Miking drums

[byeager]

We're running a Yamaha EMX5016CF powered board in my 5 piece rock band. Normally, I only mike the kick drum for the smaller venues. Usually, when we play a larger or outdoor venue a sound system and sound man are provided. However, we played a college team football peprally for a bowl game at large arena (hockey rink) yesterday with 2 Yamaha C115V's and a couple of small 15" subs. We were unable to negotiate a larger PA, and the client was convinced our small system would fill the bill. The audio guy at the arena patched a line from my board to his board, which he sent to the house speakers way up in the roof of the arena. I was expecting a nightmare, but it wasn't bad at all. My problem was that when I miked all the drums, the toms were peaking out on the board, even with minimal gain. I was able to end up with an undistorted sound out front, but the clip lights on the input strips remained. Most of the channel strips on my board that I used for the toms didn't have 26db pad switches, so I couldn't try that. In the future, should I just do like I did, and set it up so that no distortion is present out the mains, or do I need to think about getting some external pads. I already know that another board with more channels is in the future!

[byeager]

Any suggestions.....anyone???

[DaveMcg]

What type of mics were you using on the toms? Audix D4's or a similar dynamic mic about 4 inches off the head should do the job without using a pad on the mixer. If you were using SM57's, which I've seen many do, you'll get a hi mid peak which emphasizes the attack and could be the root cause of your input clipping. The mic pre is the first gain stage. If you're clipping you cannot really fix it anywhere but at the mic.

[Viper]

I agree with Dave you cannot fix this problem anywhere but at the mic's. SM 57's are great for micing a guitar amp not good micing a drum kit. There are mic's specially designed for drum micing. I'd try some of them.

[michaelhoddy]

SM 57's are great for micing a guitar amp not good micing a drum kit.

Really now? Can you tell me why you would say something like this, and better yet, give some evidence for why you think this? I might agree with the statement that there are BETTER mics for drum miking, but a 57 can be an adequate, usable mic just about anywhere on the kit. They are certainly better is just about every application than the cheap drum mic packages many people working on this level use for this sort of thing.

You also had better tell just about every professional engineer who uses 57's on the snare drum- most of us have at some point or do.

Back to the original poster- your issue is certainly the mic preamps on the Yamaha EMX mixer- any mixer designed without pad switches or a REALLY robust amount of headroom is not really cut out for serious drum miking, so that's your problem. Specifically, whatever you're using on the toms is probably outputting a hotter-than-normal signal, and the Yamaha can't handle it. Given the relatively low power and headroom specs on the Yamaha's amplifier section, I'd say that the designers really didn't have heavy drum miking intended as one of the applications for this mixer.

Most mixer clip lights will light at least 3 dB before the onset of actual clipping, so if you're getting clean sound out front, it's fine. You have a little more headroom than the lights would allow you to believe.

Your solutions are, of course, buying a bunch of inline pads for the mics, or trying something on the toms which is a little less hot in terms of output. Or just riding things out and trying to keep the sound clean until you can get a more suitable mixer.

As someone else already said, pulling the mics back an inch or two will cool the output gain off them down, assuming you can still get enough signal that way.

[DAS]

To add to what Michael correctly stated, it's often not the end of the world if your drum mics clip the channel on the board a little bit. Aside from the fact that many times those lights come on just before actual clipping occurs, what I am saying is that some clipping of drum mics can be good. (Emphasize "CAN" be...) When you clip the channel the distortion causes increased upper harmonics that can sound good on toms. Additionally it allows the channel to also act as a sort of limiter, which can help even things out a bit. Let your ears be the final judge.

Having noted that, when taken to extremes it isn't going to sound good so you may want to be prepared with pads next time.