I´m a drummer myself, I´m also a recording engineer, and I have my few .02c.
Get a good drummer, make him play the sanre with rimshots and you´ll have explosion no matter what snare you´re using.
Of course, the deeper, the better. I would suggest some 14"x7", brass snare with die cast rims.
That with a good rimshot, and you´re pretty much done, all the compression and EQing will make sound even better.

Well, you can do it the easy way, or you can get as complicated as you'd like. There are no shortage of tricks for exploding snares, toms, kiks, whatever... I'm not Thrill or e-cue, but these are some fairly well-known techniques:

Method 1: Great drummer, great snare, tuned and played perfectly and with authority in a lovely, lively room. Put a mic somewhere around the snare, mix with the rest of the drum mics, maybe add a little hall reverb to the snare and enjoy. This method really works. Just not everytime.

OTOH

Method 2: All (or as many as possible) of the above + condenser (in phase) with 57 (or insert favorite dynamic mic here), + shotgun mic pointing at snare, or LD OH pointing at snare, or ribbon mic pointing at snare, ALL placed for optimal phase relationships.

Record

At mix, carefully contemplate exactly what aspects of the snare need emphasis/deemphasis in the song.

Mult snr tops.

Run one thru SPL TD w/no sustain and max attack. Run it through again, 2, 3, however many times it takes to get brutal. This is your 'stick impact' snare track.

Run another top mic thru a Sansamp, Marshall stack, Triple Rec or whatever for a distorted fat, low mid thump. Delay this by 10-30 ms. This is your low boom snare track.

Run bottom mic thru low & hi PFs, etching out top and bottom. Delay by 15-35 ms. this is your buzzzz snare track. You can also distort this if you like.

Run shotgun or ribbon spot snare thru low & hi PFs, etching out top and bottom. This is your distant snare track.

Set up gates for snare tracks. Key all gates off of (HP'd and LP'd) signal from either the top dynamic or condenser. Adjust each gate properly, so that no portion of the attack is lost, but gate opens and closes appropriately for each track.

Create busses for snare. 'Nuke' all snare tracks (blended appropriately) thru RF Boiler/1176/Distressor(S) (whatever) with med fast attack, fast release settings. Adjust to allow the initial transient thru, but quickly clamping down and bringing up the decay (as fast as possible) to hold the body or sustain. EQ & blend to taste.

Create buss for drums. Run some combination(s) of kik, snares, toms, room(s) thru TG1/SSL/C2 (whatever), with settings similar to the snare comp busses. EQ appropriately. Blend to taste.

Create auxs. On one aux, send bottom snare to room type reverb, predelayed from 10-30ms for buzzz sustain. EQ & Blend to taste.

On another aux, send snares and toms (possibly room(s)) to room/plate/hall type reverb of choice, predelayed from 6-25ms (so drums don't step back in mix space) to add body, depth, and space. Adjust decay so that reverb ends before the next kik is struck (on average). EQ and blend to taste.

Blah, blah, blah, etc. This should be enough to keep you busy for awhile!

The important thing with all these busses and mults, is that you ABSOLUTELY MUST retain proper phase/polarity relationships for it to work. Delay compensation (if dealing w/digital medium) is of the utmost priority. If there are delays (other than the intentional ones), they will DESTROY the impact you're creating using this method.

Have fun.

here's my sample I use. It's an 80's eames snare drum
miced with a 57 on top and 421 on bottom. Mixed with
a tiny bit of the u87ai room mics. No digi reverb but very heavily limited
'brick wall' style. It almost has an 80's flavor

Personally I have yet to hear a quality drum sound on a Nickelhack Record
but we all have different tastes.... luckily

www.setvar.com/eames.wav

I just wanted to know how to get that big , fat exploding ''earthquake'' snaresound :D

Of course it's a must to have a perfectly tuned kit and a good drummer. I'm just not enough into the whole mixing material so i thought you might reach this sound by doing some complex chains...

Thank y'all for ya 2 cents :D

Blind

sorry for the mislead keyterm. the actual word is "mult".

here's the thread tho, to save you the trouble:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showt...highlight=mult

(the fun starts on 2nd page)

here's another that's an incredible read, between thrill and jazzius:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showt...highlight=mult

happy readin'

awesome dude.... thank you very much!!

Blind

Its funny over the last few years i've kinda simplified it a bit.

I guess back then my whole mantra was that "i wouldn't use samples and i would make the sounds work no matter what".

I've changed my stance some what(once in a while i will mix in a sample or two) and subquently i make the mults maybe one to two channels deep at the most.

My favorite for exploding snare:

1-duct tape 3 cans of WD-40 around a road flare in the center.

2-take the top skin off the snare.

3-put duct taped device inside snare.

4-light flare.

5-very quickly wrench top skin back on. Don't worry about tuning it. The Wd-40 will take care of that. Speed is the key word. You don't want to be messing with the snare when that road flare burns down to the point it heats up the cans.

6-hastily but calmly retreat to control room but make sure drummer stays with snare. Control rooms with poured concrete front walls are best.

7-On second thought go outside for a smoke snack or whatever for a bit. You don't want to be around any glass when that exploding snare happens.

8-When your sure the event happened (and you'll be sure) go back inside and thank the drummer for doing such a great job.

9-send flowers to drummer's family.

Use a dynamite / dynamic mic? heh

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I guess by now you might be starting to realize that the sound of every snare on every record is at least a little bit different...? And that depending on the song and the arrangement, they all sit at different places in the mix?

Blackcatdigi's post (or the link to thrill's!) has enough ninjitsu to sculpt pretty much anything. Now go practice!

sure , thank y'all thumbsup

And by the way... of course i know that it depends on each snare , tuning and song but i think we can talk about about rough guidelines right?

won't blame somebody with over 7,000 posts saving more time to give us mortals priceless tips! thumbsup

the techniques still apply, and i still go back to those threads every now and then when things don't work well.

thanks.

I tried this a couple of times and it helped add some much needed beef/low end
to an otherwise uninspired snare sound. It is along the same lines as Re-amping
a guitar track.

what i did was send the snare mix out thru an aux to an (amplified, duh) stage
monitor in the recording room. I used a single 15 x tweeter, nothing special as
long as it's pretty clean and gets LOUD. Then we found a way to mount a snare
drum about 1" parallel to the plane of, and centered on, the monitor speaker,
snares out, batter side facing the speaker.

Send your snare track out to the monitor & crank it, recording it to an empty track.
You'll then be able to play with different mics, placements, eqs to get a variety of results. Use a deep snare for added depth. I had really good results doing this with
not much special in the way of gear. Who knows? It may really suck for what you
want. It's worth a try if all else fails.

Have the dummer play with big sticks. WHen I look for that sound I use Vic Firth Generals. Rim shots. The resonance of a good wooden drum will give you enough of what you are looking for. It's true.

Then run it through your deely bobs and multi freq compress and mult it to hell. But realize that if you get THAT_SOUND in the first place ....

Use an eighth note pre-delay on a Lexicon 300 Large Hall reverb.

-R

This is a case from the snare slut who was tracking next door in the A room.
This pict doesn't do it justice. This is a freaking huge roadcase.