Overheads

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Overheads

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:39 pm

I miss our old conversations about audio.

That being said, let's talk drum overheads. I've had good luck with spaced pair and x/y personally, but what are other people's preference and why?

I did a search for this topic, and oddly enough we don't seem to have covered it in depth, with the exception of when Dylan wanted help with drum sounds in general.
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Postby macrae11 » Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:04 pm

Well even though you pretty well know my response, I'll put i down on 'paper' so everyone can see it.

Generally speaking I'm not a huge fan of spaced pairs unless I need to really reduce room tone/bleed by micing close to the drums, ie in a live situation. I find it can tend to give an un-naturally wide image, which I don't like.

Usually I'll start with something close to an ORTF stereo technique, and then adjust from there. Depending on the width of the kit, size of the room, amount of desired room tone, sound of room mics(if any) I'll adjust the angle and height of the mics. If it's a small kit that I want a tighter more mono feel to, I'll lean more towards an XY, that's fairly low. I'll often end up there for country stuff. For more open rocky stuff, I'll tend to go a bit higher, and with a wider angle, depending on the size of the kit. I tend to get the majority of my snare drum tone from the overheads so I'll try to position them so that the snare is more or less in the centre of the image.

I usually prefer LDC's over SDC. I like the slightly less accurate off axis response which I find tends to give a slightly "thicker" stereo image. My current fav's are 414's, although if I had another 87, I'd quite probably use them. I also love the Manley Reference Gold, AKG The Tube, and the Lawson L251, but I've only ever had the chance to try those mics out in mono. I don't mind mono overheads too much as long as I have some nice strong stereo room mics, but I find it harder to find a good balance between an appropriate amount of room tone, and a nice stereo spread.
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:43 pm

I tend to go with a spaced pair of condensers. I prefer large diaphragm when going for a "full kit" overhead sound and small diaphragm when doing "cymbal mics". Of course it isn't set in stone.

The position over the kit will be dictated by the player, the room sound, and the setup itself.

An important thing for me has always been, when doing a stereo pair overhead, adjust position for "image" separation, do not twist the pan pot.

And yes, after all the mics and all the years, I do still love any and all 414s I've tried on OHs.
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Postby macrae11 » Fri Oct 15, 2010 10:26 pm

Malcolm Boyce wrote:
An important thing for me has always been, when doing a stereo pair overhead, adjust position for "image" separation, do not twist the pan pot.



+7.5
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:23 am

Since you didn't specify in your post, I'll talk live sound.

Tonight I used a pair of SM81s on OHs. they were positioned as a spaced pair mostly for cymbals. It was an instrumental jazz piano trio. The kit was 7 channels of drums "close" miced is the fairly typical fashion.

Perhaps those of us doing drums should keep a running blog in this thread.
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Postby macrae11 » Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:32 am

Live is a totally different animal. I'll typically end up with a spaced pair in those scenarios

Keeping a drum/general micing blog is a great idea. Maybe we could even post some examples with artists permission.
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Postby Mathieu Benoit » Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:39 am

macrae11 wrote: Maybe we could even post some examples with artists permission.

Go ahead you have my permission.

I have an example of a mono overhead I'm going to upload this week. First time I've ever done mono for an overhead, and it's because we only have one of the mic in question. It sounds so good though that it makes me forget about stereo for a while.
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Postby Mathieu Benoit » Tue Oct 19, 2010 12:03 am

L251 Test

This was my first time ever really trying a mono overhead. I was with Andrew and this was very late in the evening the night of long day working a session. We had a couple of drinks into us and we decided to try some stuff out. We wanted to really try this mic out as we only had a few days to decide if we wanted to send it back. So we decided to see how it worked as a drum overhead in mono. I believe this was just the L251 going into the Great River, but it may have been the Millenia.

Long story short... We didn't send it back.
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Postby Scott DeVarenne » Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:21 pm

macrae11 wrote:
Malcolm Boyce wrote:
An important thing for me has always been, when doing a stereo pair overhead, adjust position for "image" separation, do not twist the pan pot.



+7.5


Let me see if I understand this- pair of overheads, they would be panned hard (one left, one right). If, for example, things sounded too "wide", reposition mics, keeping them panned all the way left and right. Right?
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:55 pm

You have it correct Scott.
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Postby macrae11 » Tue Oct 19, 2010 2:20 pm

That is of course if you're doing a standard stereo overhead micing technique. If you're going mono, or doing something different like a Recorderman type setup.
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Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:26 pm

So here's another couple of examples to go along with Matt's first one.

These are the same drums, in the same room, with the same drummer. Different mics and pres, and the room has been gobo'd somewhat in order to tame things a bit. These are both done with 414B-ULS, in basically the format discussed above. One issue with this setup is in order to make the snare sound in the center the image shifts a little bit to the left for the rest of the kit.(audience perspective with a right handed drummer) While I like the floor toms over on the side, the high rack tom is centered, or even a little to the left of the image, which is accurate, but not necessarily how I want it. So I'll pan the close mic on the rack tom a bit to the right to pull it over.

First sample is a little more gobo'd for a bit tighter sound. Sample 1

Second sample is the same mic setup, but a little more open, but still more controlled than Matt's sample. Sample 2


Also Matt I can't remember, but I think we might have had a little high shelf on the L251 when tracking your sample. It is a bright mic, but I don't know if it's that much brighter.
Last edited by macrae11 on Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:28 pm

My links don't seem to be embedding. Anyone see what I did stupid? Copy and paste works.
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:55 pm

macrae11 wrote:My links don't seem to be embedding. Anyone see what I did stupid?
It doesn't like the apostrophes in the URL.
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Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:01 pm

Malcolm Boyce wrote:
macrae11 wrote:My links don't seem to be embedding. Anyone see what I did stupid?
It doesn't like the apostrophes in the URL.

I had the file names adjusted. Repost your links minus the apostrophes and you'll be fine.
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Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:15 pm

macrae11 wrote:So here's another couple of examples to go along with Matt's first one.

These are the same drums, in the same room, with the same drummer. Different mics and pres, and the room has been gobo'd somewhat in order to tame things a bit. These are both done with 414B-ULS, in basically the format discussed above. One issue with this setup is in order to make the snare sound in the center the image shifts a little bit to the left for the rest of the kit.(audience perspective with a right handed drummer) While I like the floor toms over on the side, the high rack tom is centered, or even a little to the left of the image, which is accurate, but not necessarily how I want it. So I'll pan the close mic on the rack tom a bit to the right to pull it over.

Is it because of how I have my kit set up? Because I'm about to change that rather drastically. In many cases I'm sure that you'd run into this problem as very few people have a snare centered in there kit. Never considered it though before you mentioned it.

macrae11 wrote:Also Matt I can't remember, but I think we might have had a little high shelf on the L251 when tracking your sample. It is a bright mic, but I don't know if it's that much brighter.

I don't remember high shelfing it. I'm not even sure what we would have used as a high shelf if we did (maybe the Avalon?) The 251 does have a bass boost switch though, I'd have been curious to see what it would've sounded with it on.
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Postby macrae11 » Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:12 pm

Drumwaiter wrote:
Is it because of how I have my kit set up? Because I'm about to change that rather drastically. In many cases I'm sure that you'd run into this problem as very few people have a snare centered in there kit. Never considered it though before you mentioned it.


It's a problem inherent with that particular mic position. Unless you've got a Terry Bozzio style setup the snare is almost always off center.

Drumwaiter wrote:I don't remember high shelfing it. I'm not even sure what we would have used as a high shelf if we did (maybe the Avalon?) The 251 does have a bass boost switch though, I'd have been curious to see what it would've sounded with it on.

Hard to say. That night's a bit of a foggy memory now.
I think it might have been the Avalon
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Wed Oct 20, 2010 8:18 pm

As for the stereo imaging of the drums, I find the obsessing on what is "correct" to be hilarious. How many arguments about "audience" or "player" perspective can one take? Also, I don't fret about the snare or toms necessarily being "centered" in the OHs as long as it sounds good and balanced when listening to the whole kit. To me that is most important, and with most pop/rock-ish drum sets, the drums themselves aren't going to be even remotely symmetrical. I forget who said, "In real life, drums are mono for everyone but the player!"

So now I'll pony up a sampledone with a pair of KSM137s with I think the steep HPF on.

I really like the mono sample Matt posted. The 414s sound messed up to me. Was that a set up for tracking something or was it just you guys trying stuff out? What pattern were they set to?
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Postby Mathieu Benoit » Wed Oct 20, 2010 9:04 pm

Malcolm Boyce wrote:As for the stereo imaging of the drums, I find the obsessing on what is "correct" to be hilarious. How many arguments about "audience" or "player" perspective can one take? Also, I don't fret about the snare or toms necessarily being "centered" in the OHs as long as it sounds good and balanced when listening to the whole kit. To me that is most important, and with most pop/rock-ish drum sets, the drums themselves aren't going to be even remotely symmetrical. I forget who said, "In real life, drums are mono for everyone but the player!"

Yeah, but the snare works well to be centered. IT's the main focus of the kit in most cases. The rest I don't care as much about as all that, but if the snare isn't centered it can bug me in. But I'm nowhere near that anal yet about all of this... Yet.

Malcolm Boyce wrote:So now I'll pony up a sampledone with a pair of KSM137s with I think the steep HPF on.

How were the mics placed for this one? Spaced pair?

Malcolm Boyce wrote:I really like the mono sample Matt posted.
The 414s sound messed up to me. Was that a set up for tracking something or was it just you guys trying stuff out?

Oddly enough the mono sample was the one where we were just messing around. The 414 samples were for actual work. When you say "messed up" how do you mean exactly? I'm not sure I follow...
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:39 pm

Drumwaiter wrote:Yeah, but the snare works well to be centered. IT's the main focus of the kit in most cases...
For me, not necessarily the case to be "centered"... and it can still be the "focus" and not perfectly in the middle.

Drumwaiter wrote:
Malcolm Boyce wrote:So now I'll pony up a sampledone with a pair of KSM137s with I think the steep HPF on.

How were the mics placed for this one? Spaced pair?
Yes.

Drumwaiter wrote:
Malcolm Boyce wrote:The 414s sound messed up to me.
When you say "messed up" how do you mean exactly? I'm not sure I follow...
Sorry for the vagueness. I guess what I could say is, not what I expect any 414s to sound like. There may be more going on there signal path or processing wise that I'm not giving credit to.
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:50 pm

Drumwaiter wrote:
Malcolm Boyce wrote:The 414s sound messed up to me.
When you say "messed up" how do you mean exactly? I'm not sure I follow...


I listen again...

For me, the ambiance and top end sound so natural on the mono track compared to both of the stereo tracks. That's why I questioned the polar patterns.

As a lifelong fan of all varieties of 414s on OHs, I just have a preconceived notion of what they usually do for me. As always, it's just a matter of personal taste.
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Postby Malcolm Boyce » Sat Oct 23, 2010 7:22 pm

Tonight's live installment is from the "Joey Kitson" show at Imperial Theatre. It was something where a "rootsy" approach was appropriate so OHs are a pair 414B-XLS with each mic centered more or less straight over the two toms of the 4 piece kit, with a D112 on Bass Drum and SM81 on Snare for some definition.

The OHs get a pretty good picture of the whole kit this way, with a great focus on the toms if positioned well, and with the right player.
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