DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

When I took down my studio last September, I published a shopping list of upgrades for the next session. I bought nearly everything I’d hoped for:

• Hypercardioid Oktava MK-012, check. I actually bartered some SEO advice for this mic.
• Large-diaphragm condenser, check. I have one of the inexpensive Audio-Technica AT2020 as well as a hot-rodded Oktava MK-219 from Michael Joly. The latter was used as a room mic for my summer sessions.
• I didn’t get a Really Nice Preamp. I’m eyeing a couple of two-channel tube pre’s with S/PDIF outs for next time, though.
• I tested an Onyx 800R (samples to come, someday soon) and liked it, but opted to buy a different solid-state digital audio preamp, the Focusrite Octopre LE, which is a couple hundred dollars cheaper and to my ear sounds a little better.

I tuned up my good snare for this session. At 92 psi per lug, it sings. In fact it sings for days; I have to use a “zerOring” because it sings too much. It was miked on top with a Beyerdynamic M422, a supercardioid dynamic, through the Octopre, compressed via RNC, patched back through the Octopre and then into the Digi-002. The bottom mic was an Audix D1, a hypercardioid dynamic, positioned with the capsule 180° from the kick drum to minimize low-end bleed. I compressed it with a DBX 266XL, then patched it into the Digi-002.

Toms were miked individually with Audix D2 and D4 via the four mic pre’s in the Digi-002. I’m still using rim clips for these mics, which is convenient but arguably problematic at mix time.

I miked the hi-hat separately with my new MK-012 hypercardioid. It took some time to find a position that minimized snare bleed without getting the capsule so close to the hats that they sounded like gongs (due to proximity effect). We’ll still need to EQ the high-end; the hats lack the crystalline highs I’d like to hear.

The kick was handled as previously, although this time I was able to record the two mics’ signals separately rather than combining them. This allows the mix engineer to vary the signal, from the D112 inside the drum (lots of attack) to the M380 outside the resonant head (tons of bass and sustain). I added an Earthworks “KickPad” inline filter on the D112 signal, which has sounded great in my rough mixes. The D112 was compressed during tracking via the second RNC. The M380 was not compressed, because bass-heavy signals sound distorted through the RNC.

Overheads were MK-012s, as previously, using the Octopre pre-amps.

I recorded two room mics, but not stereo. I thought I’d get more-interesting results by recording two radically different mics. The idea is to vary the gain of each signal across songs or sections of songs to subtly alter the feel. To that end, I put the Oktava MK219 in front of the kit, about 5' off the ground. The second mic was an omni dynamic, the EV 635a, high in a corner of the room behind the kit.

All together this comes to 13 tracks of drums. It’s a ridiculous amount of channels, yes. On the other hand, the Digi-002 has five inputs I haven’t used yet.

My old Powerbook G4 (667 MHz) was not able to consistently process 13 channels of audio at 24 bit, 44.1 kHz. Some days, I could record an entire song; other days the laptop would puke halfway through. I got in the habit of shutting down nonessential services and killing off hidden daemons (iTunes helper?) to maximize the available CPU, but even then I’d get occasional errors. I upgraded to a Macbook Pro before final tracking; it worked perfectly, and didn’t kick its fan into overdrive as the G4 does.

Mic preamp summary (for my future reference):

• Octopre LE
  1. Kick external
  2. Hi-hat
  3. Snare top (dry)
  4. Snare top (wet)
  5. Ambient 1
  6. Ambient 2
  7. OH (L)
  8. OH (R)

• Mackie 1604
  1. Kick internal (insert: RNC)
  2. Snare bottom (insert: DBX 266XL)

• Digi-002
  1. Tom 1
  2. Tom 2
  3. Tom 3
  4. Tom 4

(It adds up to 14, but I didn’t record the dry snare signal.)