weird sounding drums.!

[youngshaker]

hi all
facing up a problem,
drum sound itself is pretty ok but after micing it up it sounds really weird,monitoring it through desk and speakers.actually it sounds like having a tube effect or a phaser or i dont know!
the funny thing is that when monitor the sound that dynamic mics deliver its this weird thing im talking about,when monitor though the o/h its really nice!why?!!
This is the first time i deal with recording live drums,so be gentle lol!
thank you

[skrasms]

Sounds like comb filtering. Most people will call it "phase problems" and it comes from the slight time delays between different mics for the same sound. IE, if you have a hihat mic, it's probably picking up a lot of snare. It'll sound fine by itself, but when you mic both the hihat and the snare, you then have the snare mic and the hihat mic both picking up snare. Since the hihat mic is further away from the snare, there's a time delay between the two snare sounds being mixed together. This time delay will cause comb filtering, and it'll sound like a phasor stuck in one position (though probably more subtle).

There are lots of potential ways to help it. Use fewer mics; mess with polarity flipping (whatever you record with should have this, sometimes called "phase inversion" too); use very different mics with differing frequency responses (going for less frequency overlap) will help, if you have a lot of mics available; getting more isolation between mics will help, too. That is, use more directional mics for close micing (since I don't really know what you're using now aside from "dynamic"), and try to get as little bleed as possible. It's not an exact science, just try different things and see how the sound changes.

Hope that helps.

[youngshaker]

trying that and its getting better.worried about the signal that mics are "cathcing" from each other say like the snare mic getting much of tha toms or cymbals and stuff like that,being able to cut these unwanted signals through sx later?
thanks

[C00kie]

Since time delays are causing it, that could be the cure also! You can shift the seperate tracks some samples so they lign up properly. You have to zoom in so you can see the individual samples, and watch closely at the peak of for instance the snare.

But by fixing the snare sound you might make the toms lign up worse... Very close miking with least bleeding as possible is the best fix: prevent it !!

[youngshaker]

ok its getting better and better..
thank you guys!
any other suggestions will be helpful!

[stash98]

definitley gate your drums..and then blend in the overhead mics last to fill out the sound.

[ArKTisK]

a little off topic, but for acoustic drums you can also try bfd drum suite, an amazing acoustic drums vst.

http://www.zzounds.com/item--FXPBFD

[ross g]

definitley gate your drums..and then blend in the overhead mics last to fill out the sound.

i have the opposite thought...i've had better results getting a good, full sound from the overheads and using the close-mics as supplement (depending on the situation), starting with the kick, then snare, hat, toms...the best imagining and natural sound i've gotten from drum kits was with a pair of carefully placed overheads and a kick and snare mic...this will also minimize phasing issues