Getting drums 'in front' of you

[Matt_Quinn]

So I listen to a lot of music that uses live drummers, and I really love the way that you can hear a live drummers kit sort of sitting narrowly in front of you, and how any reverberant sound sort of radiates outwards from the kit. I find normal reverbs to produce sort of the opposite effect, where anything you run through it sounds more distant, like you hear the attack & then it fades 'away' from you instead of toward you. I've had a little success using a Utility on the drum track, narrowing it down to maybe 50%, then using the Max Convolution Reverb Position control to push the 'listening position' forward. but it's still not getting me where I want to be. A lot of the stuff I'm listening to and aiming to emulate are live recordings where the full kit is obviously miked, but there's also a pair of audience mics at FOH picking up the PA system. I'm wondering if that pair of distant mics added in is what gives them that nice sense of being in front of the listener, and if so, how to emulate that.

[regretfullySaid]

Distant mics do the opposite of what you're aiming for. You want your drum samples to be as dry as possible and if they're from a live kit then you want the close mic'd drums. The exception could be overhead mics and maybe a distanced kick mic for that extra bit of presence. and depth.
Then when you do add reverb you probably don't want to go over 20%, more around 10%.
For the close mic dry sound anyway.
Consider that an opinion.

The other thing is with how the drum kit was mic'd. Some experienced guys could use some M/S techniques (with mic relations, not post processing) that could help out with that sound.

[Matt_Quinn]

Distant mics do the opposite of what you're aiming for. You want your drum samples to be as dry as

possible and if they're from a live kit then you want the close mic'd drums. The exception could be overhead mics and

maybe a distanced kick mic for that extra bit of presence. and depth.
Then when you do add reverb you probably don't want to go over 20%, more around 10%.
For the close mic dry sound anyway.
Consider that an opinion.

The other thing is with how the drum kit was mic'd. Some experienced guys could use some M/S techniques (with mic

relations, not post processing) that could help out with that sound.

I find that if I make them as dry as possible (turn off all overheads/room mics etc), the kit sounds too artificially close/in your

face. I like the power you get from that sound, but I just want to narrow it, then push the whole thing back in the soundstage like 10'. I record a lot of live music for fun, and I get the drum sound I like most in this small club with no PA - the drum kit is literally about 10' away from me, and when listening back, it occupies the same exact spot in the soundstage that it does when I am there live. It just sounds more realistic to me than even many good studio recordings.

I definitely have only been using reverb in the 17-20% area (or alternatively using it on a return track 100% wet, but with much less signal being sent to it).

Struggling to find a good example on the YouToubez, but this is pretty close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uriOpGs ... rZ&index=4

[regretfullySaid]

Ok, definitely not what I had in mind. Can't say much else then except I would think keep trying with the convolution reverb and maybe even apply more wet than before
actually play around with compression (maybe lower ratio around 4:1 but rounded knee and low threshold, mid attack, fast release) and swap before/after reverb, or have 2 compressors, 1 with more compression before reverb and one with less compression after reverb

[memes_33]

thoughts/suggestions- pan the drums as you expect to hear them live (kick in middle, snare slightly one side, high-hat slightly other side, etc.). use parallel compression (mono) and keep the mono compressed track in the panned dead center. use delays instead of reverb to give the track 'space' and keep the delays hard-panned left & right.

the panning should give you the panned effect of being in front of the kit, while the compressed channel in dead center should give you that 'forward' feel. the delay will give you the effect of a bigger space without the mud/distance with reverb.

[fishmonkey]

these two articles are an excellent primer on using delays and reverbs:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul08/a ... everb1.htm

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug08/a ... 2_0808.htm

in a small club most of the sound is direct with some early reflections, so you won't want much, if any, reverb (which will make the sound more distant). if you are using reverb then the early reflections and pre-delay settings are really important.

as mentioned above, delay is your friend. EQing delays and reverbs is also an important part of the art of space-sculpting.

also, if you are trying to achieve a natural 'live' sound, then trying for the least processing and effects is often better...

[TomViolenz]

Def. not my field of expertise, but I think trying m/s EQing with EQ8 should help some.

A good and easy, but expensive way, would be to go with a good stereo placer plug like Panorama 5.

[jrob6716]

Ive been using the abes EQ L/R mode in place of panning a bit and it seems to do a pretty awesome job of creating space

[Matt_Quinn]

Awesome, thank you so much for the suggestions everyone. That SOS article looks great, going to have to set aside some time to devote to it.

I actually had some pretty solid success last night with a different technique. I set up 2 returns inside a drum rack, and used the regular old Ableton reverb set to 'Empty Club' on each, then panned each one hard left & right. Then I sent particular drums to each panned return, so like the main snare went just a few db more to the right than the right, but pretty close. The hi hats I sent a good chunk of to the left. This left a nice punchy, middle intact for all the drums, but stil let you hear a nice tail that moves out to the sides of the stereo field instead of backwards. Not exactly what I set out to do, but I liekdthe results a lot.

I think tonight I am going to try to set up a pair of mics 10' or so in front of my monitors paying a totally dry drum loop just to see what happens.

[JoshG567]

I find it's a combination of factors. Each drum in my virtual kit has the same channel strip rack on it with a gate, compressor, and EQ. It's important to take away the parts of the drum hits that don't really make as big a psychological contribution to hearing them and to compress such that the attacks are strong before the gain reduction kicks in. So, those long resonating tails on toms should be gated, the high click of the kick should be filtered and all of the low end from the overheads has to go, just for a few examples. This way only the most crucial frequencies are jumping into your ears with as little interference as possible.

I use a hall reverb and a room reverb as return tracks and send just little bits of the dry tracks, not enough to always hear the tails, but enough to feel like something is missing when the return is muted. Then a super compressed room track I find helps with natural sound. Bus all the drums into one group/folder track to unify them in the mixer and then put MORE compression on that group track, I like some parallel compression with the glue.