The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

Hi all

The overheads are coming out distorted though my levels are all fine. Would this be dude to the proximity of the mics to the cymbals? SPL being exceeded? Yes I can simply move them away to test, but I'd like a bit more education than that.

you don't still have those "extra" DB's gains turned up, do you?

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Nope, even if I clear the Scene the distortion remains. And its an unusual sounding distortion; somewhat smoother than square wave type distortion. It sounds dirty.

broken mic's? loose connection within the mic? bad preamp? Have you tried recording voice or anything else through them?

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To attain knowledge, add things every day;
To attain wisdom, remove things every day. Lao Tse.

Lemme try that. They're a matched pair so I should get the same results with both.

Art,

What is your signal chain? Direct from mics to the G or are you using an external preamp?

If the drummer is heavy handed you can pull down the gain on the pre's, raise the overheads or both.

Gary

Hi Gary

I'm going from 5 drum mics to a Behringer sub mix to two channels on the G. The strange thing is that only the cymbals seem to distort, the tom mics are perfectly fine, no clip indicators are lighting up either. I'm going to test the mics tonight and if something wierd is still going on perhaps I'll bring in a snippet of what I am hearing.

Thanks dude.

Art,

Overheads (for me) are difficult to get right since they deal with the entire kit rather than one element. You also have to be aware of phase issues.

For starters, I'd cut the Behringer out of the signal chain if possible and go direct to the G, then bounce a submix within the G if you need more tracks.

Even if you are simply passing signal through the mixer (I'm assuming it is a Behri mixer) you are adding complexity (and perhaps color or some unknown) to the signal chain.

I typically record drums with only 4 mics....Kick, Snare and stereo overheads gain staging for peaks of -12 for everything.....yes, -12. I used to record much hotter, usually peaks of -3 and my recordings sounded muffled with very little space. Once I targeted more conservative levels everything became clearer, more open and I never had to deal with a "mystery clip".

My end result is 4 drum tracks. 1) Kick, 2) Snare, 3) Stereo Overhead- original and 4) Stereo Overhead- Cloned track.

I EQ & effect the original overhead track for cymbal & hi hat then EQ the overhead clone for the best tom sound possible. My last (and most arduous) step is editing the stereo tom track, keeping only the sections with tom work and eliminating everything else.

The end result for me is a much cleaner and open drum sound with nice thick toms.

One last thought....have you tried to pad your overhead mics? I have one very good external preamp (Vintech Dual 72) and it sounds great when it is cranked up. The only way I can crank the pre is to heavily pad the mics, usually 20-30 db. Just food for thought.

Gary

I gotta remember that one.

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

It allows you to EQ in a big fat tom sound without muddying up everything else. When I used just one stereo overhead track I had to make compromised EQ decisions because what sounds great for the cymbals sounds like shite for the toms and vice versa. With this approach you can high pass the overhead track that highlights the cymbals/hi-hat @ a comfy spot and give a little shelf boost starting at 10K for some air & sizzle. Then take the track you are going to use to highlight the tom strikes and add some "ooompf & beef" (technical term) @ 80 hz, remove the cardboard boxiness in the 300-500 range, then boost for stick attack @ 3K or so.

Cool technique, Gary. I'll file that one away in the grey matter.

Really , surprised Cheesehead hasn't made a suggested EQ settings section yet.

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
____________________________________________________

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Wow, somehow lost track of this one. It turned out to be a faulty Mic. I opened it up to see what I could see and as these things do, the problem went away.

Pity I have 7 weeks of wrecked recordings already. Definately not starting over.

Bummer, Art.

Yeah, and last night it bombed out again, so now I am recording the drums with Kick, Snare and the B2 Overhead Cardioid pattern.

Any suggestions on placement of ONE overhead?

before i had two, i would place one OH as close to what I could estimate as being the dead center of all of the drums and it didn't sound bad at all.

Thanks Monti

Thats what I am planning for now. I have it dead center and will use that duplicate and EQ trick later on.

Hey...I sorta skipped right to the end of this thread, so please forgive me if someone else has already covered this....

The problem may go back to like you said...proximity. Not 'proximity' as in 'proximity effect', but just being too close. Condenser mics are not big fans of high sound-pressure levels. Now hold on...I'm sure you know what SPL's are, but people often overlook the whole deal with cymbals. Regardless of the audible volume put out by a cymbal...that bronze disc is physically moving a LOT of air, and if the condenser mic is too close, you will get distortion. Cymbals, like bass drums, generate a lot well..."wind", and we all know how mics respond to wind.

Thanks ElGuepo

The mics are being sent in for a service. I have tried everything, I can't even record an acoustic guitar at very low gain. Doesn't matter which desk, which pre-amp, which room, which cable.

I just don't understand how they BOTH got damaged, they are good CAD mics.

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Cool man. If they were at one point, too close to the cymbals...which could explain the initial distortion, it likely fried the diaphragms...perma-stortion.

EDIT: Yeah, I missed your reply saying you diagnosed the mic as faulty. Hey...Something else...since you were saying the problem is intermittent...could humidity be a problem? That might explain why the problem comes and goes...moisture on the diaphragm. Hope your service guy doesn't stick you with an unnecessary repair.