After all the talk about snaredrum mics and the fact that I finally had the time to do some testing myself, I did a little close snare mic shootout.

Contenders:
SM57
MD441
Royer R-121
Josephson C42

The snare was a Pearl brass Sensitone 5.5"x14", with a new coated ambassador. I did a quick placement of the mics, purely intuitiv and only replaced the MD441 because I thought it was a little too close and therefore too dull. I played the complete kit to so you hear the leakage. I only put the snaredrum mics up. I tried (without too much effort, kinda lazy...) to get roughly the same levels. Preamp was a BA312a, converter was stock Yamaha DM1000 and the files are 48Khz, 24bit.
I had a problem with the C42: this mic is too hot for close snare drum. With the pad in and no gain, I could just prevent the AD converter from clipping, but obviously the mic compresses quite a bit....

So, here come the uploads, about 2,5MB per file, about 18s of me bashing away.

Oh, first takes only heh .

Greetings,
Dirk

So, what's your favourite, I know mine heh .

Greetings,
Dirk

Well, obviously the c42 is clipping, but by itself it sounds pretty good. Of course, once it gets to the mix it might not have enough body, or it sound alot worse, you don't know until then really.

oh, I should add, I'm listening at work with sheap sony headphones (MDR-006)

Yep, Youn hit it on the head.

The C42 sounds great soloed but with the whole kit and the whole track who knows?? If this were the whole drum sound that would be my pick but obviously this is not the whole drum sound. If you get a chance to pop the C42 into the whole track I would love to hear what kind of weight it has.

Oh and nice playing by the way, very cool.

Problem with the C42 is, I would not know how not to clip it. Obviously now there is way too much bleed and personally I don't think it has enough snap and meat (although the lack of snap could be due to clipping).

The R-121 does not do it for me on close snare and the MD441 is rather dull. Perhaps with the high-shelf in it could be a lot better, but the hi-hat leakage - which sounds a little but weird now already - would only get worse.

I really dig the SM57. With a little brightening up the bleed won't be too much of a problem and there will be plenty of meat, snap and tops. Yep, staying with the SM57 for next sessions heh . Although I definitely could see the taped KM84 work to brighten up the SM57 and not use eq...

Greetings,
Dirk

Thanks Dirk !

I absolutely love the C42 !
The SM57 is very good too, and the other mics give a special tone color to the sound.
Your samples allow me to listen the BAE 312a mic pres, which I was waiting for long !! Sounds AWESOME, I love it thumbsup

Yeah I like the C42 but you are right, it might not have enough body for the track. I would need to hear it in context of the whole song or at least with the drums and even then I don't know what the source sounded like so.... ?? The big trick there is the relitive volume of the C42, it is so much louder it sounds better.

About the output, you chould try one of these. People with API pres should carry a few of these around at all times...

heh

My goal has been to go with an SM7 for snare, that is coming in the next week or so. I have never used one but I have always been a fan of SM57's on snare. It gets knocked alot round these parts because it is the easy choice but it has good rejection and takes EQ pretty well. It has done good by me so far anyway.

I would say that you might want to try mod'ing your 57 to take the transformer out of the path. Lowers the output but for drums that is not such a big deal. Without the transformer people say it is pretty close to an SM7, more open on the top and more beaf on the bottom while keeping the nice mid range attack (if that is the right word). I just did this mod to one of my 57's, we will see I guess.

Thanks for posting the clips. thumbsup

Josephson makes two versions of these. I believe the C42h is the high spl version. That would probably take care of the clipping problem.

-bee

The Royer has some real meat on it, doesn't it? Soloing these up the C42 is really satisfying, as others have said, but putting any of these in context might yield different conclusions. Thanks for doing this in any case.

Your playing is very nice, by the way.

John-

Thanks for the compliment. And yes, the key is in how it works with the other mic's and how good you can process the signal. That's why I love the SM57, might need some brigtening up -which is not a problem- but lends itself very well to all kind of compression approaches. Plus the bleed from the hi-hat is very controllable.

I tend to build my drumsound with a mono room mic, in and outside kick mic and close snare. After that the overheads (which are really more cymbal mic's, but I make sure I get a workable kitsound with them anyway) are brought up and then perhaps some close toms...

Greetings,
Dirk

I wish my room were a little better to afford that approach, Dirk. You may be familiar with the Talk Talk record called Laughing Stock in which truly glorious drum sounds are achived with a single distant LD condenser.

A question please: When you refer to in & out kick mics, is your outside mic a front-of-drum unit placed at several feet for LF capture, or are you using a mic on the beater head for attack as your outside mic?

If it ever amuses you, I'd love to hear a full kit mix of the sample you posted above or even just a room mic of the session. Did you record only the snare mics or did you have some other channels open at the time?

Best wishes,

John-

My room isn't that great at all, but with a R-121 about 5 feet from the kit, heavy compressed with a Distressor in nuke mode and some serious eq-ing, it gives me exactly the gell and room sound I need to make a nice mono image of the drums together with the close kick and snare mic's.
in: mostly D112 in the middle of the drum pointing at where the beater hits the head
out: something like 1-2 foot outside the kick, sometimes with a tunnel, to get some space around the kick. I use a Little Labs IBP on the inner mic to get the lowend phase the way I like it (not necessarily the most "in-phase" sound). Sometimes I key gate the outside mic from the inside, sometimes I roll of all highs to just get a kind of low end boom... Sometimes I leave the highs in to get some more definition, all depends on what's happening in the mix.
I did not record any other mic's with those snare samples. I do have full kit samples with the mic's like I described, but without close toms, so the toms aren't full enough... I'll see if I can find something suitable to post. Problem is, I was just bashing away and the drumming sounds like ass .

Greetings,
Dirk

Wish my rear sounded like that...

sm7 is my most used mic on snare actually, though I generally like micing side-of-shell 3-6 inches away.

I probably wouldn't call it 'beaf on the bottom', that might seem to suggest an agressive behaviour, it's more silky down there IMO

OK, here is a quick drummix thingy .

You hear the inside kick mic first, then the key-gated U195 is added, then the close snare mic (compressed with Distressor, EQ-ed with Buzz audio MPE1.1), then the room mic is added (crushed with Distressor in Nuke during tracking) and last the overheads are added. At the end you hear a little room programm added, send from close snare and overheads.

Of course, hearing the drums by themselves like this is a little pointless. Especially eq-ing of the snare and kick, amount of room mic etc. is all very dependent on the mix, type of song yadayada....

And I did not pay too much attention to phase relationships while setting the mic's up, since I was actually experimenting with a few separate things. Also, during a tracking session, I would pay more attention to tuning of the snare and placement and compression of the room mic. Ah f*ck, whatever, you can hear how it sounds and perhaps it's in some way usefull...

Greetings,
Dirk

Amazing !

What are the preamps used ? Only BAE 312a ? Do you have pics of this session ?

Thanks

Kick in and snare are 312a's, overheads are TG2, room and FOK are DM1000 preamps.
As you can hear, no close mic's on the toms, which would normally be the Audix D2's trough the DM1000 preamps.

Greetings,
Dirk