speaker mic story

[psychicoctopus]

Speaker mics. I like them! I'm getting some crazy boom out of a 4" woofer pulled from a set of computer speakers. It's just a bare speaker with no enclosure. The foam surround is even falling apart, but that doesn't stop it.

There was a band at the radio station tonight, and I wanted to try out the speaker mic inside the kick drum combined with a D112 for attack. I slipped the speaker through the hole on the front head and rested it on a folded T-shirt inside the drum. BUT then, we ran out of mic cables and couldn't plug in the D112... I wasn't sure that the speaker mic was going to cut the mustard, and I didn't want to slow things down by drawing attention to it, so I left the unplugged D112 on the kick as a Jedi mind trick. Of course, the bass player was a sound guy (who'd guess) and he's like "Oh, this mic's not plugged in!"... damn. So we're stuck with the speaker, and I'm thinking "this is gonna suck". We both went back to the control room to listen.

Normally, the inside-the-drum speaker transforms an average kick drum into a deep, sustaining, unnatural TR-808-like instrument. It's a really cool sound, but it didn't fit the band at all. Imagine a crisp, mid-tempo rock beat, but the damn kick drum is sustaining FOREVER. BOOOMsnapBOOOMBOOOMsnap. So how do you get rid of the sustain? I tried some weird settings on the RNC but that was counter-productive. Need an expander! Fortunately, there was a Valley People Dyna-mite in the rack, and it trimmed the boom down into more of a punch.

This was with a Daking preamp, but the boom factor comes through even with a Tascam pre.

Moral of the story: bass players are most likely to be sound guys.

---

Another speaker mic observation: I tried an Auratone as an outside kick mic on a different drum and it was TOTALLY WIMPY. It sounded like a heartbeat recorded through a stethoscope onto a cheap cassette tape. Why would it suck while an even smaller speaker (above) rules? I blame the speaker box for dampening the vibrations.

[dokushoka]

What happens when you gate it? Is it the attack or the relase that is the problem, or both?

[psychicoctopus]

[dokushoka]

Yikes. What are you mixing with? Is this all software or all hardware? If you're using logic I have just the trick for you...

[psychicoctopus]

Well this was a live to 2-track broadcast thing... but I'm down with Logic too. What are you thinking about?

[dokushoka]

Shit, its gonna be hard to save it then. In logic, IF you had the kick isolated, the first thing I would do is gate the kick (trying to keep it sounding natural) then I'd dup the kick track to another track, whip out the envelopler plug in and kill everything except for the initial attack on the kick, catch just the beater. It should just be a little "click" when done right. Reduce the lookahead to zero and then mix that in with the other kick track. Its like a poor man's transient designer. There are a few more things that I'd do but I don't want to give away too much

I guess you're gonna be stuck with trying some carving. Maybe a series of cuts?? Its hard to tell without hearing it. Multiband compression??

Good luck dude!

[joelpatterson]

Hey you two! This isn't a chatroom!
_________________
Mountaintop Studios
~The Peak of Perfection~
Petersburgh NY 12138

mountaintop@taconic.net

[trashy]

shaddup, joel, this is good shit!

I love the speaker-as-mic thing. It's fun. Bands look at you like you're some sort of genius or just plain crazy - or some sort of just plain crazy genius.

dokushoka: you give killer advice, friend. I've noticed your postings here before - always helpful and well-written. You should post here more often!

-Phil

[dokushoka]