How to deal with processing snare when bled to Overheads and Room mics

  I use Superior Drummer and like the sound of "some" of the snare bleeding into the Overheads and Room mics. When trying to process my snare it is almost all for naught because the sound doesn't change much, unless I reduce the bleed to the OH's and Room a good degree, which is what I usually do. I just want to get a good smack going with a transient shaper (Trans-x) or compressor. .............................................................................................What do you guys do? I haven't tried using the transient shaper on the OH's and Room yet, just reducing the bleed until there isn't much snare left in them.

But isn't that the whole point of overheads and rooms :-) It's not really bleed when the whole point of them is to pick up the whole kit to begin with.

True, bleed wouldn't be the appropriate term.

I guess it depends though on if you want them to act like true overheads (whole kit) or as simply cymbal type mics (so no individual cymbal mics - which I tend to hate - except sometimes maybe hats). Set-up could vary with that decision.

I think of the overheads as a great compliment to the primary snare mic sound. Though some styles of music treat the primary snare as a compliment to the drum sound of the overheads. Any approach can work, you just need to decide on the VISION!

@Dean: Yeah, You got me on that one! I guess bleed might not be the right term I should be using. The room mics especially add a lot to the sound. Just a little too much rattle in them on this song.

I don't use Superior but in Addictive Drums, you can control the amount of bleed within Addictive's mixer. Check out Superior's mixer. You may have the same control.

Jimbo: in my experience, it's been rare that I use overheads to control the crack in my snare drum. I DO use them to enhance the rest of the kit, but when I want more crack in the snare, I put more crack on the snare track exclusively. If you want, I can pm you a little 8 minute video that I did for another site showing some of the things I do to get more crack in situations like this? Let me know and I'll send a pm your way.

-Danny

Probalby one of the biggest differences in drum sounds in the last decade or so is that it used to be that most of the time the overheads were probably the bulk of the sound. The directs would be used to enhance them where required, sometimes just a kick mic. These days, as less and less realistic drums have become hip, it seems like more folks are using directs the most and using overheads as an ancillary thing.

Personally, I think it always sounds best if the overheads/rooms are providing the bulk of the sound. I will try to use as little direct mics as possible. This also much reduces phasing issues and bleed issues. I started off thinking that I had to have twenty mics, then slowly used less and less and the sound got better and better, at least in terms of what I think a good drum sound is. Overheads, kick mic, and rooms is a nice way to get a good sound, if you want drums that sound like drums.

Ultimately, IMO, if the overheads don't sound like you want them, then either use a different kit or, if recording your own, then adjust them. Or swap out just the snare and find a snare that has the right room sound. It's very common for drummers to try out lots of snares to find one that has the right sound in the room.

at least in my application of superior drummer, i have found that when TOM 1 is hit it picks up a lot of the strainer from the snare. at first i turned off the bleed, then came to realize it sounds realistic.

To be fair, in order to offer a heavy bleed option, without doing it purely by fakery, the folks recording samples for stuff like BFD woudln't be able to do things like angle and place mics to reduce bleed. They need to get plenty of it so that it's available, and therefore most folks probably would turn it down somewhat, in order to get (albeit much more easily) what probably would have been done in most cases naturally via mic placement/angling.

So it's not necessarily 'fake' to turn down the bleed a good in BFD. Even back in the day plenty of folks worked to minimize bleed, according to the sound they were going for. Not everyone was looking to do Levi Breaks. I reduce it somewhat, but never a lot. It does mean that everything becomes interactive, which can be tricky. Change the snare EQ and suddenly other things can start sounding different, depending on how much they are bleeding into the snare mic.

But, again, since I use minimal direct mic's, bleed isn't nearly so much of an issue. Usually one of the kicks (wherever works best) and usually the top snare. Sometimes the floor tom if it's kind of weak in the overheads, which it sometimes is. But even then, they are mixed in fairly moderately, so the bleed isn't that big a thing.

The thing I started doing more and more was taking the time to audition various kits, and see what I could with a quick and miniimalist mix, mostly balance of minimal mics and one small EQ on the drum bus. If it was sounding very close after that, then I'd go with that one since it probably will require the least massaging. I'd prefer to do that than spend hours relentlessly tweaking EQ. Given that something like BFD, particularly with the expansion packs, gives you access to a number of kits that even high endy studios might not be able to keep around, you should make use of it.

And particularly snares, to play around with the snare that works best with minimal manipulation. One kit/share combo is almost always likely to have fairly close to the sound you want with just basic balance and a little EQ.

I like the fact that BFD kits aren't pre-tweaked really. It makes for a lot more flexibility. But yeh, if you know you are going for a particular sound when recording a real kit, you can work towards with mic selection and placement, EQ and compression on the way in, and all that.
Another side effect of that is levels. Almost always you going to end up doing from a good bit to a lot of subtractive EQ because the stuff recorded is very neutral and so you end up having to remove what you don't want. So you can end up doing pretty large boosts to keep the levels up and make up for those cuts. You can only bring the signals over from BFD so hot.
 
When recording real drums, you can get good levels with a tone that's very close to what you want to have in the end. So probably better gain staging in that case, and less massaging of the tone. But, in the end, not getting kicked out of your apartment is probably a bigger win than not having to as much subtractive EQ I guess.
 
 

@Danny: That would be fantastic! Thank you very much. That's very nice of you............... @Markno999: Yes exactly! Also, at least some of the superior kits have the snare sound on the overheads off center (possibly for realism, I'm not sure), but when blended with the direct mics it sounds centered............@Bitflipper: Thanks for the mention of Superior's transient shaper. I forgot all about it as I generally do all the processing in Sonar.........@Droddey: I was just thinking today about using the X-drum to layer another snare under the one I'm using now, but I'll have to read up on it since I've not used it before. I do like the Nashville kit I'm using for the overall feel though and all those snares have a good bit of rattle, except for the ones with none..............Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and discussion in general............. Apologies for the dots as I'm on Firefox and not ready to give it up yet.

BFD is for people who want to have the flexibility to mix a raw drum kit, not for folks want something pre-packaged. To really get the good stuff though you need probably more than the Eco version. The expansion packs have the highest quality kits in them.

Though I've never recorded a real kit myself, on the mixing front I could probably do pretty well with a real kit now that I've spent so much time learning how to mix raw drums with BFD, and eventually getting to the not really cheating at all level. It's been time well spent. And it's so much more flexible because you can take the sound in whatever way you want.