First drum mix in treated control room

[aapee]

Hi fellows!

Few days ago I asked question concerning acoustic problems in my control room. I have now installed 7 broadband absorbers, 2 tube traps and 3 kind of super chunks to my CR. I just made first drum mix and asking you to evaluate it. Don't pay attention to playing only possible problems in mixing.

I mixed this track in Samplitude almost without compression in channels, so I am partying without an alcohol . Only channel compression in snare top channel and mono room mic channel. I inserted UAD 1176 with mild compression to subgroup.

Please, give me comments! Be rude if necessary but honest.

I think there might be little harshness in symbals but let me know what you think...

with respect,

AaPee

[Jules]

Sounds cool..... bring pie...!

[astronmr20]

Instead of digital reverb,

You might try a room mic with a squashed 1176 on it. It will give everything a lot more guts and body and resonance.

[Jules]

Was that a Carnagie Hall - sampled reverb ?

[Killahurts]

Sounds great, except there is a continuous tone at 138 Hz.

Could that be a tom ringing?

[aapee]

I knew this! You guys are amazing. Please, more opinions!

Jules:"Was that a Carnagie Hall - sampled reverb ?"

No, it actually is UAD EMT140 Acoustic ambience preset n:o 3 with high pass and low pass added with littlebit Lexicon 480 impulse responce Big wooden room preset with Voxengo Pristine Space Lite. - Did I put too much of them?
Hey Jules, you seems to have almost half of Ethans store of Real Traps , I bet, your Library Studio sounds very cool. How many of them?

astromr20: I will try 1176 instead of Waves Ren Compressor. All buttons pressed with quite high input?

Killahurts:"...there is a continuous tone at 138 Hz."

This was the reason I asked help from you guys. You have good pair of ears and lot more experience. Right, there is contiuous tone coming from floor tom at 133-138Hz. I cutted it with narrow filter almost -9 db but you can still hear it. Maybe gate would take care of it?

Thank you so far fellows! More opinions, come on! You don't hear any harshness or boominess?

with respect,

AaPee

[astronmr20]

aapee,

I am not hearing any un-pleasant harshness at all. It's actually pretty smooth up top.

I too am hearing the ringing down there. It's showing up on the left, and it sounds like a rack tom. The reverb should probably come off until you get things just how you want them with eq/ compression/ balance, first. The kick drum is ringing some. Part of that is reverb. For the part that is not reverb, it might not be a "problem" when you mix.


What youve got sounds nice and clean on it's own, and certianlly not bad.

What will really matter, is what happens to the kick when you add bass guitar, and what will happen to the snare and cymbals when you add guitar. You can get great suggestions here to improve those skins, but it has to all balance out in the end mix, and ultimately each drum and percussive frequency range of the kit will either need to punch through, or take a back seat, depending on what you want in your mix.

Yes; you could try that with the 1176, but try pushing the volume of you room mic first.

For fun, see if you can start over with "just" the room mic. push the mids on it. Then gently add your overheads and the rest of the kit. Also, you could try "pushing" things a bit more on the compressors when you start to mix. Try a gentle 1176 se (i assume you are using a UAD?) on just the overheads. See what you have after all that. Add your Toms last. Try gating them. pull the snare out of the kick track by slightly dipping 700htz. If you ARE using the UAD-1, there is an ECELLENT plug for drums in there that I discovered called the "gatecomp." it's actually part of nigel I think, but can be used seperately. Use it mainly for it's gating. Try it on kick and toms. (Again, add your toms later.. this way you will hear if you have some prombelm ringing frequencies.) If you gate the toms to fix the ringing, always insert the gate FIRST.

Now for another step, try keeping a "dry" track of your snare and maybe the kick, too. (copy and paste the original file to another track.. very easy). This way you can play with more agressive compression settings on the drum mix, and if it starts to squash the dynamics of the kick and snare too much, slowlly mix in the dry kick and snare for more dynamics and to keep them from disappearing with these more agressive settings on your drum mix. This is something to "play" with, and you might not try it until you add your other components to the whole band mix... as it can turn your drums into more of an "organism" that can be un-predictable if you are not careful. This sort of technique can give you "pumping" on the drums, which could be good or bad, depending on what you want.

You can try these tricks sequentially, or independently. I would still begin, though, with getting more dirty or up-front with that room mic.. and push the mids in it with a good EQ. You could push those mids also by rolling off the very top and bottom of your room mic track. Keep in mind that this technique is a personal preference, and might not suit your fancy! But I did feel it would give you more "guts."

Now you're having fun!

[aapee]

astronmr20,

Many great ideas and technics to test! Thank you for shareing them. I am glad to hear that my mixes seems to turn to better side thanks for the much better monitoring facilities. Actually, very good now . I will absolutely try your suggestions when I will go back to my studio. I will be on tour for two days but at sunday I'll be back again.

Any further comments fellow slutz?

AaPee

[aapee]

Any more comments?

Perhaps drummers would say their own opinion?

AaPee

[Drumsound]

The recording sounds pretty good indeed. I don't dig the reverb, but that's personal. It's really hard to evaluate the miux because we are hearing this out of context. I will say that I'm sure I would be able to work with these tones in a production.

[aapee]

Thanks Drumsound!

Give me your suggestion for the reverb. Shorter maybe?

AaPee

[u b k]

Originally Posted by aapee

Give me your suggestion for the reverb. Shorter maybe?

how about none? go on, be brave.

this sounds like DFH or BFD or whatever acronym people are sampling with these days, it doesn't feel real. any chance of making the drums less "studio refined" and more organic?


gregoire
del
ubk

[aapee]

Thanks for the comment Ubik!

Good point! Actually, when I done the mix I was thinking how those a lot used sampled drums are sounding mostly. I suppose it is not very good reference anymore... I will try to remove reverb and add more ambience mic for the set.

By the way. I almost took it as a compliment when you said they sound like DFH or BDF :)

with respect,

AaPee