Drum Recording Slipping Tracks etc. .

studiorat

Ok, I thought I'd open this can or worms up again.

Do many of the brothers here slip tracks so that the drum onsets match up on every mic? For example matching up the kick drum mic signal with the same drum hit on the overheads etc.

I know Mr. Brewer does from time to time. So I thought I'd try and get some proper scientific study done on the matter. This will involve some test recordings and some blind listening tests etc. as well as some precise measurement and all the rest.

So initially I'm looking for some background, if anybody has any links to articles on the subject, any files I could listen to or any observations on having done this I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks.

trackmixstudio

I always zoom in and slip the tracks to make sure the kick, snare and toms are in phase in the overheads, hats, ride and room mic. I'm not a fan of time aligned drums. Tends to sound programmed, especially if you are going to quantize the kit too.

studiorat

Here's the thing though. You move the kik in line with the overheads, then move the snare to the overheads, what happens to the relationship between the kick and snare?

Also how do we know that what our screen tells us is right?

These are questions I want to address. I'm not saying right or wrong.

Can you define the difference??

i57dwun4yb1pt8

the kick and snare are in time with the click ,
so you should move the futrther mics towards the kick / snare

i used to do this and to be honest , good micing and hi passing does a better job

studiorat

But the relationship between the kick and snare change when you move one and not the other. However the relationship between the kick and the overheads will be different to the relationship between the snare and the overheads.

So do you move the snare to the overheads or the kick to the overheads or both???

DamagedTrax

i dont normally touch them. i like close tight overheads, so the distance i mic them at tends to be tight with the close drum mics anyway and then the room mics i like to add depth, so being a little out of time suits the purpose.

studiorat

DamagedTrax wrote: »

i dont normally touch them. i like close tight overheads, so the distance i mic them at tends to be tight with the close drum mics anyway and then the room mics i like to add depth, so being a little out of time suits the purpose.

I'd do similar, though I think sitting the kick on the overhead signal tends to help.

PaulBrewer

The two things I've found is that space and 'stereoness' don't seem to get 'damaged' with a wee bit of tugging, some of which you might loose normally .... this more apparent the deeper into the mix you get.

I've not done that much with it (as I haven't been recording that much!) but it's an interesting area.

Resolution did an article recently with a few engineers (including Greg Haver and George Shilling) and moving was the norm ...


Here's another viewpoint ...

http://recordproduction.com/robert-carranza-recording-tips.html

DamagedTrax

studiorat wrote: »

I'd do similar, though I think sitting the kick on the overhead signal tends to help.

and do you not get any phasing issues against the snare?

PaulBrewer

The other thing I noticed is that on more distant mics if you drag them up nearer the over heads the tone of the drums change less when you add that mic i.e. you get the 'bang' of the room without the 'clatter' of spaced transients.

Aridstarling

I've tried it a couple of times and never really found it worth the time. Prefer to trust my ears when micing up in the first place.

PaulBrewer

Aridstarling wrote: »

I've tried it a couple of times and never really found it worth the time. Prefer to trust my ears when micing up in the first place.

It only takes a few minutes !

I agree about the mic technique - but some of the shyt I've been working on needs ever bit o help it can get

Aridstarling

PaulBrewer wrote: »

... some of the shyt I've been working on needs ever bit o help it can get

I can understand that alright! I've been very picky over the last while so no issues there. Quality over quantity baby.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

studiorat wrote: »

But the relationship between the kick and snare change when you move one and not the other. However the relationship between the kick and the overheads will be different to the relationship between the snare and the overheads.

So do you move the snare to the overheads or the kick to the overheads or both???

leave kick and snare as is and move the overs towards them

why would you move the mics most closely aligned to the click track - away from the click ?
the overheads are slightly behind the click , so need to move towards the click - ie with the kick and snare.

studiorat

DamagedTrax wrote: »

and do you not get any phasing issues against the snare?

I couldn't say for sure. There's not usually enough of the snare on the kik track to make a noticeable difference. It would seem that the couple of ms that the kik drum decay is in the room seems to get masked by moving the kick back 4 or 5 ms.

trackmixstudio wrote: »

I always zoom in and slip the tracks to make sure the kick, snare and toms are in phase in the overheads, hats, ride and room mic. I'm not a fan of time aligned drums. Tends to sound programmed, especially if you are going to quantize the kit too.

Doing what you describe there is what I would call time aligned. What do you mean when you say time aligned?

See the thing is, each drum has a relationship with the overheads as well as with each other; the snare on the tom microphones for instance. By placing all the onsets based around the overheads we are then changing the relationship between the close mic's. Should we perhaps align the snare spill on the toms as opposed to the toms themselves? Maybe having a "master" mic for at the drummers head perhaps and alining all to that might work? Possible moving the overheads forward and the close mics back to match the master mic?

DaDumTish wrote: »

leave kick and snare as is and move the overs towards them

why would you move the mics most closely aligned to the click track - away from the click ?
the overheads are slightly behind the click , so need to move towards the click - ie with the kick and snare.

I don't think that's the case really. The time it takes the sound to get from the kick to the overheads is pretty much undetectable in a musical sense below the just noticeable difference (JND) Averaging around 12ms from various descriptions. Interestingly this seems to be frequency dependent too.
You are also assuming that the onset of the kick and snare is always the same as the click, it's not as far as I can see, it drifts about slightly before and behind it below these unperceivable amounts. We're talking tiny amounts of time here, smaller than one could hear as any sort of tempo based description. Though in the listening tests I guess I should ask is there any sort of different feel issues.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should a) conduct the recordings, b) what variations should I present for the test mix-downs (with music/without music). c) Musical style? Tempo? and what questions should I ask with the listening test?

Hopefully we can come up with some sort of best practice method to approach this technique is at all. And then maybe figure out a way to do it automatically!

trackmixstudio

"Doing what you describe there is what I would call time aligned. What do you mean when you say time aligned?"

I generally don't line up the transients (which would be time aligning) but do line up the waveforms so the peaks line up.
I do understand that everything on a kit can not be in phase with each other but I find that once the shells are in phase with the overheads and room mics the kit sounds better.
The phase relationship of (eg) the snare in the kick mic is nowhere near as important as the relationship between the snare and the overheads.

studiorat

trackmixstudio wrote: »

I generally don't line up the transients (which would be time aligning) but do line up the waveforms so the peaks line up.

I'm still confused TM, what's the difference between a waveform peak and a transient?

For me the transient is the increase in voltage as displayed in the waveform. Surely lining up the peak is the same thing, no?

trackmixstudio wrote: »

The phase relationship of (eg) the snare in the kick mic is nowhere near as important as the relationship between the snare and the overheads.

Agreed, I think. But would you say it's more important to line up the snare spill on the Tom microphones than the actual tom hits themselves?

eigenboggle

Hey guys. Apologies for the possibly stupid questions to follow but hopefully someone could take the time to answer.

After reading through the thread it seems that a number of you have used this technique. I am just wondering to what end?

What are you hearing when you sit down to edit or mix after a recording session that makes you think, 'I'll line x up to y'?

Do you hear phasing and slip tracks to address it?

And finally, apart from being in phase, what do you hear as the post track slipping outcome? Basically, what makes you turn to this particular technique to achieve your goal?/ What sound do you 'visualise' and then try to reach using this technique.

madtheory

That's a good question. To test, it would be a good idea to do two rough mixes, the only difference being one has drums aligned and the other doesn't. Then do a blind listening test with them both lined up in latched solo mode so you can switch between them.

trackmixstudio

studiorat wrote: »

I'm still confused TM, what's the difference between a waveform peak and a transient?

For me the transient is the increase in voltage as displayed in the waveform. Surely lining up the peak is the same thing, no?



Agreed, I think. But would you say it's more important to line up the snare spill on the Tom microphones than the actual tom hits themselves?

When phase aligning the snare with the overhead, it could be the 3rd or 4th (or more) cycle (waveform peak) of the snare hit that I am lining up with the peak on the overheads. Hope that makes sense.
I usually side chain compress the toms bus triggered from the snare or gate or expand the toms so snare in the tom mics is not an issue.

studiorat

madtheory wrote: »

That's a good question. To test, it would be a good idea to do two rough mixes, the only difference being one has drums aligned and the other doesn't. Then do a blind listening test with them both lined up in latched solo mode so you can switch between them.

That's what's going to happen. I'm trying to figure out a few different ways to do this. Slide to Overheads, Slide to a "reference mic" in the room or possibly at the drummers head. Good idea to flip the drum mixes between each, but should the drums be mixed according to how they sound slipped or un-slipped or should the faders be in the same position each time?

The mix settings will be a bit different depending on if the tracks being in moved or not. Should the un-moved version be the template or the moved one? EQ will be different too!!! Questions questions!

studiorat

trackmixstudio wrote: »

When phase aligning the snare with the overhead, it could be the 3rd or 4th (or more) cycle (waveform peak) of the snare hit that I am lining up with the peak on the overheads. Hope that makes sense.
I usually side chain compress the toms bus triggered from the snare or gate or expand the toms so snare in the tom mics is not an issue.

Gotcha!

PaulBrewer

studiorat wrote: »

Maybe having a "master" mic for at the drummers head perhaps and alining all to that might work? Possible moving the overheads forward and the close mics back to match the master mic?

I posted on this before, a 'Phase Centre' I called it - my thinking is that the OH are a constant.

In a rock context the OHs are always 'on' where as it's possible kick and snare and most likely toms could be gated , thereby only contributing when they're hit .... where as the whole heap goes down the OHs.

trackmixstudio

BTW. It is extremely helpful to get the drummer to hit each of the shells one at a time after the end of the song so you get a clear signal to help line them up rather than trying to find hits in the overheads that will be washed with hats/cymbals in the body of the song.

trackmixstudio

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I posted on this before, a 'Phase Centre' I called it - my thinking is that the OH are a constant.

In a rock context the OHs are always 'on' where as it's possible kick and snare and most likely toms could be gated , thereby only contributing when they're hit .... where as the whole heap goes down the OHs.

Absolutely the way I do it. Overheads are the reference point with everything phase corrected to them.
Another trick I forgot about is to move the room mic later in time a few cycles to give the impression a bigger room. Just use the snare in the overheads as the reference then drag the room track slightly to the right so the positive phase lines up but a few cycles later. Makes a big difference to the depth and sense of space of the whole kit if you do this. To cheat further add a high quality small/medium room impulse reverb to the room mic mixed at 20-30% then absolutely hammer the track with compressor with fast attack and release set by ear to a 12th measure (ie the "and" of "one-and-a-two" or 1/3 of interval between kick and snare in a standard 4/4 beat) to make the room mic breathe. I do this on nearly every mix.

PaulBrewer

trackmixstudio wrote: »

BTW. It is extremely helpful to get the drummer to hit each of the shells one at a time after the end of the song so you get a clear signal to help line them up rather than trying to find hits in the overheads that will be washed with hats/cymbals in the body of the song.

Yup .... do so as a matter of course to use as possible samples too.

PMI

Also remember when your zoomed in your dealing with thousanths of a second so movements sometimes dont need to be done....

I had a habit of lining everything so perfect that I no longer knew what i wanted to achieve haha

studiorat

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I posted on this before, a 'Phase Centre' I called it - my thinking is that the OH are a constant.

In a rock context the OHs are always 'on' where as it's possible kick and snare and most likely toms could be gated , thereby only contributing when they're hit .... where as the whole heap goes down the OHs.

Thats

trackmixstudio wrote: »

BTW. It is extremely helpful to get the drummer to hit each of the shells one at a time after the end of the song so you get a clear signal to help line them up rather than trying to find hits in the overheads that will be washed with hats/cymbals in the body of the song.

Pure

trackmixstudio wrote: »

Absolutely the way I do it. Overheads are the reference point with everything phase corrected to them.
Another trick I forgot about is to move the room mic later in time a few cycles to give the impression a bigger room. Just use the snare in the overheads as the reference then drag the room track slightly to the right so the positive phase lines up but a few cycles later. Makes a big difference to the depth and sense of space of the whole kit if you do this. To cheat further add a high quality small/medium room impulse reverb to the room mic mixed at 20-30% then absolutely hammer the track with compressor with fast attack and release set by ear to a 12th measure (ie the "and" of "one-and-a-two" or 1/3 of interval between kick and snare in a standard 4/4 beat) to make the room mic breathe. I do this on nearly every mix.

Gold

PMI wrote: »

Also remember when your zoomed in your dealing with thousanths of a second so movements sometimes dont need to be done....

I had a habit of lining everything so perfect that I no longer knew what i wanted to achieve haha

Lads.

So what about the listening tests? Should I present different versions mixes separately or use one mix setting???

With or without the music?

Fast or slow tempo?

Anything else?

PaulBrewer

studiorat wrote: »

Thats



Pure


Gold



Lads.

So what about the listening tests? Should I present different versions mixes separately or use one mix setting???

With or without the music?

Fast or slow tempo?

Anything else?

I think the results will depend on one thing primarily. Namely, the state of the initial tracks - if they're in rag order your improvement could be significant.
Also the listening environment is critical - we are, after all, splitting snares at this stage.

Also, how about doing the opposite - drag tracks apart randomly and see does that make things worse!

Robin Ball

Mic them properly. No need for aligning. 'Nuff said!

studiorat

Robin Ball wrote: »

Mic them properly. No need for aligning. 'Nuff said!

That's a possibility alright. But when you are dealing with something where improvements are made in fractions of a percent, how can you know that moving a track can't give you another small improvement.

I suppose the purpose of these recordings when they do happen will be to actually try and find out if there is a noticeable improvement.

I'm not suggesting that it be done every time, but I'd like to try and establish what the perceived differences are when it it done.

I hope MT will attend the listening sessions hopefully around the end of Sept.

Robin Ball

studiorat wrote: »

That's a possibility alright. But when you are dealing with something where improvements are made in fractions of a percent, how can you know that moving a track can't give you another small improvement.

QUOTE]


Very true StudioRat, engineering is about the small percentages. I do spend a good amount of time getting the phase relationships right come micing time. Right going in is always best. However, when you're dealing with others recordings any advantage is a plus.

studiorat

Robin Ball wrote: »

Very true StudioRat, engineering is about the small percentages. I do spend a good amount of time getting the phase relationships right come micing time. Right going in is always best. However, when you're dealing with others recordings any advantage is a plus.

It's not something I do myself either. But I am interested to see if it works. I'm also interested in a machine that will allow you to change the phase by increments of less than 180 deg. This would be a useful thing...

DamagedTrax

studiorat wrote: »

I'm also interested in a machine that will allow you to change the phase by increments of less than 180 deg. This would be a useful thing...

little labs I(n) B(etween) P(hase)

its hardware or a plugin for your UAD card.

http://www.littlelabs.com/ibp.html
http://www.uaudio.com/products/software/ibp/index.html

i have the UAD one. well worth having. not something you'd use all the time but when you need it its an amazing piece of kit.

studiorat

That's the one alright couldn't remember what's called.

Aridstarling

Phasebug, seems to do what you're talking about. I've used it quite a bit over the last year or so. It's free too.

http://www.betabugsaudio.com/plugs.php (Down the bottom)

ogy

i think time aligning is useful when theres obvious phase issues in the recording, but not convinced that its worth doing as a matter of course.

that aside i have a question:)

some times when time aligning the kick with the overheads the peaks and troughs of the kick mic are much bigger in time than those in the overheads. so sometimes one peak in the kick mic can be the size of a peak and a trough in the overheads. this makes it impossible to line up logically. any idea how to interpret this? i don't understand it and presume its just a lack of preciseness in DAWs. and before you say it, i know, use your ears:) any theories on why it happens though? does this happen for anyone else?

Robin Ball

ogy wrote: »

i think time aligning is useful when theres obvious phase issues in the recording, but not convinced that its worth doing as a matter of course.

that aside i have a question:)

some times when time aligning the kick with the overheads the peaks and troughs of the kick mic are much bigger in time than those in the overheads. so sometimes one peak in the kick mic can be the size of a peak and a trough in the overheads. this makes it impossible to line up logically. any idea how to interpret this? i don't understand it and presume its just a lack of preciseness in DAWs. and before you say it, i know, use your ears:) any theories on why it happens though? does this happen for anyone else?

when close micing the kick you'll get more overtone & sustain in the audio than in the OH's, there would also be things happening in the room that would attribute to it as well.

Bluebirdstudios

Hi Studiorat,
While this isn't a very scientific answer I recently done time alignment of a Kit, pretty straight up beat / well played. Spent alot of time in getting phase and aligment as best as I could. The reason I done this was for using these tracks for sound replacement (TL Drum Rehab )I was trying out an idea I had.
At this point I'd like to state I very rarely slips Kit tracks, I think sound gets unfocused and cymbols suffer badly.
While my initial idea with Drum Rehab didn't work out I had time to listen closely to the kit in it's corrected form (so to speak).
As stated earlier I'm not convinced that slipping drums tracks can deliver top notch results I'm aware a busy mix can hide the type of issues I'm refering to here. This is what I noticed.
-a kind of light cymbol sound.
-a stereo image that's loose and not stable.
-Kick drum sounded separated from the kit sure it had lots of oomph but didn't gel with the rest of the kit
-When trying to mix the kit in a foward position couldn't get it to sit right again the cohesion wasn't there.

After trying many different ways of sliping the kit , changing reference and so on... still all above couldn't be resolved.
To me the kit sounded better with slight phase and timing issues which is always the case with multi miked instruments.

In one way I was happy this was the case just confirmed my long held belief

Just an observation.
-Dec

ogy

have to agree with dec, at the end of the day all the drum sounds of note i've ever heard were recorded long before time aligning was possible. in general drums are the element of the traditional rock band that have suffered the most at the hands of technology, from quantizing/replacement/etc.

studiorat

Ogy,
The thing is, using the waveform may not be the most accurate way to do this. I read recently that in one of the upgrades of Beat Detective they upgraded the bit depth of the image making it more accurate. So I'm wondering how accurate the wave-form image actually is. Probably close enough for editing, but is it accurate enough for analysis? Just a thought...

So on that note I give you : http://www.soundradix.com/ Automated time-align tools. May be worth a try!

Tis also true that most of the famous drum sounds of the past may not have been time aligned, but they certainly have been processed very heavily in some form. Engineers were timing alining Bass DI and Amplifier long before we were recording to DAW's. So I reckon it's a matter of time before we have one that uses this method.

Finally it might me worth mentioning that perhaps drums aren't the only instrument which may (or may not) benefit from this treatment.

How about Vocal and Acoustic Guitar?

PaulBrewer

Bluebirdstudios wrote: »

This is what I noticed.
-a kind of light cymbol sound.
-a stereo image that's loose and not stable.
-Kick drum sounded separated from the kit sure it had lots of oomph but didn't gel with the rest of the kit
-When trying to mix the kit in a foward position couldn't get it to sit right again the cohesion wasn't there.

Declan, what your describing is the effect of putting stuff out of phase , not in ...

PaulBrewer

studiorat wrote: »

Ogy,
The thing is, using the waveform may not be the most accurate way to do this. I read recently that in one of the upgrades of Beat Detective they upgraded the bit depth of the image making it more accurate. So I'm wondering how accurate the wave-form image actually is. Probably close enough for editing, but is it accurate enough for analysis? Just a thought...

So on that note I give you : http://www.soundradix.com/ Automated time-align tools. May be worth a try!

Tis also true that most of the famous drum sounds of the past may not have been time aligned, but they certainly have been processed very heavily in some form. Engineers were timing alining Bass DI and Amplifier long before we were recording to DAW's. So I reckon it's a matter of time before we have one that uses this method.

Finally it might me worth mentioning that perhaps drums aren't the only instrument which may (or may not) benefit from this treatment.

How about Vocal and Acoustic Guitar?

Interesting 'Rat -

Physics says that if you add two mono signals that are not entirely in phase effectively created an 'EQed' sum (that is in fact how EQ works, mixing a phase delayed signal with the original to cancel or boost different bands)

If you bring in Stereo into the equation that makes it even more critical.

My professional acquaintances , Cenzo Townshend (Snow Patrol, Cranberries etc) Simon Gogerly (new Underworld album), Rupert Cobb (Live at Abbey Road), Sylvia Massey (Tool), Mike Masters (Flight of the Conchords) George Shilling (reviewer) use checking phase as a matter of course.

It's only needed if there's a problem - if your tracks have a good phase relationship why bother ?

But if they haven't, why on earth wouldn't you ?

Ignore it at your peril.

Bluebirdstudios

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Declan, what your describing is the effect of putting stuff out of phase , not in ...

What I was trying to describe was, for example -fixing the snare phase against the overheads as mentioned earlier in this tread would perhaps bring the snare into better focus / phase, this is more an issue of degrees of phase as opposed to be simply in or out. But what about all the other stuff the snare mic hears - a near crash or hi hats, toms etc.... they now have also been offset against the overheads.
This is what I was referring to the result of this can be worse than having the snare slightly out of phase with the overheads or any other reference for that matter.
For me I think getting the phase right by ear at Miking/tracking as others have said , works better always open to new ways so I'll keep reading and trying out some ideas or products that pop up in forums like this.
-Dec

SeanHurley

studiorat wrote: »

Finally it might me worth mentioning that perhaps drums aren't the only instrument which may (or may not) benefit from this treatment.

How about Vocal and Acoustic Guitar?

I read an interview with Dave Eringa in Resolution magazine that he splits guitar signals to 2 or 3 different amps and time aligns each amp to each other. He sends a pulse from a tone generator to each amp and then calculates by how many ms he needs to nudge each one so that they are in phase.

PaulBrewer

ogy wrote: »

have to agree with dec, at the end of the day all the drum sounds of note i've ever heard were recorded long before time aligning was possible. in general drums are the element of the traditional rock band that have suffered the most at the hands of technology, from quantizing/replacement/etc.

So you don't rate Queens of the Stoneage or the new Gorillaz or Foo Fighters ?

ogy

thanks to robin and studiorat about my peaks/troughs question, both arguments make sense and are probably both contributing factors.

My professional acquaintances , Cenzo Townshend (Snow Patrol, Cranberries etc) Simon Gogerly (new Underworld album), Rupert Cobb (Live at Abbey Road), Sylvia Massey (Tool), Mike Masters (Flight of the Conchords) George Shilling (reviewer) use checking phase as a matter of course.

do you specifically mean time alignment or does this mean checking phase before recording?

But what about all the other stuff the snare mic hears - a near crash or hi hats, toms etc.... they now have also been offset against the overheads.

this point is probably more important than people realise. especially if your going for a natural airy sound with minimal gating.
on top of this, with a noise type signal especially, the frequencies involved will all have varying unrelated wavelengths, so bringing some frequencies into phase will push others out of phase.

I read an interview with Dave Eringa in Resolution magazine that he splits guitar signals to 2 or 3 different amps and time aligns each amp to each other. He sends a pulse from a tone generator to each amp and then calculates by how many ms he needs to nudge each one so that they are in phase.
Yesterday 10:20

what about the technique of flipping the phase on one channel and moving the mic until the tone generator/amp hum dissapears as much as possible. Flipping the phase back will give you a point of maximum constructive interference between the two sources. Repeat for as many mics as neccesary. However this still suffers from the different wavelengths problem.

So you don't rate Queens of the Stoneage or the new Gorillaz or Foo Fighters ?

not especially in terms of drum sound. the drums are very well mixed, punchy, solid etc, but often sound generic/sampled/triggered. Natural is a funny term i guess talking about recorded drums, we're not talking about the sound of a kit in a room (outside of jazz recordings i guess). engineers have always created some degree of hyper-realism in a drum sounds. we probably just have a different opinion of what a great drum sound sounds like.