Drum mic packs..

[chris perra]

Yup. not to mention some of the mics being out of phase.. but I think as mics they are ok.. Especially for 150 bucks..

I'll do a setup using regular mic stands.. I need to spend some time tuning my floor tom.. I was doing some tracks with super muffled 70's sounds.. Take off the towel and it sounds awful.. There was also a fair amount of cymbal bleed and cross bleed between the mics due to the distance from the drums.. Not too noticeable until you add compression and buss compression and eq.. then things got shrilly..

I suppose to shorten the distance..you could cut off the ends of the mic clips and throw some tape or something on the ends to have an end to them..

I have 5 of them only using 4.. so I think I'll try that..

All in all.. if you are looking to save some money and don't mind tinkering... alot.. spending time is what you'll need to do with these mics... they are a good value...

They are not set it and forget it mics.. and not easy to get a good sound from.. But they work.. You can get some decent usable stuff on a budget for demos etc..

[chris perra]

[Rudy_Ment]

Kit sounds great chris, as does your playing as usual! Floor tom is actually really nice and beefy sounding. Snare is low but I like it. Mics definitely seem to be a good purchase. Is that a garage in your house converted to a studio?

What is that Ufip ride cymbal? I'm liking the bell, nice and breathy.

[Pocketplayer]

Ditto on that sounding kit Chris...very impressive. Bass drum is a solid thumper.
Hats sound killer. Usually don't like lower tuned snares, but like this! Fun to
experiment with placement...record and adjust, record and adjust...

[chris perra]

Thanks Guys.. It's my basement haha.. The ride is a 22 inch Extatic .. I think it's a heavy..Might be a medium.. It's pretty cool..

I have an obsession with floor toms.. In my head I want an open purer tone like the 10 and 12.. but at the same time the low end and pitch that I have.. To get the open tone I'd have to tune it up higher.. I think I need to spend a day just tuning for the most open sound and tune everything up from where they are right now including the snare and sit with it for awhile..Try and weed myself off of predetermined pitches and go with what the drum likes the best..

I was surprised that you can get a decent sound from thise mics with lots of eq and compression.. Useable anyway,..

[Rudy_Ment]

Nice, you must have a big house as that basement looks pretty long. Csn you play any time of day and night, ie, how soundproof are you?

I've not heard of Extatic, I'll look out for one. I use 13 class series ufip hats. They're nice and crisp.

I think I'll put some more moongel on my 15 to try and get that thicker sound you get on your floor. Mine (9000RC) has an emp with one piece of moongel but the sound just never really satisfies me, it doesn't really have that thump. Maybe it's just the nature of the shell.

[chris perra]

That's a 16 by 16 maple with zebra wood veneer.. Evans g2 coated on top.. and a clear g1 on bottom. tuned fairly low..

I'm lucky.. I can play any time as I have 10 to 15 feet between houses.. and one neighbor is a business..

I've got my windows stuffed with insulation etc.. Traffic is louder than my drums .. About 5 feet away from the house you can't hear them at all. My room is very dead as well.

[MRhet]

So, first things first -- you sound great, your drums sound great. Mics seem to be working pretty well.

Ok, now. Help me out here. Are you talking about polarity or phase? I'm pretty weak on this. I thought phases was a time issue. That is, if for instance, I was recording a drum from two different positions or distances, I could get into trouble that way. But, can a single mic be out of phase?

Am I just misunderstanding (quite possibly)

Thanks.

[chris perra]

"Phase is a general term to describe polarity... Like beats in a bar describes 1/4 notes in 4/4.. "Beats" isn't a specific thing but it's been generalized over time so know what it means.

If something is 180 degrees out of phase the polarity would be considered to be reversed.. In this case the xlr pins on the mic are backwards..
which put them 180 degrees out from the other mics..

What winds up happening in the real world is the speakers get conflicting information.. When I hit a snare.. the snare mic gets the signal and tells the speakers to move forward..

The overheads gets the same snare signal but because the pins are wired backwards... they tell the speakers to move backwards. The result is a cancelling out of all the frequencies that are the same in both sets of mics happening at the exact same time.. In most cases the mic types are different and with the different mic placement locations they hear different things they don't cancel out completely.. You usually lose bottom end and punch and the top end gets swirly.. the sound gets unfocused..

That's if they are 180 degrees out..

Having all the mics have the same polarity and by placing them in areas that give timing issues will cause phase problems as well.. On a drum set there's going to be some level of phasing happening no matter what you do.. unless you move stuff around in a daw...

Every mic is a different distance from any source... be it a tom, snare kick etc so timing wise so your punch of the speaker cones moving together will be lost to some degree and you will have some cancellation of frequencies from snare bleed, cymbal bleed into other mics.. It's a matter of how much phasing is too much..

Like how wide is that flam?.. At some point in time its 2 notes.. instead of one..