Recording a Bass Drum: Endless Fiddling

I like creating a midi track from the audio track and enhancing the kick with an synth kick.

These guys have some good videos on eq'ing kicks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRi01OZ7LIM

Im with ya on the Old School,  Nice to get it as close as you can recording first. 

Wasnt sure if the rest would help ya out as well.  Im running a D112 recording back through a Yamaha mixer. One thing I have done if yu dont have an extra body is postition your mic's on the kick, record it, loop it back through the board and EQ it out off the loop.  Gives ya plenty of time to get it the way ya want it as far as EQ goes.

Another thing is possibly using a Transient shaper to tone down ringing. Danny just posted a real good video on it also.

Click was probably a poor choice of word. Click is the spikey attack of the beater. Not a bad thing but for what I am doing, don't need much.

I still think that a lot of the resultant sound you get is in how the bass drum really sounds in real life. Also when you say it sounds punchy etc it might sound like that up higher where the drummer is but get your head right down in front of the hole and have a listen there, it is often a different story.

It is hard but you can kneel down there and operate the beater by hand while listening close to where the mic is. Both heads effect the sound a lot. Also the damping inside also has a big impact. It should be touching the edges of the heads to a certain extent but not kill the sound either. I often put a small brick on the damping to keep it in place.

The front head can still effect the sound too. The batter head obviously has a big impact on the sound. Tension etc, pitch etc. What type of head is the batter head? There are some clever batter bass drum heads that have an extra ring around the edge to control unwanted rings etc..

I am lucky because I play a Sonor kit and really those drums are better than nearly everything else on the planet. I say that because even if my bass drum is poorly tuned it still sounds killer. That must say something. (I can put an SM58 in there and still get a killer sound) If I spend time tuning it sounds ridiculous! So get the drum sounding as best as you possibly can after all if that is not right nothing will help you from that point on. You should be able to get a killer recorded sound with no processing virtually. It can be done.

As far as the mic is concerned I am not a great fan of the AKG D112 either. Sure it is a good mic but I find a Shure B52 sounds quite different and better. Not sure about the Heil mic. We have an Audix D6 at work where I teach and I have used that and it is also great. I also have the Antares Mic Modeler plugin and I find that it is quite excellent at changing the sound from the recorded mic in pretty much anything you want to hear! That plug works!!!

Rimshot mentions below to put the mic in front of the hole. Try that for sure. I put the mic right inside the hole inside the bass drum. That is where I get the better sound for me anyway. You don't need to isoloate the bass drum with any covers. But saying that I have also got great results buy putting a large piece of heavy carpet right around the bass drum to form a cannon like extension in front of it and put the mic outside the hole but still inside the tunnel obviously. If you do that you need to block the end of the tunnel somehow as well to keep the isolation.

I got some advice from a very well known drummer once, he said to aim the mike to the point where the head meets the wood.

I never looked back, but I use a mike aiming to the beater too(from the back side of the kick).

I appreciate the advice. I am using four mics, 2 OH, snare and BD.
I've had my friend play the drums and I think the BD sound is working.  The beater head has a muffler ring

What's it sound like in front of the hole? Inside? Well I've tried all sorts of combos and I guess with my particular kit I have just not found the magic mix of tune, muffle and placement. I'll keep trying. I'm just shocked it doesn't sound better than it does pre-processing, based upon what I am hearing and seeing.

I have a 20" Pearl that has an Evans EQ2 batter head and the stock Pearl resonant head with no hole. I use the Shure Beta 52 and a Shure SM57. Both are pretty much 3" from the front head about 2-3" to the right of where the beater would hit (obviously extrapolating here as the beater would not be hitting the resonant head). I have a pair of overheads as well. The B 52 gets excellent low end sound. The Sm57 gets mid and higher range freq and a good crack. The overheads get good crack as well. Record a few drum tracks and then mix the sound volumes to get the sound you're looking for. As far as EQ, I boost about 1k on the SM57 kick mic and low pass the B 52 while boosting at about 650 hz. In my mix, the 57 and 52 are quite low - the overhead gets a great sound and I use the 57 and 52 to fill in. Maybe you are trying to fill in using your kick mics and they are overpowering your mix. My bass drum sounds great to my ears. No muffling at all (other than what the EQ2 head provides). As stated earlier, you need the kick drum to sound 'right' to your ears first. Play with the positioning of the kick mics until you hear what you like. There is no magic bullet. I set my mic position and happen to like what I got, so I keep it there. I remember it's position in case I move my drumset. The key is that the kick drum has to sound "right" when you listen to it by ear. Also remember that distance can increase your low frequency response. So try moving a mic farther back (noting that you will get bleed from the other parts of the drumset). Try porting your resonant head and placing a mic inside the drum. Point the mic at where the beater strikes the batter head or aim it towards the shell. Experiment. When I was using a mic inside the drum via a front head hole, I aimed the mic at the beater from inside, about 6" inside the drum (as measured from the front head to the front of the mic). Placing the mic directly in front of the front head hole might not give you the sound you want because of the amount of air rushing out of that hole when you hit the drum. My suggestion would be to move the mic farther inside or farther away from the actual hole. Or do what I do - no hole. Remember that you can keep fiddling with your sound endlessly - or just get what sounds good and play drums. I honestly just get a good sound, make sure there's no strange buzzes/rattles, check for phasing, and play the hell out of my drums. You can hear a test drum sound I uploaded to SoundCloud, Search for deralds you should find it. Its just an example of a drum sound but you can see if it's something you like.