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[AndrewY.]

hello, i am currently heading the AV group at our church.
we recently bought drum mics, but the kick bass sounds horrible. Its ahrd to exaplin in word but heres a shot. its a thummmmmp, not the bomb bomb. i was wundering if there are common solutions for this problem.

are main stuff are:
Allen&Heath 16:2 main
2 Mackie 1521 HF main
2 Mackie SWA1801 sub

[K.Carr]

what mic are you using? is it inside the kick?( hole)

[AndrewY.]

oops sorri about that.

we are using an audix D6 and it is place inside the hole.

[Ivan Beaver]

There are MANY issues involved in getting a good kick sound.  Below are some of them: They are in generally in the order of importance

How well the drum is tuned
Quality of the drummer
Microphone placement
Quality of the person running the sound (how the console gain/eq is setup)
Quality of the sound system-including how well it is aligned/setup/tuned whatever you want to call it.
Acoustic signature of the room you are in

and lastly the quality of the mic-assuming it is not junk.

Reminds me of the story I read in a magazine years ago when a new hotshot guy who was looking for a job at a recording studio.  He asked how long he would have to work as a grunt, before he could get to "engineer".  The owner responded 6 months.  The kid said But I know how to operate so and so recorder and so and so automated console and this high thec stuff etc etc. They showed us this in school.  The owner replied "OH for you it will be 6 years!!"  Whay asked the kid-Because the ower said-you have not learned any of the basics-such as microphone placement-building a mix-gain structure etc, just the flash.  Most people want an equipment solution to their problems, when often times the real root of the problem is in how the tools are used, not the tools themselves.

Give 3 people a hammer and you will get 3 different things.  1 guy will build a fine piece of furniture-the 2nd will build a house.  However the 3rd guy will smash his thumb and BLAME the hammer.  He just needs a better hammer I guess.

[David Henry]

My Guess-->

Either:

-You have the mic near the back of the drum,(generally you get a more thud near the front, and boom near the back)

or

-the mic is backwards inside of the drum.

At my church youth group we have a ev re-11 inside our kick, and with the right placement, eq and compression, it sounds great.

David

[AndrewY.]

i like that stroy, cuz i was just like that.



ok, im gonna havta mess with the system a little bit on friday. thanks for all your help

God Bless

[Andy Peters]

AndrewY. wrote on Sat, 01 October 2005 21:03

hello, i am currently heading the AV group at our church. we recently bought drum mics, but the kick bass sounds horrible. Its ahrd to exaplin in word but heres a shot. its a thummmmmp, not the bomb bomb. i was wundering if there are common solutions for this problem.

Tune the drum.

-a

[Brian Granaghan]

You need to mess with the compression and EQ. Set a compressor probably around 4:1 with an attack somewhere around 5ms. Also, on your EQ, crank the 5k. Depening on what mic you're using, place it right up to the beater will also help.

[Scott Helmke (Scodiddly)]

Tune the drum.

[Rory Buszka]

I would agree - tune the drum. At the Campus Crusade meeting, one drummer doesn't have a well-tuned kick and the other does, and you can hear the difference.

Also, the less experienced (read: totally not knowing what they are doing because they're young and dumb and trying to act like they aren't though they are) people running sound probably have the low EQ knob on the mixing board cranked to the max and everything else cut. This Is Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. Perhaps this line of thinking comes from the idea that the kick drum provides most of the bass sound on lots of popular recordings, but bass is not the whole kick drum story, and the reason (in this case) that you would not be getting your desired kick drum sound is that you are actually cutting out with EQ the parts that you are now complaining that you are missing. Start with flat EQ on the kick drum mic. If you want it louder, crank up the trim knob more, until you get the levels of kick you want.

[ProSoundWeb Community]