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[Jay Barracato]

So only 3 drum mics for a festival situation?

Nope, I set them all up, and then decide which I need in the mix depending on the players style.

[Steve Payne]

Nope, I set them all up, and then decide which I need in the mix depending on the players style.

Just an observation on the 3 mic drum technique.  I will use it in a flash on an opening act that is
throw and go just before doors.  A good player on a well tuned kit can sound terrific.  I always use a stereo pair OH and kik, though.  I have found that relying on a single overhead to pick up the entire kit and then adding a close mic on the snare always smears the image and effects clairity and impact for the worse.  Just my .02.  Also, if I am mixing a band on the fly I am unfamiliar with in a festival situation, a single gate available on the kick channel and maybe a nice sounding comp on the stereo bus is probably going to get me about as good a sound as I am going to get in 30 minutes of on the fly mixing if the band is on it's game.

[Mark McFarlane]

I'm my woodshedding I ran across this document on gates.  Although it was written with studio work in mind, it's an excellent overview, with great illustrations, ... If you buy the book you get lots of audio samples showing the effects of different parameter settings.  It appears very well done.

http://www.mixingaudio.com/book/Gates%20(Mixing%20Audio).pdf

This just happens to be the one 'free chapter' of a book for sale.  I don't own the book or know about the other chapters. Here's the book for sale: http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Audio-Concepts-Practices-ebook/dp/B008SA3YWK/ref=tmm_kin_title_1

[Jay Barracato]

Just an observation on the 3 mic drum technique.  I will use it in a flash on an opening act that is
throw and go just before doors.  A good player on a well tuned kit can sound terrific.  I always use a stereo pair OH and kik, though.  I have found that relying on a single overhead to pick up the entire kit and then adding a close mic on the snare always smears the image and effects clairity and impact for the worse.  Just my .02.  Also, if I am mixing a band on the fly I am unfamiliar with in a festival situation, a single gate available on the kick channel and maybe a nice sounding comp on the stereo bus is probably going to get me about as good a sound as I am going to get in 30 minutes of on the fly mixing if the band is on it's game.

Steve.

I understand what you are saying about the snare mic, but I have not noticed the smear as much.

Since you also brought it up, in a festival setting I like to mic everything in advance, whether it is a shared kit or each band has their own. That means the mic is there if I need it and I don't need to waste time explaining to a drummer the difference between what they want and what the gig needs (at a recent bar gig I put 11 mics on a drum kit in a place where the dance floor they are playing to is 30 feet deep. Nothing said I have to turn those mics on. It was easier that debating the need or chipping away at the drummers "we mic everything attitude").

My downstream processing is also part of the strategy. I like to do a light parallel compression on the instruments where all the instruments go into a group with a compresser that gives me about 3-6 db average gain reduction and the instruments I want a greater dynamic from get routed to a second group with no compression.

[Krzysztof Podsiadło]

Gating the tom group would certainly be quicker to adjust per-band, or per-song.

FWIW, my particular setup is Audix D2s and D4s run through an 01V96.  My standard setup does have toms on their own bus so its easy enough to try.

Compared to any contemporary console, working with dynamic processors in 01V96 is very slow, not to mention you don't have a visible indication of it's state. I'd rather leave the toms without the gate until an certain instrument really demands it.
Work with the phase and placement to minimize destructive interferences between tom and snare microphones.

[Rob Spence]

Well, the smear is the different arrival times to the snare mic and the overhead.
I suspect if you were to delay the snare mic by a couple of milliseconds (and perhaps also compensate in the PA delay) it would clear up.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Jay Barracato]

Well, the smear is the different arrival times to the snare mic and the overhead.
I suspect if you were to delay the snare mic by a couple of milliseconds (and perhaps also compensate in the PA delay) it would clear up.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I know what it is. I am not sure I can really hear the difference 3ms might make in a live setting. If you think about it it is not uncommon to purposely apply about 40 times that amount of delay to vocals and the difference between the distance between the snare mic and the overhead (even accounting for the over headed being gained hotter) is over 10 times.

[Roland Clarke]

I rarely gate kits, and certainly I would do anything to avoid gating a kit with a drummer/band/set I was not practised with, particularly on a "gun and run" festival gig.  Only thing worse than a bit of "bad spill" would be missing beats.  Use more OH's if players toms are a problem, judicious use of eq to tune out "nasty honks", even supply a quick bit of moon gel.  Gates, even digital ones, are often a crude fix.

Of course YMMV 

[RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS]

Compared to any contemporary console, working with dynamic processors in 01V96 is very slow, not to mention you don't have a visible indication of it's state. I'd rather leave the toms without the gate until an certain instrument really demands it.
Work with the phase and placement to minimize destructive interferences between tom and snare microphones.

I find the 01v96 very easy to set gates on.  In the gate screen you can see how much gain reduction you have on the meter.  Then when it opens you see the meter go up and disappear as the gain reduction is reversed.

I set my gates for run and gun stuff very generic.  Very fast, 50 microsecond attack.  Moderate release depending on which mics I am using.  6-10 dB of gain reduction.  0dBu threshold.  When doing my line check setting up a band all I need to do is adjust the threshold for each channel. I am up and running.  After they get playing I can tweak gain reduction and release if needed.  It really doesn't take much to tighten up a kit and make it sound a lot better.  Remember, too much gain reduction will sound choppy as you hear them open and close.

[Robert Lunceford]

Instead of gating the drums, you may consider looking into the SPL Transient Designer. The SPL may be a better solution depending upon your intended goal. 

http://spl.info/index.php?id=162&L=1

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