feedback needed especially from drummers

[Sound Machine Inc]

I own a custom drum building company along with my little sound company and I have come out with a custom internal mic module system that has some passive filtering inside. I would LOVE for the guys here to give a listen to a demo I did in SAW and tell me what you think of the drum sounds.. this clip is my prototype drum kit with the internal mics installed and NO eq on the drum tracks.. just verb and compression. What you hear is what the mic modules sound like. Looking for any opinions on whether they sound decent for recording. Track is not mastered and the mix isn't perfect. Nor is the playing either lol.. I build drums well , play them not as well

http://www.bbcustomdrums.com/drumcli...nd%20O%27s.mp3

[brettbrandon]

My first suggestion would be to post an audio track of just the drums.
The nuances are difficult to hear with the music over top.

As for me, I would not want an eq'd mic as different drum heads tuned differently on different make drums vary so much as does the playing style.
I would rather have all the frequencies available.

[Sound Machine Inc]

My first suggestion would be to post an audio track of just the drums.
The nuances are difficult to hear with the music over top.

Since I am SOOOOOO not a drummer just bare drum tracks are like a really bad idea lol.. so I did a slower song so the drum articulation could be heard better, and I mixed the drums a few db louder than everything else to make it easier to hear.. for the drummers out there and techies, the heads are Evans g1's on bottom and Aquarian Performance II's which will likely be the standard head on my kits. The drums once again are with no eq and just compression and some gating

http://www.bbcustomdrums.com/drumcli...20Threnody.mp3

[Microstudio]

In both your recording it's very hard to hear the drums the track is very guitar heavy and the drums are way to low in the mix.

I always miced my drums with regular mics to capture the pour sound of the kit.

[IraSeigel]

Since I am SOOOOOO not a drummer just bare drum tracks are like a really bad idea lol.. so I did a slower song so the drum articulation could be heard better, and I mixed the drums a few db louder than everything else to make it easier to hear.. for the drummers out there and techies, the heads are Evans g1's on bottom and Aquarian Performance II's which will likely be the standard head on my kits. The drums once again are with no eq and just compression and some gating

http://www.bbcustomdrums.com/drumcli...20Threnody.mp3

Although of course I would defer to you to know what sounds best with your drums, I am a little surprised to read that the Aquarians "will likely be the standard head..." I have a little bit of experience with Aquarians, as they are the head of choice of JD Blair, drummer for Natalie MacMaster and currently playing with Shania Twain. We had Aquarians on Natalie's riders. They make great products and their artist relations guy is really great, very responsive and helpful. But the Aquarians are VERY hard to get by the vast majority of music shops in the US, and they're pretty expensive.

If there's any way to get Evans or Remos to work on your drums instead, I would suggest that. I have nothing against Aquarians at all; I just think for the majority of your potential customers, they'll be happier and they'll be able to save more money with the other brands.

Regarding your recording, I would suggest not using any gating. A well-tuned kit should not need any gating, and you'll get a much more representative sound of the shells and heads and how everything interacts if you turn off the gates. The FIXX's drummer, Adam Woods, is an excellent example of a drummer who knows how to tune drums - almost any rental kit he used - so that gates weren't necessary.

[RBIngraham]

I'm not a drummer at all. But if you really want folks to be able to give you honest to goodness feedback on their perception of the quality of the mics you need to just have a dry drum track.

No gates... no compression... no EQ.... no reverb or other effects... just the dry tracks. And it would be best if you just created a multi-channel interleaved .wav file which would have a separate channel for each mic. That way you could listen to each and actually make a real evaluation. Or just render a bunch of mono files and put it into a zip file for download.

That way I could for example, drop the tracks into my DAW of choice and see how they work and how much effort I have to put into making them sound good.

If you create a mix or do any processing of any kind... you're now evaluating not only the mics, but the processing and work of the mixer.

Yes... it will be boring. It will show any and all warts, both in the playing, the mics and perhaps the drums themselves. But honestly... that's kind of the point, right?

Just my $0.02

[Cary B. Cornett]

I have run across the idea of dedicated mics mounted inside the drums before, maybe 25 years ago. The idea was interesting, but AFAIK it didn't really take off. I can see how the idea, as you are implementing it, could make a lot of sense on tour, saving setup time and possibly shortening the sound check. Really good, I think, if you want consistency.

In a studio setting, maybe not so much. A studio that caters to many different artists wants to be flexible in the sound they get for their clients. Even if they use one set studio kit, they want to be able to set it up in a way that suits the sound the artist wants, and the way the kit is miked makes a big difference to that. A preset integrated setup tends to lock in a particular sound, which may not be what is wanted for a given project.

So, I guess it depends who your target customer is.

[Sound Machine Inc]

I'm not a drummer at all. But if you really want folks to be able to give you honest to goodness feedback on their perception of the quality of the mics you need to just have a dry drum track.

No gates... no compression... no EQ.... no reverb or other effects... just the dry tracks. And it would be best if you just created a multi-channel interleaved .wav file which would have a separate channel for each mic. That way you could listen to each and actually make a real evaluation. Or just render a bunch of mono files and put it into a zip file for download.

That way I could for example, drop the tracks into my DAW of choice and see how they work and how much effort I have to put into making them sound good.

If you create a mix or do any processing of any kind... you're now evaluating not only the mics, but the processing and work of the mixer.

Yes... it will be boring. It will show any and all warts, both in the playing, the mics and perhaps the drums themselves. But honestly... that's kind of the point, right?

Just my $0.02

not a bad idea there.. i'll do that sometime this week. The approach I am looking at is not as much for recording as for B bands that are playing in small clubs with different engineers every night so there is consistency from show to show. I am just hoping the sound is good enough that recording isn't "crap" compared to say E604's or other "affordable" drum mics.

[Sound Machine Inc]

I have run across the idea of dedicated mics mounted inside the drums before, maybe 25 years ago. The idea was interesting, but AFAIK it didn't really take off. I can see how the idea, as you are implementing it, could make a lot of sense on tour, saving setup time and possibly shortening the sound check. Really good, I think, if you want consistency.

In a studio setting, maybe not so much. A studio that caters to many different artists wants to be flexible in the sound they get for their clients. Even if they use one set studio kit, they want to be able to set it up in a way that suits the sound the artist wants, and the way the kit is miked makes a big difference to that. A preset integrated setup tends to lock in a particular sound, which may not be what is wanted for a given project.

So, I guess it depends who your target customer is.

yeah I can see what you are saying and as I say in my reply to Mr I, I am hoping my target is drummers that need to sound good at various small venues where the sound equip and personnel may not be the best or brightest. Just a little "crutch" if you will to get the drums sounding better quicker

[Cary B. Cornett]

yeah I can see what you are saying and as I say in my reply to Mr I, I am hoping my target is drummers that need to sound good at various small venues where the sound equip and personnel may not be the best or brightest. Just a little "crutch" if you will to get the drums sounding better quicker

For what you are describing, yeah, I think you have a pretty good idea there.