Feeding the kick with a subwoofer?

[Baykush]

Hello all,
I found a second hand NIVA subwoofer (AB-150) for a very cheap price. I'm thinking of feeding the kick with it in drum recording sessions. Putting it infront of the kit and making the kick resonate around 45 hz? What do you think?
I'm going to buy this subwoofer if I can make something with it.

Any suggestions will be appriciated..

[radioactive]

Hey Baykush,

I'm intrigued. Could you ellaborate as to how you would do this? Not something I've heard of being done by being "fed INTO the Kick Drum".

regards,
rad.

[Baykush]

It is an idea that I thought I should give it a try. Propably someone tried it before. It is just like putting a stage monitor. But this time it is a subwoofer reproducing 40hz range. you might put the subwoofer infront of the kick or search for a better place close to the kick. You might also make a tunel like thing with carpets for isolating the kick and the sub.
Then send back the kick signal you are recording into the recording room. Deal with phase issues. High pass all mics at 45/50 Hz as you should. But not the kick mics(the beater and the body mics for kick) or you might put a mic pointing to the sub (if you dare) and hope the sub frequancy leakege will not hurt..
That's the idea. Results may be horrible.. (too much boomyness) Or you might have just captured a a drum sound with a very puncy and also deep kick.

Just brain storming..

[Baykush]

No one tried this before?..

[radioactive]

Adventurous stuff :-) By all means have a play around, and who knows you might come up with something GREAT, but be carefull it doesn't cause more problems than it solves. The phase could be tricky to get right. Keep in mind that because your signal path would be...

Kick > Mic > Pre > Interface > System > Interface > Power Amp > Subwoofer

...there will a MINIMUM delay beyond which you can't pull the signal back any further. Maybe use a latency free monitoring output as long as it doesn't use transformers that colour the sound in a bad way on the main kick mic.

You said that you want the subwoofer signal to RESONATE the kick at 40Hz. To get that kind of reaction it needs a fair bit of volume. EVEN if you low pass the signal to have nothing above 40Hz the speaker itself is going to throw a lot of harmonics and overtones above its fundamental out into the room. These may, or may not, want to play nice with the drums around the kick and the sound of other drums reaching the mics.

Even if you high pass the mics at 45Hz, frequencies ABOVE that can phase and cancel with the frequencies below (that are relative as subharmonics and subtones) as they reach the mic at the same time.

If you take a kick track, stick on a High Pass filter and roll it up from 30Hz towards 40 or 50Hz the sound can seem perceptively DEEPER, which is weird, but what is happening is that your playback system can't reproduce these lowest frequencies and by removing them you're freeing up frequencies that they were cancelling out above the lowest range of your speakers. Kinda works like a gentle low shelf boost. There's a danger you might be introducing this concept into the recording space itself.

... SO, a safer method might be to track the drums as normal but THEN re-amp the kick mic into the subwoofer afterwards. Mic this up as you would a bass cab and then blend it in behind the original recording adjusting the phase to taste but with no bleed into mics.

OR:

...if you want it to interact with the kick drum as resonance, again track the drums as normal but then send a sampled kick from that recording into the subwoofer and play it out into the kick drum Mic'ing the kick drum itself. Record in and use as a sample to reinforce your drum track. A couple advantages of this is that A: you can gate the sent signal as a short snap which would agitate the kick into resonance but end in time for you to record the reaction of the kick drum itself or B: stick the speaker where the kick drum was and open up ALL the drum mics to see if any create a good ambient sample.

I hope this inspires some ideas, as opposed to just confusing them in my usual manner Let us know is you get some good results,

regards,

rad.

[Baykush]

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm not thinkinking to go with re-amping. That's the first thing to go for sure but I'm very much curious about doing this the way I wrote. I'm planning to send the signal directly from the preamp without going into the interface if I can match the impedance. So it will be the light of speed I guess.( !!!? )
I also want the drummer to feel subs while he/she plays. If the drummer can interact, it will change the playing in a good way I think.
I'll let you know about the results..

sinan

[Curtis Franklin]

i made a sub kick mic in the way that you describe.

it sounds good.

!!! make sure you line up the phase with the inside kick mic or it defeats the purpose. !!!

i usually just automate mine instead of compressing it. only eq is a low pass.

[radioactive]

Originally Posted by Baykush

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm not thinkinking to go with re-amping. That's the first thing to go for sure but I'm very much curious about doing this the way I wrote. I'm planning to send the signal directly from the preamp without going into the interface if I can match the impedance. So it will be the light of speed I guess.( !!!? )
I also want the drummer to feel subs while he/she plays. If the drummer can interact, it will change the playing in a good way I think.
I'll let you know about the results..

sinan

Well that does sound good fun. The drummer is going to LOVE ya for giving them the big amplified stadium rock sound whilst they play .

Post us some clips when you get it working.

All the best,

rad.

[7rojo7]

For live sound monitoring, feedback is a big problem with the kik and the shaker (drum monitor) when the drummer has enough monitor it starts to howl and has to be pulled back
In the studio I would see the problem to be worse, as it's in a much smaller space than one would find in live situations
If you tune the kik properly for the genre of music and use a tunnel (which keeps the kik out of the room a bit also) I don't see the need
it could work as a microphone placed directly in front of the kik, or as a passive radiator (acoustially)
Getting drummers to tune their instrument for recording has been one of the hardest tasks I've ever had apart from getting viola players to play louder than they breathe or getting bass clarinetists to stop thinking that they're percussionists or gtr players to show up with their instrument intonated (although, lucky for most that they have frets on their gtrs)

[MrJulius]

If you want the drummer to feel it, you should look into one of those butt kicker things.

[Baykush]

Originally Posted by MrJulius

If you want the drummer to feel it, you should look into one of those butt kicker things.

what did you mean by that?

[Baykush]

Originally Posted by 7rojo7

For live sound monitoring, feedback is a big problem with the kik and the shaker (drum monitor) when the drummer has enough monitor it starts to howl and has to be pulled back
In the studio I would see the problem to be worse, as it's in a much smaller space than one would find in live situations
If you tune the kik properly for the genre of music and use a tunnel (which keeps the kik out of the room a bit also) I don't see the need
it could work as a microphone placed directly in front of the kik, or as a passive radiator (acoustially) is
Getting drummers to tune their instrument for recording has been one of the hardest tasks I've ever had apart from getting viola players to play louder than they breathe or getting bass clarinetists to stop thinking that they're percussionists or gtr players to show up with their instrument intonated (although, lucky for most that they have frets on their gtrs)

i don't thhink feedback will be a major problem i jusstt need some sub to resonate kkick. the only issue that should be taken care of is phase. i f kick and sub are not aligned it is all uselesss

[MonkeyGang]

Originally Posted by Baykush

what did you mean by that?

Those "butt kicker things" are commecially made subwoofers mountable on(under) drummers' seat. They give 'em a kick in ... each time they're triggered by the signal from the BD mic. I know some drummers that are playing drumpads use this thang - it sorta gives 'em a real feel

just google for that stuff..