achknalligewelt Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Does anyone have experience of this? I know I can use the two built in mics for the room sound L/R, plus plug in external mics for the kick and snare/hi-hat and get me four channels of mixable drum sounds, but how good is it? To get a few hours of good rehearsal studio time (a good one, not a sh*t one full of teenagers playing death metal) to record like that in, well, that costs a few quid, and I don't want to waste time and money on a dead end. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 (edited) Yep, lots.... The drums on this were recorded with an H4n, using a Sennheiser e835 for snare and a BlueBall on the kick for The Individuils, changed that for a Red5Audio kick mic for the other two to get a bit more low end off the kick:- [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/your-mouths-are-killing-you"]https://soundcloud.c...are-killing-you[/url] [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/the-individuils"]https://soundcloud.c...the-individuils[/url] [url="https://soundcloud.com/lines-horizontal/harvest"]https://soundcloud.c...izontal/harvest[/url] Placement is as always crucial. In this case IIRC the H4n was placed such that the kick and snare were dead center in the stereo field, above the kit (about 2' above the toms, pointing straight down at the snare). Kick mic was right at the hole in the resonant head of the kick pointing (as best as you can with a blueball) at the beater, the snare was mic'ed about 3" above the snare at the rim, pointing at the contact point of the stick on the batter head. A few listens to make sure nothing was terribly wrong and away we went. Comes out rather well considering it was recording on a showstring budget in a avery guerrilla fashion Edited January 14, 2014 by 51m0n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 (edited) Oh and make sure you have the latest firmware that lets you seperate the rec levels of the two external mic inputs, there is a config in the system menu somewhere to enable that. Recording in 4 channel mode gives you two stereo wav files, one is the internal mics the other is the external mics. Seperate the external mics file into two mono files and treat accordingly in your DAW.... Edited January 14, 2014 by 51m0n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
achknalligewelt Posted January 14, 2014 Author Share Posted January 14, 2014 Sounds very good indeed. So, plug in the externals, stick the Zoom on a mic stand above the kit, and hit record. The firmware is up to date, yes, so I can split the two stereo tracks into mono and mix in GarageBand. Did you have your drummer listening to a demo track on headphones? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 The drummer was listening to a click and the samples/synths Syncing up afterwards was pretty easy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 That's brilliant timing, I've just got one of these and am looking to do the same thing. Do you use the compressors built into the recorder or add them during post processing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 (edited) Never use the built in compressors or limiters They sound like arse Set it to 24 bit and keep the rec level low. I think the inbuilt mics are set to about 0.3 and the kick and snare Mic around 0.4 or so, very low! Different kit, drummer and room will need different levels obviously. That gives enough headroom for transients. All fx, eq compression reverb etc applied at mix down. Edited January 19, 2014 by 51m0n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonBassAlpha Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Good results, 1 question, the cymbals sound very wide,were the internal mics panned hard left and right at mix? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 Yep, its par for the course if you have an X-Y pair dead centre of the kit pointing down on the snare and then pan them full width. You can get a wider image with a spaced pair, but you tend to lose the middle of the kit then, which sounds far worse IMO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonBassAlpha Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 I get what you mean, it's just that I thought the ride and crash sounded somewhat disconnected from the rest of the kit when listening on headphones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 closing the pan width would solve that issue, but it was mixed on monitors, and in that case pan is going to necessarily wider to achieve the desired result in a room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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