Ooof... my ears are ringing. Done my hi hats and ride but still gotta do the crashes and overheads. Think I better let my ears rest for a little bit. The funny thing is I'm doing this all at pretty low volume and mostly through the monitors. Powerful stuff this digital audio gack is.

Tracking or mixing?

Mixing... more specifically EQing and applying effects VIA the Percussion Strip thingy. Man that thing really brings out the shine of... well everything. I'm just not used to a) this much power in regards to effects and b) having proper reference monitors/headphones to work with.

I used to do all this type of thing through my home stereo and a pair of crappy $30 Sony cans. Gotta be careful.

No need to crank it Beep! 

Mix quieter and you can mix longer - and more accurately.

Hiya, Jonesey. I'm actually keeping it pretty low volume. I think my ears have just reverted back to being ultra sensitive which is kind surprising how much I abused them over the years. It's really not much louder than if I were watching a movie. I just think my ears aren't used to the super defined high frequencies the cans and monitors throw. I'm trying to bring out as much clarity in everything as possible and then I'll tame it down on the bus if necessary. 

I think they're settling down a bit now. I'm gonna give it another ten minutes and get at the crashes. I really wanna finish this up so I can put my brain into some meatworld mayhem.

Yeah it's easy to burn your ears out when you're concentrating really intensely

I think it was you I was discussing this with a while ago. I find that even though I'm not really doing anything physical that mixing can be physically exhausting. Like in the sense I get actually tired as if I were digging a ditch... but more so because there isn't the blood/oxygen flow like with exercise. It's quite strange.

If the hats and crashes are ouch then they are probably way too loud. Hats and crashes cut through amazingly well and can be very low in the mix and yet still very audible. 

I have played in a band where everything was miked up to blazes except the hats and the OHeads were not yet the sound engineer used to tell me he could still hear them as clearly as anything. (when I used nylon tipped sticks that is)


You can HPF the hats and the crashes and even apply some nice HF shelving boost to them as well but then pull them way down in level and they will still be there.

Yup. That's pretty much what I'm doing. Got them sharp and crisp and had to bring them WAY down in volume in the mix. Sounds cool.

BTW these are raw BFD MIDI samples so they are also recorded really really well too so I'm sure that is contributing to the ear fatigue as well. 

Hope you've been well, Jeff.

I am well Beep thanks very much. I play drums you see and have got lovely cymbals so that might help. Like Paiste and Zildjian crashes and rides and they sound great. I have also got a very old pair of New Beat hats too that date back to the 50's. I know that cymbals don't necessarily get better with age but these things record so well. I don't record with nylon tips either that tends to make them a little ticky for my licking. 

What I have found and my son has really got me into this is how much different the attack of the note is on a ride cymbal when you change the wooden tip shapes on the end. The sticks can radically change how a ride cymbal and hats can sound. Hard to believe but true.
Samples might be a little more fatiguing due the repetitive nature of them so that could be a factor. As I don't use them I am not sure you see.