SDX room mics stereo image

[jgro002]

Hey everyone,
 
I notice in a lot of the SDX packs that if you solo the room mics (and the overheads) the kick and/or snare will often sound like they are not in the centre of the stereo image (i.e. you hear them coming from the right or left)…
 
How does everyone deal with this if you want to have the kick and snare right in the middle? – obviously you can just turn all the stereo room mics down and have the majority of your drum sound from the close-mics. But what if you want a really roomy sound? Is it just something you have to live with?
 
Cheers,
Jeremy.

iMac 3.06 GHz 4 GB OSX 10.6.5, Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Logic Pro 9.1.3, Lacie D2 Quadra

Topic

[Scott]

This is more prevalent in some SDXs more than others. Hit Factory comes to mind. The room was asymmetrical so the room mics picked that up. I’ve never had a problem with the room channels moving the kick/snare around too much, especially in a mix. Personally, I tend to bring in the OH/Room channels in more towards the center mix position and not have them panned hard left/right. This leaves room for guitars panned in that position and focuses the drums more for me. 

Scott Sibley - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Whitten]

It’s kind of normal not to have the overhead mics dominate the drum mix.
As to room mics, you can have them up high, but it would be unusual for the bass drum and snare to appear clearly weighted to one side in a room/ambience mic. The distance is too great.

[jgro002]

Thanks for the replies,

Scott – yeah it’s definitely more prevalent in some SDXs. For instance, I’m working on a track with kit 3 of evil drums and the kick is clearly on the right and snare clearly on the left when soloing the room/oh mics. I actually kinda like hearing the snare ever so slightly off centre, but not the kick. I think that’s a good idea to narrow the panning of the overheads/rooms, although do you then find you have to alter the panning on the close mics too? (i.e. so that you don’t start ‘smearing’ the image of the toms/cymbals etc?)

Chris – it’s only when soloing the room mics on some of the SDXs that you can clearly hear snare/kick off-centre. But when the close mics are also playing back the effect is very, very slight, and in a mix probably a complete non-issue. I was just curious what others thought of this. Cheers for the input.

Jeremy.

iMac 3.06 GHz 4 GB OSX 10.6.5, Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Logic Pro 9.1.3, Lacie D2 Quadra

[Whitten]

Yeah, it’s not exactly what most people want, but seems to happen quite a bit.
My cymbals and toms are mostly on my right. So if the overheads are equally positioned over them, both the snare and bass drum can end up more in the left mic.
I agree, it’s especially handy if the bass drum and snare are centred in the room mics.
Certainly the bass drum is best centred in the mix, at least on most occasions.

[Brooks H]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I’m noticing this phenomenon in the overheads of the included kits. I forget witch bass drum – I’ll report back if it matters – but it’s way to the left in the overheads. I used some mid/side EQ to center the bass frequencies which is having some undesired effect on my floortom 2. But it seemed to work better than narrowing the stereo field as I want a spread on my toms, and the kick would only be less to the left.

This is a bit disappointing. I’ve been trying to use SD3 more as the feature set is incredible. But there always seems to be a “small” thing keeping me from using it as much as I’d like. If this is in fact due to the room, I wish more care was taken in the room selection or kit/mic placement. My other go-to is obviously using some trickery as I can pan kit pieces in the overheads & room mics, but it’s convenient if not as realistic.

SD3 v3.3.6, EZbass v1.1.7, EZkeys v1.3.4
Studio One v5.5.2, Cubase v12.0.60
3.6GHz Intel i9 iMac, 64GB RAM, OS 12.6.1

[Author]

Replies