fake drum room mics

[jack c.]

would someone explain for dummies 101 how to set up fake drum room with no mics?thanks in advance.jack c.

[msmcleod]

Put a send on each individual drum track to an aux track with a room reverb on it.  Pre-fader is probably best.

Adjust the send / reverb amount to suit - I'd recommend listening to other recordings of real drum mics so you have something to match.

[Lord Tim]

^^ Great advice!

To expand on what Mark said. I'd also tend to make sure your reverb is set to a "room" kind of sound rather than a big hall wash, then set up a pre-delay on it if the reverb plugin has it (or put a delay in the chain before the reverb plugin with 100% wet and a delay time of 50 - 200ms), and then I'd use EQ to sculpt the sound a little, rolling off the highs especially, and more than likely everything below about 200Hz too.

The idea of that is that sound takes a while to travel to another part of a room and reach the room mics there, so you'd want to add the pre-delay in to give it the illusion of it travelling. Some people like to time-align their room mics to be in time with the initial drum sound when doing live drums but that always makes it sound much smaller than if you just left it alone, I reckon.

The reason I'm suggesting a room kind of reverb rather than a hall or plate or anything like that is it's generally more dense sounding, so you get that "boxed in" kind of room feeling, and EQing it will make it sound further away and stop it from clashing with your direct drum sound. There's nothing wrong with adding a send on that room track to a bigger reverb if you want it to sound like the space is bigger, but I'd definitely start there.

I'd also tend to experiment with maybe adding some saturation to the room track as well - the Pro Channel Tape Emulator is a good one to throw on there to give it some thickness and grit, but you'd definitely want to have this all fairly low in the mix if you go this way unless you're purposely going for a trashy kind of drum sound (which sounds killer, but it won't work for everything).

Edited November 15, 2022 by Lord Tim

[Xoo]

Why pre-fade?

[Lord Tim]

I think there's an argument for both pre and post fade, but in argument for pre-fade, imagine you have a live multi-mic kit. Each drum will be as loud as it is, and those room mics will pick up the kit as a whole. Then when you get the multitracks of the kit into your project, you might find you'd like the hats quieter, the kicks and snare louder, etc. so you'd adjust those on each kit element, but the room mics wouldn't change - that's baked into what the room "heard" so to speak.

Of course, this isn't a real kit, so you don't have to put up with the limitations of live mics either. You might find the kit sounds great in the room but the cymbals are way too loud, so you have to jump through a bunch of hoops with de-essing, EQing, etc. to tame it all. For a fake room mic, just turn the send down on those elements, so do it as a post-fader send.

It's ultimately whatever works for the track, really.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Lord Tim

[Xoo]

That makes perfect 0sense.

[abacab]

One idea >>> T-RackS Sunset Sound Studio Reverb

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/trsunsetsound/

 

[jack c.]

On 11/15/2022 at 8:01 AM, msmcleod said:

Put a send on each individual drum track

thanks for insights.jack c.

[jack c.]

On 11/15/2022 at 9:12 AM, Lord Tim said:

To expand on what Mark said.

thanks mate as your words are helpful!!!jack c.

[jack c.]

1 hour ago, abacab said:

One idea >>> T-RackS Sunset Sound Studio Reverb

thank you.jack c.

[FZ1]

Craig Anderton's SOS column covered this in great depth

Sonar: Making A Virtual Drum Room

You would probably need to replace the old CakewalkFx delay with something else.

I have used this method and it works well.

Cheers

 

[jack c.]

8 hours ago, FZ1 said:

Craig Anderton's SOS column covered this in great depth

Sonar: Making A Virtual Drum Room

You would probably need to replace the old CakewalkFx delay with something else.

I have used this method and it works well.

Cheers

 

thanks mate.jack c.

[jack c.]

i installed Perfect Space convolution reverb

but i can find them.so where are these impulse responses located or do i have to downlaod them?thanks in advance.jack c.

[abacab]

2 hours ago, jack c. said:

i installed Perfect Space convolution reverb

but i can find them.so where are these impulse responses located or do i have to downlaod them?thanks in advance.jack c.

Take look here. Probably something more up to date and 64-bit for free.

Best FREE Convolution Reverb VST Plugins

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2019/03/18/free-convolution-reverb-vst/

I my opinion, I would try the Melda plugin first. I own several of their plugins, plus many of their free ones. They are always high quality and relatively bug free. The developer is always updating the bundle.

Edited December 1, 2022 by abacab

[abacab]

I just had a play around with the free MConvolutionEZ from Melda (mentioned in the article above), and it works great in CW!

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MConvolutionEZ

Never tried it before, but it's got a permanent home here now! Tons of impulse responses and presets included (drum room included)!

Edited December 1, 2022 by abacab

[OutrageProductions]

REMatrix Solo is built in to the CbB ProChannel and is a convolution reverb. You can load any IR response in Wave or AIFF (IIRC) format. I have a ton of IRs collected in person over the years.

[jack c.]

19 hours ago, abacab said:

Take look here.

thanks mate for your thoughts.jack c

 

16 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

REMatrix Solo is built in to the CbB ProChannel

thank you.jack c.