4:24 - Air Studio 1 4:29 - Rak Studio 2 4:33 - Snap Studio 4:37 - Rak Studio 1 4:41 - Toomi Labs 4:44 - Jam Track Central 4:49 - Air Studio 1 with panels 4:52 - Air Studio one
Hey Caleb - link to the recordings is here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. Check out the MEDIA section on the right hand side of that page for all the recordings. Thanks for watching!
alexreevesdrums thanks for sharing the link to Sos. When you listen to the video air studio one sounds the best. But with all mics in the mix Rak studio-2 sounds forward big and punchy and even some of the small rooms sounds really good.
Can you guys please revisit this and make a series out of it. Would love to have heard with all drum mics thrown in as well to see how the drums change with the OH/Room mics.
I'd say so as well if someone tuned that floor tom so that it would wouldn't buzz so much. Bottom head needed adjusting, most likely. For that reason I preferred the sound from same room with panels. The panels helped soak up that floor tom ring. At least you can tell that the tuning was in no way altered for the experiment.
Amazing video. It's something that's been needing to be done for ages but it's a massive undertaking. So thanks for the time and effort you guys put in to making this video. Really well demonstrated.
Really cool getting the message across this way, nice job. something that I'm sure was considered but not explained is the temperature, humidity, and pressure of these locations which can also have a noticeable difference, especially in tuning and dampening. Acoustic drums are still preferable than any digital set in my opinion.
the problem with keeping it all consistent is I'm sure nearly all engineers would mic a drum kit differently dependant on the room. A great room would be the case for some cool single or double overhead only recording...a small room probably bring the overheads in and relying on close mics and others that are very large probably going to town on ambient mics... If the ambient mics can't be that far away often its good to delay them out of the phase cancellation area and place the kit in the null for example too, so different rooms definitely prescribe different techniques. very often even what fits in one room doesn't in the other in terms of actual mic stands!
it is obvious that hearing the same drumset in different rooms is different. but the question was: "does the room affect my recordings?" so it shouldn't have been done with a binaural mic, because no one ever recorded a drumtrack with an ambient mic! we wanted to see if the room affected the sound of each mic positioned on the drumset!
The choice of using the head was to keep what you hear on the video as consistent as possible. The experiment is documented on Sound On Sound September 2016 issue including proper drum mixes download
ma non ha senso. è ovvio che in diverse stanze il suono generale della batteria è diverso. ciò che vorrebbe sapere il visualizzatore medio di questo video è: la stanza modifica il suono che arriva nei microfoni della batteria (tipo quello su rullante, cassa ecc.) ?
oh i'm sorry, i thought you were italian. aand yes, i know they include ambient mics, but i think everybody knows that those mics are affected by the room's acustic. what should be really tested, imho, is if the close mics are affected by the room too ;-)
I find the constantly shifting camera angles confusing because it's sometimes hard to spot which room is being used at the time. During the actual demonstration the rooms should be also shown and switched in the same order as they are introduced in the first half of the video.
For me, Rak Studio One sounded the best by far. Air Studio One also had a great sound to it. Rak Studio Two was the best of the medium/ small rooms imo
Incredible effort! Thank you for doing this. This makes up for the plug in microphone video (the only other SOS video I have watched), I finally got that shit out of my head....mostly.
This was a very well executed and brilliantly conceived idea. I hope there will be more like it, exploring other aspects also. Recording schools would do well to incorporate this kind of video, lest they become obsolete.
Glad I know what a floor tom sounds like in all these rooms. Next time make this a 16 second short or demonstrate the sound of the kit in the rooms....
Cool! note: in one room, floor tom moved to other side of kit...changes sound if in different position from the central condenser mic, i tend to think.
Where can I hear the mixes starting from 4:21? They are not available on the SOS website, so where can I listen to them? I prefer that tune over the one on the SOS website.
I DID NOT KNOW acoustics mattered this much. The hi-hat and snare sparkle and glimmer in Rak Studio One. Rak Studio Two makes the floor tom hum and resonate the biggest and warmest. The panels in Air Studio One smooth out the snare's transients and adds compression. I'm just confused on if and how and why they used other mics and then the bianural mic.
Bands never, really never believe me when i tell them, to better spend 100 bucks more a day for a better room for drum tracking... Next time i play 'em this video.
5 лет назад
oooor build a anechoic chamber and then you can add reverb properly ^^ i work sometimes in a anechoic chamber and while being incredibly expensive the possibilities you have afterwards are amazing ... it might not sound as pleasings as a room that fit perfectly the sound you're looking for but having a completely dry sound to work with is incredible
Are they in the MEDIA section of this page? www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. If not then I think no, sorry
I ran into an issue with a heavy buzz sound on my drum kit...the strange thing is that you don't hear it live. I did all the troubleshooting to be sure it wasn't the mic, chord, the preamps, and I even unplugged all the other mics on the kit to be sure it wasn't some phasing/frequency issue. It is only happening on the toms and like I said you dont hear anything when it is live but you hear this almost electrical type buzzing sound when its being recorded. Do you have any idea what it could be? Any suggestion would be 100% appreciated. Thank you.
I can't help but think that this might not be the best way to compare because in rooms and spaces with a lot more reflections there's a higher spl, so keeping the preamps' gain settings the same is in effect adding or removing gain when changing the space. To get a more accurate representation of each space it seems to me to be a good idea to adjust the preamps accordingly each time to try to avoid hearing so much change in how much is hitting each preamp. Nothing you can do to avoid the differing spls hitting each mic obviously.
hmmm, i wonder if thats why my guitar sound never sounds right compared to the drum sound. I only own 2 mics (Shure SM57 and an Apex 435B) and I've been using the Shure SM57 to record my guitar tracks but i record them in my bedroom separate from the jam space (both in the basement). But i'm also thinking that I wasn't cranking my guitar amp enough to get the bottom end to pull through as the tone sounds flat and full of static when at a low to medium volume. I'll figure it out through trial and error until I go to Audio Production & Engineering
I'd like to hear some music produced with only one stereo pair of ribbon mics left in the exact same spot with the same gain, for every track. No mixing, no compression, no eq. If you want a track to be louder, bring the instrument or amp closer to the mics. Mix by positioning left/right + closer/farther from the stationary mic, combined with performance dynamics. Set the initial gain for the loudest track, and leave it there. If there is a binaural head ribbon setup, that'd be cool as well. You just need one good mic pair and one good preamp pair to do this method. And of course a medium or large room that sounds good.
+soundonsoundvideo *Thanks for this study of the recording chamber's effect on percussion.* For contemporary pop-rock, the deadest rooms would probably work best for me, as I routinely tune my Tama®/Hoshino® kit for maximum decay time (and Evans®/D'Addario® EC2S coated top/plain bottom, 7+7 mil, would have the longest decay time of any head pair-up I'll be testing).
It does, don't even have to use microphones to see the difference. I drum in my room, in a practice room 10 minutes from home and sometimes hace small gigs and in every one of these, the drums sound different, the reverb is awful in my room, its way too small, the practice room has some reverb but it actually gives it power and well the gigs, sounds pretty normal
this video could really have been a game changer. But why did you decide to show so little, and bring back the playback in the middle of it ? I hope someday you come up with another editing of this, because you were close to achieve something big
![Recording Drums With Steve Albini [Third Circle Recordings]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kmP9z-xTRz0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Recording Drums With Steve Albini [Third Circle Recordings]](/img/tr.png)
4:24 - Air Studio 1
4:29 - Rak Studio 2
4:33 - Snap Studio
4:37 - Rak Studio 1
4:41 - Toomi Labs
4:44 - Jam Track Central
4:49 - Air Studio 1 with panels
4:52 - Air Studio one
I call my room 'The Non-Life Having, Random Rattling Shit and Out of Control Bass Frequency Room'.
Sounds cool.
got me one of those suckers too :)
I'm dyin, man...lolol
Got me there
Mine is called "the slap-back echo chamber."
Please don't tell me I just watched 5 minutes of describing the experiment and only one minute experiencing it
Full experiment and sound examples here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
loooool
words can not describe sound. reason why drum mags are a waste of time
IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!!
You just described Life in it's entirety for most people
Rad Video. Would have loved to have seen/heard more of the actual drum recordings
Look in the article, the link is in the desription. There's a ~700 mb archive file there.
Hey Caleb - link to the recordings is here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. Check out the MEDIA section on the right hand side of that page for all the recordings. Thanks for watching!
alexreevesdrums thanks for sharing the link to Sos. When you listen to the video air studio one sounds the best. But with all mics in the mix Rak studio-2 sounds forward big and punchy and even some of the small rooms sounds really good.
Here: soundcloud.com/soundonsound/sets/drum-rooms-audio-examples-snippets
Can you guys please revisit this and make a series out of it. Would love to have heard with all drum mics thrown in as well to see how the drums change with the OH/Room mics.
during the mixes i found it pretty incredible how just changing the drum sound can have such a dramatic effect on the entire mix
Personally I like the sound in Air Studio One with panels the most.
There's a lot of work and time spent to make this video...bravo! Wonderful & informative, thank you!
thanks
Great comparison. Amazing how different the same kit can sound.
Oh...and Air, Studio One (no panels)...yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees...
My response as well - that's where I want to record!
Rob Burgess don't we all. and it's only like $6,000 per day😂
That one is great
I'd say so as well if someone tuned that floor tom so that it would wouldn't buzz so much. Bottom head needed adjusting, most likely. For that reason I preferred the sound from same room with panels. The panels helped soak up that floor tom ring. At least you can tell that the tuning was in no way altered for the experiment.
Amazing video. It's something that's been needing to be done for ages but it's a massive undertaking. So thanks for the time and effort you guys put in to making this video. Really well demonstrated.
Really cool getting the message across this way, nice job. something that I'm sure was considered but not explained is the temperature, humidity, and pressure of these locations which can also have a noticeable difference, especially in tuning and dampening. Acoustic drums are still preferable than any digital set in my opinion.
If song at 0:55 and the drum solo at 4:48 isn't already a song it definitely should be. Very awesome!
Yes please!!!!
There is so much potential to a really cool song
@hakarumonoka - Burning up by lotte Mollen
Air Studio One and Studio One with panels were lovely.
Great practical demonstration, super obvious, totally got it. Thanks for this one.
Absolutely brilliant demonstration.
the problem with keeping it all consistent is I'm sure nearly all engineers would mic a drum kit differently dependant on the room. A great room would be the case for some cool single or double overhead only recording...a small room probably bring the overheads in and relying on close mics and others that are very large probably going to town on ambient mics... If the ambient mics can't be that far away often its good to delay them out of the phase cancellation area and place the kit in the null for example too, so different rooms definitely prescribe different techniques. very often even what fits in one room doesn't in the other in terms of actual mic stands!
Air studio one is just grand. Helps the mix balance out too just having a great room
Great thing. The concept and its realization made mi giz.
Thumbs up for Tommaso !!
it is obvious that hearing the same drumset in different rooms is different. but the question was: "does the room affect my recordings?" so it shouldn't have been done with a binaural mic, because no one ever recorded a drumtrack with an ambient mic! we wanted to see if the room affected the sound of each mic positioned on the drumset!
Very True!!!
The choice of using the head was to keep what you hear on the video as consistent as possible. The experiment is documented on Sound On Sound September 2016 issue including proper drum mixes download
ma non ha senso. è ovvio che in diverse stanze il suono generale della batteria è diverso. ciò che vorrebbe sapere il visualizzatore medio di questo video è: la stanza modifica il suono che arriva nei microfoni della batteria (tipo quello su rullante, cassa ecc.) ?
Recording drums nowadays always include close AND distant/room/ambient mics. If you read the article though the subject is discussed in depth.
oh i'm sorry, i thought you were italian.
aand yes, i know they include ambient mics, but i think everybody knows that those mics are affected by the room's acustic. what should be really tested, imho, is if the close mics are affected by the room too ;-)
Excellent! Great video. Well done.
Great....thanks!
Great video! Sweet experiment and even a nice JAM! Want to hear the whole song.
Air studio one, with and without the panels was so nice. My fav by far.
Right up there with the guitar cab mic placement video I saw on another channel a while back. Points for accent, too. Epic video.
ahahah my accent is pretty terrible if you ask me but thank you
I love the small room vibes! You can hear the tuning of the toms and the snare so much better because there is almost no reflections going on!
Wow, awesome video. I wish it was longer.
Great video, particularly liked the sound of the Rak rooms.
Me also (as well as Air studio without the gobos).
Thank you guys. It`s evidently A LOT of work done here. And the idea becomes quite clear toward the end.
Incredibly helpful video :D Thank you guys
I find the constantly shifting camera angles confusing because it's sometimes hard to spot which room is being used at the time. During the actual demonstration the rooms should be also shown and switched in the same order as they are introduced in the first half of the video.
Amazing! Who would've thought that the room made that much difference?
I thought.
IME, it's the single most important factor in drum sound. Any combination of other things will sound bad in a bad room.
For me, Rak Studio One sounded the best by far. Air Studio One also had a great sound to it. Rak Studio Two was the best of the medium/ small rooms imo
It also depends where in any room you place the kit.
Incredible effort! Thank you for doing this. This makes up for the plug in microphone video (the only other SOS video I have watched), I finally got that shit out of my head....mostly.
Very exciting to hear the difference so clear! Thanks for this video!
This was a very well executed and brilliantly conceived idea. I hope there will be more like it, exploring other aspects also. Recording schools would do well to incorporate this kind of video, lest they become obsolete.
I just found this from my Recording School; I think I'd call it a success
where I can find the song that starts at 4.55?
Glad I know what a floor tom sounds like in all these rooms. Next time make this a 16 second short or demonstrate the sound of the kit in the rooms....
What happened to the cymbal stroke at 5:07?
Different take happened.
Rak Studio One is my favorite. Gives the drums a nice open and atmospheric sound.
4:56 - does anybody know the title of the song, where to buy it?
As soon as the music comes in, AIR flexes and shines.
Cool! note: in one room, floor tom moved to other side of kit...changes sound if in different position from the central condenser mic, i tend to think.
Excellent undertaking!
Great to now have an informed perspective.
Personally love the natural sound at Air Studio One.
Thank you!
If i build a studio for recording drums, what is the most important in the room,
height, low ceiling, room width?
Awesome Video. Came here from Gizmodo :D
amazing video guysss. so glad im a paid subscriber to s.o.s!!!!!
eye opening!!!!!
Where can I find the songs in this video, especially the one the drummer performs? I can’t find it anywhere.
I want to learn this snakedance. Do I need special stretching for my neck?
GREAT video. Can we get a stereo stem of the drum in each room?
Here: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
This was a really good experiment 👍 I'm not going to say the name but one of the biggest good-looking studio in the video sounds like a bedroom 😆
Where can I hear the mixes starting from 4:21? They are not available on the SOS website, so where can I listen to them?
I prefer that tune over the one on the SOS website.
There has been years but I could not find the track.
So are there actual drums in this drum video?
So, is that close mic + binaural mic that we hear? Close mic to capture drum and binaural mic to capture room?
Truly eye-opening.
I DID NOT KNOW acoustics mattered this much. The hi-hat and snare sparkle and glimmer in Rak Studio One. Rak Studio Two makes the floor tom hum and resonate the biggest and warmest. The panels in Air Studio One smooth out the snare's transients and adds compression. I'm just confused on if and how and why they used other mics and then the bianural mic.
Bands never, really never believe me when i tell them, to better spend 100 bucks more a day for a better room for drum tracking... Next time i play 'em this video.
oooor build a anechoic chamber and then you can add reverb properly ^^ i work sometimes in a anechoic chamber and while being incredibly expensive the possibilities you have afterwards are amazing ... it might not sound as pleasings as a room that fit perfectly the sound you're looking for but having a completely dry sound to work with is incredible
are the close mic drum channels available anywhere to download and compare more closely? I only saw the drum mix stems
Are they in the MEDIA section of this page? www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make#para15. If not then I think no, sorry
Hey guys anyone knows the name of the background song?
Is there a chance to get the test-song with "air-studio-one-without-panel-settings" or any other version of that song? anyway - very nice work!
All I can say is WOW! What an excellent video :-O
I liked the OPEN Air studio sound (no pun intended).
Nice video ! can you tell me what is that snare ??
Great video!! Nice work
He is even wearing the same jacket 😂 interesting stuff tho, good job 👍
Someone asked me if I was also wearing the same underpants
THIS IS absoludly amazing. thank you so much sound on sound
+Sound On Sound magazine
Love it! Thanks so much for this test. 👍👍
What was the song that the drummer was playing to and where can I buy it?
Saw Alex playing with Elbow not long ago. Astounding drummer
Recorded drums in a barn years ago. Best place I ever recorded drums in (studios included).
So well DONE
I ran into an issue with a heavy buzz sound on my drum kit...the strange thing is that you don't hear it live. I did all the troubleshooting to be sure it wasn't the mic, chord, the preamps, and I even unplugged all the other mics on the kit to be sure it wasn't some phasing/frequency issue.
It is only happening on the toms and like I said you dont hear anything when it is live but you hear this almost electrical type buzzing sound when its being recorded.
Do you have any idea what it could be? Any suggestion would be 100% appreciated. Thank you.
I can't help but think that this might not be the best way to compare because in rooms and spaces with a lot more reflections there's a higher spl, so keeping the preamps' gain settings the same is in effect adding or removing gain when changing the space. To get a more accurate representation of each space it seems to me to be a good idea to adjust the preamps accordingly each time to try to avoid hearing so much change in how much is hitting each preamp. Nothing you can do to avoid the differing spls hitting each mic obviously.
That difference is huge!
Would have been nice to hear more of the drums. As in an entire drum kit!
video only presents an experiment we did and it's very well documented on Sound On Sound Sept 2016 issue. Files to download including drum stems too
You guys nailed it on this one. Proving one simple fact #roomacousticsmatter
I'm guessing the lack of color correction was to emphasize the difference in the rooms. Air Studio One has my vote for this track.
What kind of Head shaped Micropfone cover is that in front of the drumkit?
hmmm, i wonder if thats why my guitar sound never sounds right compared to the drum sound. I only own 2 mics (Shure SM57 and an Apex 435B) and I've been using the Shure SM57 to record my guitar tracks but i record them in my bedroom separate from the jam space (both in the basement). But i'm also thinking that I wasn't cranking my guitar amp enough to get the bottom end to pull through as the tone sounds flat and full of static when at a low to medium volume. I'll figure it out through trial and error until I go to Audio Production & Engineering
Which is the song at 4:58? Any place we can hear that whole track?
yo this video was fucking sick as fuck! Just wish it was longer! great job. I want to hear more rooms.
Where was Tommi Labs on the second pass ... that room is what most of us have... wanted to hear more
Wow! very cool and interesting. thx for your work and the provided information.
Amazing!
My fav:
1. Air Studio One with Panels
2. Rak Studio One
Yep, me too.
I think unless your a pops musician,we all want that "when the levee breaks"power so. First room with out panels added
Really nice, I just wish there was a bit more playing, showing different configurations of mics. You guys must have that somewhere, right? ;)
Read the Sound On Sound article: www.soundonsound.com/techniques/recording-drums-what-difference-does-room-make
I'd like to hear some music produced with only one stereo pair of ribbon mics left in the exact same spot with the same gain, for every track. No mixing, no compression, no eq. If you want a track to be louder, bring the instrument or amp closer to the mics. Mix by positioning left/right + closer/farther from the stationary mic, combined with performance dynamics. Set the initial gain for the loudest track, and leave it there.
If there is a binaural head ribbon setup, that'd be cool as well. You just need one good mic pair and one good preamp pair to do this method. And of course a medium or large room that sounds good.
LOVED the dummy head technique, now i want one
excellent explanation, thanks. check out the kit at DME studio in Nashville...
RAK Studio 1 is a clear winner for me, at least for this style of song. AIR studio 1 without panels was pretty good too.
+soundonsoundvideo *Thanks for this study of the recording chamber's effect on percussion.* For contemporary pop-rock, the deadest rooms would probably work best for me, as I routinely tune my Tama®/Hoshino® kit for maximum decay time (and Evans®/D'Addario® EC2S coated top/plain bottom, 7+7 mil, would have the longest decay time of any head pair-up I'll be testing).
It does, don't even have to use microphones to see the difference. I drum in my room, in a practice room 10 minutes from home and sometimes hace small gigs and in every one of these, the drums sound different, the reverb is awful in my room, its way too small, the practice room has some reverb but it actually gives it power and well the gigs, sounds pretty normal
I love learning, this was great
Anyone else noticed that in one of the clips the drums are the other way around as if they're setup for a left handed player? Why is that?
you could just use Air Studio One sound as the only track for drumms and come out with a killer mix. What a nice room
What are the dimensions of Rak Studio One?
this video could really have been a game changer. But why did you decide to show so little, and bring back the playback in the middle of it ? I hope someday you come up with another editing of this, because you were close to achieve something big
very helpful video, thank you
so good. straight and to the point! cooooool