kick mic, snare mic, 2 overheads. Steve Gadd during the clinic tour: kick mic, snare mic, hihat mic, two large diaphram mics as overheads, placed behind Steve, about 3 feet above his head.

All produce great drum sound, but with very different approach and goals.

Danny

Quote:

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Originally posted by GrooovePig:
Snare: Nueman KM184. Same mic placement as toms. I got the most wonderful snare sound using a condensor mic.

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ November 09, 2005 05:44 PM: Message edited by: GrooovePig ]</font></font>

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I thought you could damage the diaphram in condensor mics if you introduce them to to much db spl. I know most of them have a 10 or 20 db pad that helps protect them, did you use this.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 12, 2005 03:18 PM: Message edited by: DeeP_FRieD ]</font>

You are going to get that open feel from overheads and room mics in a good room.


Here are some topics on drum miking


This is what a studio did with Kenny Aronoff
http://gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...hlight=aronoff

http://gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...hlight=aronoff