This is just junk library music for film and commercial sound beds (yes, I'm the Anthony Phillips of the Midwest minus the pedigree), so it's not a big deal to me at all and not my kind of music really (at least I wouldn't want to live in that world all the time), but I flew the drums in from an old cassette recorded in mono on a Audio Technica RMX64 back in the 80's or 90's. A friend of mine recorded a ton of drum tracks for me back then to add to the library. I guess they don't sound that great by today's standards, but I always liked his playing and still toy with using some of his old tracks from time to time. Do you think the drum sound stinks up the track? They sound okay to me considering the source, but maybe I've gotten a bit to close to them to tell anymore. It's not a finished tune or anything. Just some sparse bass and guitars at the moment, and I'm only giving you half of it. Basically I just need a thumbs up or down on the drums. There's not much I can do to make them better, so they either sound okay or they don't. Thanks.
 
Drums Test Track

Well Anthony Phillips of the Midwest minus the pedigree, I'm am certainly not at your skill level on the matter at hand, so all I can tell you is zip-beyond I am sure it blows away anything I can do. 
 
Not sure if me tell you about my sort comings will advance your work, but as an envious bystander I'd have no problem with this work at this point. Of course, I have no idea what you have in mind for the other half of this. A BIG swollen thumbs up!

There's lots of stuff you can do with drums these days. Parallel Compression/Transient Shaping and things. Are these part of mix-down or separate stem. The drums sounded like they were a bit in the backdrop to me and lacked a bit fullness.
 
That's not to say it will be like that when you're done. Just my passing thoughts.  If you don't have the separate tracks as you say, fixing things in the mix is problematic. Ah turned up the volume a bit, the drums do sound OK maybe not a fan of the ambience though. What do I know....I can't do any better.
 
 
 

Enjoyed hearing this, but I think it needs a bit more mid range EQ to fit better where the drums go, just a tad, not much at all, and perhaps more importantly a little less treble on the drums.
 
But then again, who am I to say such things, all I can tell you is what I hear, I can't do it myself so kudos to you for such a great performance and mix!
 
Sounded good to me!
 
Keep on Keepin' on!
 
Bobby
 

I love that sound, that minimalist old school ambience, it's a sound that I find myself pushing to get more and more. The drums sound great, use 'em! On the track itself I heard a bit of looseness with instruments synching with the drums but there's nothing I wouldn't be super proud of in there, and anyway loose is my middle name. :)

Wayfarer
 
 Do you think the drum sound stinks up the track?
 
Drums Test Track

 
That would be a yes for me.
 
I didn't really read your post past the first sentence or so at first, went straight to listen, and the first thing I thought was I wish the drums 'sounded' better. You say there isn't much you can do to make them better, but there is, with the vsti's available today you could make that sound a whole lot better, I would suggest BFD3 myself, nothing else touches it, but anything like Superior Drummer2, EzDrummer2, Addictive Drums etc will do the job no question. If you wanted to keep the actual 'drumming' you could probably convert the drum track to midi with the likes of Melodyne, then with a bit of work sort it out, or just program as close as you can get, or play if you have an electronic kit, whatever.
 
Despite the drum track sound, I found myself wanting to hear more, I quite liked it, could polish up very nice.

Hi Bill - nice track but, yes the drums could do with tidying up in my opinion. Try a Transient plug in to open them up a bit ?

It's hard to do much with a mono drum track that was poorly recorded to begin with using just one inexpensive electric condenser mic and a tiny room that was very dull sounding. (We used the rehearsal room at his brother's house---an attic room with a sloped ceiling.) I think you can tell that I went dry to tape with just some compression. The kick drum sounded like a giant marshmallow in that room. Of course EQ is a problem in mono. If you try to enhance the kick or the cymbals etc. you end up hurting the snare or the toms and so on, so you have to settle for something that's just tolerable across the board. I boosted the overall highs and a narrow band at 145hz to fill out the kick as best I could without messing up everything else.
 

 
I then added some reverb and a 200ms delay for that "Let It Be" thing, which I thought worked well.
 
Unprocessed Drums (30-seconds)
You can hear some crosstalk from the guide guitar here, but it gets almost completely masked in the processed version.
 
Processed Drums (30-seconds)
 
Like I say, this is the best it's going to get. I'd still rather listen to an actual drummer playing his heart out in a less than stellar recording (as long as it's not awful) than some manufactured track using a machine or loops. If I don't mention anything about the drums upfront, none of the people who've heard it have said anything about them one way or another, so I think whatever poor qualities the drum track has goes unnoticed by most people. I'm probably going to keep it as is.
 
Thanks all.