Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rod Affleck]

j.hall wrote on Mon, 10 November 2008 11:34

if you have a bad sounding room it really doesn't matter what you use.  and in a lot of cases, it might be better to use something crap then to capture that bad sounding room in all it's glorious badness with great mics and pres.

As someone who has spent more time than they'd like in a variety of terrible sounding acoustic spaces with both prosumer and high end mic pres, this comment has been in direct contrast with my experience. In general, I've found that bad pres in a bad space will make things worse, whereas good pres in a bad space will at least not add more bad to the mess.

[craig boychuk]

Rod Affleck wrote on Thu, 05 August 2010 08:53

As someone who has spent more time than they'd like in a variety of terrible sounding acoustic spaces with both prosumer and high end mic pres, this comment has been in direct contrast with my experience. In general, I've found that bad pres in a bad space will make things worse, whereas good pres in a bad space will at least not add more bad to the mess.

Agreed.

If your room is junk you'll be better off taking it out of the picture as best you can. Make it as dead as possible. Put up as much absorption as you can. Blankets, curtains, whatever.

You'll still have to deal with room modes, but odds are you'll find at least one spot in the room that is adequate.

Your overheads will suck no matter what you run them through if your room is crap.

In my humble opinion.


-craig-

[Nick Sevilla]

Bad sounding room = bad sounding anything.

Try to not use an "ambient" mic, only overheads that give you the cymbal splashes and the overall drumkit.

You may want to mic only a few inches above the drummers' head, pointing towards the kit. Experiment with the mic positions until you have the snare hitting where you want it in the stereo field (hint : the mics will probably NOT be aligned perfectly to the center line of the kit, but what matters is what ends up being recorded, not how it looks when you put the mics up.)

Cheers