DrWobble said:
Thanks chaps.I'll check drum atom out. I,ve got a What do you mean by lookahead JS?
Yes it's acoustic spill not a mixer issue. I'm using a Teac PE 120 which is a nice mic.
I don't have many mic's and am looking for another decent dynamic mic at present as the Sennheiser I have isn't the best for mic ing the kick drum. It's been really tricky to get a decent sound despite trying different positions, damping and drum head tuning.
When I get the time I'll try using a speaker to mic it. Last time I tried this the signal was very faint which makes me think it could do with a preamp before the channel pre amp. Of course it could be a complete waste of time.
Andy.
Leakage may be a problem when you have too much hi hat in your snare so you can't make your snare bright enough without having trouble with hi hat, or the kick has too much snare so is difficult to get good HF from the kick to make its attack good enough. Gates can get really tricky, lookahead is a control that
detect the signal before, so it inserts a delay on the signal, when it has to open, the signal that says the gate needs to open is capable to get through it and you listen, because that delay gives the gate enough time to open without clicking, so you have the attack solved, make lookahead 2ms and 2ms attack time and you have a clean, click less and nice attack. For the release is quite more complicated... well, not more complicated but there isn't a recipe as lookahead for the attack, which make us know that is should be right. Too long catch snares, too short is not the same kick anymore, it will sound different, I usually go for let the next hit of the snare leak a bit, it will be covered by the actual snare when it's on the mix.
You should really try drumatom, it really shocked me when I tried, never used in a actual mix since not too long since I know about it and any mixes where it could be useful since then, I did reopened an old mix, which is the only mix the mastering studio returned to me, because of a leaky hi hat on the snare and it did really good job with it, when I did it it was a PIA and ended disappointed with my mix, the hi hat was too open in a part the snare was lower than it should, bad combination, the hi hat ended being louder than snare, with little gate to attenuate the effect, if I used a gate, as I did on the first mix, the hi hat was shouting with the snare hits, so it was awful, I thought it will be just fine but it wasn't, I ended with a weak snare for the intro and bridges of the song. I tried this soft and it did a really nice job, too bad I didn't know about it when I did that mix. Most probably there are some other softs doing something like this one out there, I don't know others, but let me know if you find something.
JS