Compressing Drums
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Posted on Aug 26, 2002 09:32 am
tripnek
Member Since: Jul 11, 2002
A question for anyone Micing and Compressing each drum. What settings do you use on your compressors threshold and ratio? Noise Gate threshold?
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Aug 26, 2002 09:44 am there again is an impossible question to answer. As with all instruments it depends on who is playing them, how hard they hit, now far away the mics are, how many you have vs. how many drums, etc.
As for gating, what I usually do is gate a mic on one side of the kit, then hit a drum on the other side. The drum on the opposite side on an average hit should not open that gate...
Dynamic effects are to subjective to get into great detail about without standing right there working with them. They are far to dependent on the moment, the player, the music and the environment.
Aug 26, 2002 01:34 pm Well, maybe I can give a little more info and go at this question in a different direction. I have a mic on each drum: Shure beta 52 on the kick, Shure 57s on the toms, Sennheiser MD421 on the snare (which I may replace with a 57 and put the MD421 on the Kick), AKG S1000C for overhead. I put the 57s and the MD421 about 1" above the head and about 1-1.5" in from the edge of the drum. I put the beta 52 inside the kick about 2" from where the pedal hits. The overhead I placed about 3' obove the center of the kit. I also placed a Shure 58 about a foot below the snare and a 57 about a foot under the hi hat. Any tips on my mic placement?
When you run the toms, kick, and snare into the compressor, do you set the average input signal at 0 or +/- 0 ? It is my impression that the average signal should always be below 0 to avoid cliping. Is this correct or can I set the compression to compensate for a hotter input signal?
When I set the output signal on the compressor, I set it so the average hit took the meter to 0, but the input meters in Nuendo registered a lower signal. Is this normal, or do I have something set up wrong? Any thoughts you might have would be great.
Do you compress the overhead mic a little or alot?
Any general tips, tricks, common practices, or problems/solutions you have run into micing and compressing drums would be helpfull.
chrisMember
Since: May 24, 2002
Aug 29, 2002 08:29 pm i would definitely set the threshold for lower than 0 decibels, because you don't want any distortion (remember you can always raise levels later during mixdown). furthermore, i find it usually the case that drummers will hit harder while actually recording than when they are just hitting the drums for you during soundcheck (even if they tell you, "that's as hard as i hit it"
better to set it low and to be safe, rather than sorry.
Aug 29, 2002 09:46 pm remember, tripnek, the threshold is just where the compression starts the compressor doesn't stop the signal there. If you set the threshold at "-1" and the ratio at 4:1 for a light compression, an 5db peak (5db over -1 that is) will put you back over 0 again...then comes the evil clips.
Obviously that is really hitting the whole issue with a "simple stick", but it helps get the point across...I hope.
LokiCone PokerMember
Since: Apr 07, 2002
Aug 31, 2002 03:05 am I've never understood compressors and gates..
