Recording Drums: What Difference Does The Room Make?
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- čas přidán 12. 07. 2024
- Everyone agrees that when you’re tracking drums, the room makes a difference - but with so many other variables in play, identifying its specific contribution can be tricky. Enter producer Tommaso Colliva, drummer Alex Reeves, and a unique experiment... Full article: sosm.ag/sep16drums
00:00 - Start
00:54 - Rooms Used
02:39 - Microphone Considerations
03:18 - Preamps
04:10 - Drum Sound Room Comparison
05:38 - Conclusion
This experiment was recorded and produced by Tommaso Colliva
Drums by Alex Reeves
Songs
A father's first words written and performed by Hazel Mills and TJ Allen
Burning Up written and performed by Lotte Mullan, courtesy of Reverb Music
You Know how to rock written by M. Martellotta, performed by the Cypher Ensemble, courtesy of Toomi Labs
Video Credits
Directed and edited by Erica Gianesini
Filmed by Daniel Hurley
Grading by Marco Lamera
Photos of RAK Studios by Andrew Brooks
Produced by Sound on Sound and Toomi Labs
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I call my room 'The Non-Life Having, Random Rattling Shit and Out of Control Bass Frequency Room'.
Sounds cool.
got me one of those suckers too :)
I'm dyin, man...lolol
Got me there
Mine is called "the slap-back echo chamber."
4:24 - Air Studio 1
4:29 - Rak Studio 2
4:33 - Snap Studio
4:37 - Rak Studio 1
4:41 - Toomi Labs
4:44 - Jam Track Central
4:49 - Air Studio 1 with panels
4:52 - Air Studio one
Please don't tell me I just watched 5 minutes of describing the experiment and only one minute experiencing it
Full experiment and sound examples here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
loooool
words can not describe sound. reason why drum mags are a waste of time
IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!
You just described Life in it's entirety for most people
Shocking how clear this makes things.
during the mixes i found it pretty incredible how just changing the drum sound can have such a dramatic effect on the entire mix
Rad Video. Would have loved to have seen/heard more of the actual drum recordings
Look in the article, the link is in the desription. There's a ~700 mb archive file there.
Hey Caleb - link to the recordings is here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. Check out the MEDIA section on the right hand side of that page for all the recordings. Thanks for watching!
alexreevesdrums thanks for sharing the link to Sos. When you listen to the video air studio one sounds the best. But with all mics in the mix Rak studio-2 sounds forward big and punchy and even some of the small rooms sounds really good.
Here: soundcloud.com/soundonsound/sets/drum-rooms-audio-examples-snippets
Can you guys please revisit this and make a series out of it. Would love to have heard with all drum mics thrown in as well to see how the drums change with the OH/Room mics.
Personally I like the sound in Air Studio One with panels the most.
There's a lot of work and time spent to make this video...bravo! Wonderful & informative, thank you!
thanks
Amazing video. It's something that's been needing to be done for ages but it's a massive undertaking. So thanks for the time and effort you guys put in to making this video. Really well demonstrated.
Oh...and Air, Studio One (no panels)...yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees...
My response as well - that's where I want to record!
Rob Burgess don't we all. and it's only like $6,000 per day😂
That one is great
I'd say so as well if someone tuned that floor tom so that it would wouldn't buzz so much. Bottom head needed adjusting, most likely. For that reason I preferred the sound from same room with panels. The panels helped soak up that floor tom ring. At least you can tell that the tuning was in no way altered for the experiment.
Absolutely brilliant demonstration.
Great comparison. Amazing how different the same kit can sound.
Great practical demonstration, super obvious, totally got it. Thanks for this one.
Thank you guys. It`s evidently A LOT of work done here. And the idea becomes quite clear toward the end.
Air Studio One and Studio One with panels were lovely.
Great thing. The concept and its realization made mi giz.
Thumbs up for Tommaso !!
Really cool getting the message across this way, nice job. something that I'm sure was considered but not explained is the temperature, humidity, and pressure of these locations which can also have a noticeable difference, especially in tuning and dampening. Acoustic drums are still preferable than any digital set in my opinion.
Very exciting to hear the difference so clear! Thanks for this video!
If song at 0:55 and the drum solo at 4:48 isn't already a song it definitely should be. Very awesome!
Yes please!!!!
There is so much potential to a really cool song
@hakarumonoka - Burning up by lotte Mollen
Incredible effort! Thank you for doing this. This makes up for the plug in microphone video (the only other SOS video I have watched), I finally got that shit out of my head....mostly.
Great video! Sweet experiment and even a nice JAM! Want to hear the whole song.
I love the small room vibes! You can hear the tuning of the toms and the snare so much better because there is almost no reflections going on!
Excellent undertaking!
Great to now have an informed perspective.
Personally love the natural sound at Air Studio One.
Thank you!
This was a very well executed and brilliantly conceived idea. I hope there will be more like it, exploring other aspects also. Recording schools would do well to incorporate this kind of video, lest they become obsolete.
I just found this from my Recording School; I think I'd call it a success
Incredibly helpful video :D Thank you guys
Excellent! Great video. Well done.
Great....thanks!
THIS IS absoludly amazing. thank you so much sound on sound
All I can say is WOW! What an excellent video :-O
Right up there with the guitar cab mic placement video I saw on another channel a while back. Points for accent, too. Epic video.
ahahah my accent is pretty terrible if you ask me but thank you
Wow, awesome video. I wish it was longer.
Great video!! Nice work
Great video, particularly liked the sound of the Rak rooms.
Me also (as well as Air studio without the gobos).
Amazing! Who would've thought that the room made that much difference?
I thought.
IME, it's the single most important factor in drum sound. Any combination of other things will sound bad in a bad room.
Air studio one is just grand. Helps the mix balance out too just having a great room
+Sound On Sound magazine
Love it! Thanks so much for this test. 👍👍
Air studio one, with and without the panels was so nice. My fav by far.
So well DONE
the problem with keeping it all consistent is I'm sure nearly all engineers would mic a drum kit differently dependant on the room. A great room would be the case for some cool single or double overhead only recording...a small room probably bring the overheads in and relying on close mics and others that are very large probably going to town on ambient mics... If the ambient mics can't be that far away often its good to delay them out of the phase cancellation area and place the kit in the null for example too, so different rooms definitely prescribe different techniques. very often even what fits in one room doesn't in the other in terms of actual mic stands!
very helpful video, thank you
Truly eye-opening.
amazing video guysss. so glad im a paid subscriber to s.o.s!!!!!
eye opening!!!!!
As soon as the music comes in, AIR flexes and shines.
You guys nailed it on this one. Proving one simple fact #roomacousticsmatter
What happened to the cymbal stroke at 5:07?
Different take happened.
so good. straight and to the point! cooooool
Loved this video!
Glad I know what a floor tom sounds like in all these rooms. Next time make this a 16 second short or demonstrate the sound of the kit in the rooms....
I love learning, this was great
For me, Rak Studio One sounded the best by far. Air Studio One also had a great sound to it. Rak Studio Two was the best of the medium/ small rooms imo
where I can find the song that starts at 4.55?
Wow! very cool and interesting. thx for your work and the provided information.
It also depends where in any room you place the kit.
awesome video thanks heaps.
Awesome music!
Rak Studio One is my favorite. Gives the drums a nice open and atmospheric sound.
This was a really good experiment 👍 I'm not going to say the name but one of the biggest good-looking studio in the video sounds like a bedroom 😆
GREAT video. Can we get a stereo stem of the drum in each room?
Here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
yo this video was fucking sick as fuck! Just wish it was longer! great job. I want to hear more rooms.
This was an excellent video
Great Vid
Awesome!
Bands never, really never believe me when i tell them, to better spend 100 bucks more a day for a better room for drum tracking... Next time i play 'em this video.
That difference is huge!
LOVED the dummy head technique, now i want one
Is there a chance to get the test-song with "air-studio-one-without-panel-settings" or any other version of that song? anyway - very nice work!
4:56 - does anybody know the title of the song, where to buy it?
Awesome Video. Came here from Gizmodo :D
I ran into an issue with a heavy buzz sound on my drum kit...the strange thing is that you don't hear it live. I did all the troubleshooting to be sure it wasn't the mic, chord, the preamps, and I even unplugged all the other mics on the kit to be sure it wasn't some phasing/frequency issue.
It is only happening on the toms and like I said you dont hear anything when it is live but you hear this almost electrical type buzzing sound when its being recorded.
Do you have any idea what it could be? Any suggestion would be 100% appreciated. Thank you.
Where can I hear the mixes starting from 4:21? They are not available on the SOS website, so where can I listen to them?
I prefer that tune over the one on the SOS website.
There has been years but I could not find the track.
oooor build a anechoic chamber and then you can add reverb properly ^^ i work sometimes in a anechoic chamber and while being incredibly expensive the possibilities you have afterwards are amazing ... it might not sound as pleasings as a room that fit perfectly the sound you're looking for but having a completely dry sound to work with is incredible
Awesome video
+soundonsoundvideo *Thanks for this study of the recording chamber's effect on percussion.* For contemporary pop-rock, the deadest rooms would probably work best for me, as I routinely tune my Tama®/Hoshino® kit for maximum decay time (and Evans®/D'Addario® EC2S coated top/plain bottom, 7+7 mil, would have the longest decay time of any head pair-up I'll be testing).
are the close mic drum channels available anywhere to download and compare more closely? I only saw the drum mix stems
Are they in the MEDIA section of this page? www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. If not then I think no, sorry
He is even wearing the same jacket 😂 interesting stuff tho, good job 👍
Someone asked me if I was also wearing the same underpants
Cool! note: in one room, floor tom moved to other side of kit...changes sound if in different position from the central condenser mic, i tend to think.
very interesting indeed
excellent explanation, thanks. check out the kit at DME studio in Nashville...
great video \m/
I liked the OPEN Air studio sound (no pun intended).
Nice video ! can you tell me what is that snare ??
Where can I find the songs in this video, especially the one the drummer performs? I can’t find it anywhere.
Would have been nice to hear more of the drums. As in an entire drum kit!
video only presents an experiment we did and it's very well documented on Sound On Sound Sept 2016 issue. Files to download including drum stems too
Rak Studio two and snap studio... these are the sounds i want to have!
Cool vid...
Recorded drums in a barn years ago. Best place I ever recorded drums in (studios included).
Thank you for good vdo.
RAK Studio 1 is a clear winner for me, at least for this style of song. AIR studio 1 without panels was pretty good too.
I'd like to hear some music produced with only one stereo pair of ribbon mics left in the exact same spot with the same gain, for every track. No mixing, no compression, no eq. If you want a track to be louder, bring the instrument or amp closer to the mics. Mix by positioning left/right + closer/farther from the stationary mic, combined with performance dynamics. Set the initial gain for the loudest track, and leave it there.
If there is a binaural head ribbon setup, that'd be cool as well. You just need one good mic pair and one good preamp pair to do this method. And of course a medium or large room that sounds good.
I find the constantly shifting camera angles confusing because it's sometimes hard to spot which room is being used at the time. During the actual demonstration the rooms should be also shown and switched in the same order as they are introduced in the first half of the video.
thanx
Oh yeah! Now we know!
air studio one without the panels sounded so good
Every time I hear studio drums I keep coming back to the same thing over and over and over again. The bigger the room, the better the drums sound.
Really nice, I just wish there was a bit more playing, showing different configurations of mics. You guys must have that somewhere, right? ;)
Read the Sound On Sound article: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
hmmm, i wonder if thats why my guitar sound never sounds right compared to the drum sound. I only own 2 mics (Shure SM57 and an Apex 435B) and I've been using the Shure SM57 to record my guitar tracks but i record them in my bedroom separate from the jam space (both in the basement). But i'm also thinking that I wasn't cranking my guitar amp enough to get the bottom end to pull through as the tone sounds flat and full of static when at a low to medium volume. I'll figure it out through trial and error until I go to Audio Production & Engineering
If i build a studio for recording drums, what is the most important in the room,
height, low ceiling, room width?
it is obvious that hearing the same drumset in different rooms is different. but the question was: "does the room affect my recordings?" so it shouldn't have been done with a binaural mic, because no one ever recorded a drumtrack with an ambient mic! we wanted to see if the room affected the sound of each mic positioned on the drumset!
Very True!!!
The choice of using the head was to keep what you hear on the video as consistent as possible. The experiment is documented on Sound On Sound September 2016 issue including proper drum mixes download
ma non ha senso. è ovvio che in diverse stanze il suono generale della batteria è diverso. ciò che vorrebbe sapere il visualizzatore medio di questo video è: la stanza modifica il suono che arriva nei microfoni della batteria (tipo quello su rullante, cassa ecc.) ?
Recording drums nowadays always include close AND distant/room/ambient mics. If you read the article though the subject is discussed in depth.
oh i'm sorry, i thought you were italian.
aand yes, i know they include ambient mics, but i think everybody knows that those mics are affected by the room's acustic. what should be really tested, imho, is if the close mics are affected by the room too ;-)
Which is the song at 4:58? Any place we can hear that whole track?
Hey guys anyone knows the name of the background song?