Now that I've a handle on my cymbal problem, I would like to know how people treat spill between drum mics.
 
At this stage I am setting up an OH, snare, rack tom, floor tom and kick mics, and while I've managed to get   decent overall tracks, on listening to individual tracks there is a lot of spill between adjacent mics.
 
I know that some spill is inevitable, but I think I'm hearing to much kick in the snare mic, and too much snare in the kick mic. I'm not too concerned about too much spill in the tom mics, as the toms are hit only occasionally, the gap between hits can be edited. But editing is more difficult in the snare and kick tracks as kick and snare are busyer and cymbals overlap at times. I suppose mic orientation could help, but this is limited by the proximity of the drums.
 
I have tried using the gate in the Pro Console with some success but don't feel confident with it as I think it affects the sound. Also that begs the question, should the gate be on the way in, or after recording, like I have done?
 
So, how do you pros handle spill, or am I worrying too much about it? 
 
 

EQ on both tracks.
 
HPF on the snare(low cut)
LPF on the kick(high cut)
 
Tweak to taste.

How do you treat spill? Mostly - get em in phase - eq out the ugly stuff - then don't worry about it.

So you're  saying not to worry about spill and just eq and mix the kit for the best sound. I would have thought there should be more.
 
Today I did some experimenting with just the raw tracks and tried various eqs and came up with something quite workable. Just added a little compression, no gates, and am reasonably pleased with the results.

depends on the song and the mix.
 
some mixes, rely on all that spill to 'glue' the whole set together.
 
other mixes, you don't hear it, i'll actually blank out all the empty parts of all the drum tracks by removing the audio between the strike and the end of the decay.
 
several ways to do this...
 
sometimes i'll mix the two techniques together,
let the spill over remain for certain sections,
nuke it on others.
 
 

a perfect example of aggressive gating on drums that works in the context of the song:
 
http://youtu.be/J17v-1rDl1M
 

If you do decide to use close mic sounds and distant mic sounds eg overheads it is important to get into shifting the timing of the O'Heads in relation to the direct sounds.  If the O'Heads are 6 feet above for example they will be roughly 6 ms late compared to the direct copunds.  I have found it is interesting shifting the timing of the OHeads back slightly.  The effect can be quite pronounced.  It is also interesting to delay that sound a little more too sometimes for a different effect.

optimus
Now that I've a handle on my cymbal problem, I would like to know how people treat spill between drum mics.
 
At this stage I am setting up an OH, snare, rack tom, floor tom and kick mics, and while I've managed to get   decent overall tracks, on listening to individual tracks there is a lot of spill between adjacent mics.
 
I know that some spill is inevitable, but I think I'm hearing to much kick in the snare mic, and too much snare in the kick mic. I'm not too concerned about too much spill in the tom mics, as the toms are hit only occasionally, the gap between hits can be edited. But editing is more difficult in the snare and kick tracks as kick and snare are busyer and cymbals overlap at times. I suppose mic orientation could help, but this is limited by the proximity of the drums.
 
I have tried using the gate in the Pro Console with some success but don't feel confident with it as I think it affects the sound. Also that begs the question, should the gate be on the way in, or after recording, like I have done?
 
So, how do you pros handle spill, or am I worrying too much about it? 
 
 

I do what bapu mentioned and eq things out that shouldn't be there. For example, you don't need much low end in a snare drum. High passing should remove some of the kick you hear. From there, I use the Sonitus gate and get it just right. You shouldn't hear any artifacts that take away from the track when you do it right.
 
I do the same thing for all drum tracks. Try to accentuate the track using eq to enhance the drium, but also high pass/low pass to remove the unwanted stuff that might be bleeding through with the use of a gate. I really like the Sonitus gate....and like it a lot better than the PC gate. The Waves gate is cool too. As bats says, some mixes depend on the glue of that bleed you hear to make a difference for the better, so be careful. Some of those live elements add some good stuff too. :)
 
-Danny

As usual, I can rely on considered advise from this place.
Thanks to you all.

The PX-64 is wonderful for this type of situation because it has EQ and a dynamic range expander. The expander resembles a gate, but has a gentler action where you can cause levels to drop off dramatically below a certain threshold.