Drum mixing, bfd etc

[fuzzface777]

I am using BFD, midi triggered drum softare? I love it! I am using it in PT. Anyway, does anyone have any handy tips or any suggestions for fader volume level and panning levels for a nice live drum with a fairly large room sound ??? I read that to set all drum track levels at -12 to -15 db for a nice starting point ( since the cummulative levels are going to be loud on the master). I have front and back kick, top and bottom snare, hihat, toms and cymbals, and the ambient 3: stereo overheads and stereo room and stereo pzm mics. I noticed that the room and overheads provide more ambience and more prominent snare and cymbals. Where the pzm mics bring more general kick and tom fullness. How do you set your ambience mics? panned hard hard left and right? How do you pan your mono kit pieces?

Thanks dude!

[max cooper]

If you link the stereo pairs, you can mess with panning them in and out a bit. It's always been kind of amazing to me how changing the width of O/H and room mic pans can change the whole character of a mix. Even taking them all the way to mono can be useful.

Since BFD comes up in PT like a drumkit, I don't find I have any special rules for mixing BFD that don't apply to drumkits in general, except for the fact that in BFD the snare is always much louder than anything else on the room mics.

Sometimes I go a little wider in the chorus, for example.

As for gain staging, you gotta just take it as it comes, and use your head. Yes, keeping it a little shy of zero is nice.

I try to pan the mono stuff to where it is in the stereo pairs. Y'know, mute the close mic and listen to where it is in the stereo mics.

[fuzzface777]

thanks headroom!