Spaced A/B drum overheads

[Jason Poulin]

Good day,

can someone elaborate on this technique

I'm new to this type of overhead micing and I figure why not try it!

What heights does it best work at?
what to watch for when angling the mics? phase? 3:1 rule?

where to place?

How well does it work with R84's?

Thanks

Jason

[tINY]

For drums, you will probably do better with a co-incident pair.

WIth spaced pairs, the room and the drum kit will dictate what works best. No rules of thumb here. Transients with delays are a pretty unique beast....


-tINY

[DirkB]

I just finished preproduction on a heavy rock band and will start drumrecording in a week or to. The position of the overheads is very important to me and is a little tricky, but also fun .

There are a few things that I find important that somewhat work against eachother:
- I want a very strong center for snare and kick
- I want to be able to use a lot of overhead in softer passages
- I want a quite some stereo spread on the crashes, but not necissarily on the toms.

I've used a spaced pair of large condensers a lot in the past, but always made sure the snare is in the middle. This comprises the width of the crash near the hi-hat side somewhat and moves the toms spread to the right (righ-handed drummersperspective).

What I like best at the moment is ORTF with two small condensers about 2 foot above the crashes with the snare almost or complete in the middle and a nice stereo spread of toms and cymbals. Putting the stand behind the drummers back and using some stereo adapter works great.
With the close snare mic, which is mostly fairly loud, mixed I get a nice cymbalsound and a strong snare center. You can choose in the mix how much of the kit comes from the overhead or if the overheads are more cymbal mics. With spaced A/B I find there is less punch and definition in the overheads and it's a little more difficult to use the overheads for the entire drumkit.

Hope this helps,
Dirk

[Mystr Tiger]

You might find the following article useful. It does mention the 3:1 rule to reduce phase problems. I like using a Royer SF-12 just above drummers head. Using a spaced pair seemed to make the cymbals sound too wide and less cohesive. But, I did not experiment enough and might try it again someday.

http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_capt...kit/index.html

[dim light]

Check this out!

http://www.kimcheerecords.com/articles/drums/

I just found it when doing a google on the Royer mic.

Cheers!

[Jason Poulin]

Thanks guys!

that's why I like this forum

Jason