Mic Pres: Transient Response, Drums, etc.

[UnlikeKurt]

Good morning all.

I posted a ways back about preamp selection for drums. Fletcher responded by suggesting the use of one's clearest and cleaner pres for things like overheads and the "softer" / more aggressive for the close mics.

This made me start thinking about a preamp's transient response and the effect on this first question. How is transient response of a mic pre rated? I've often noticed with some of my preamps, on snare drum specifically, the initial attack seems to be reproduced with what might be perceived as "less impact?"

I had considered the concept that much of the exploding snare crack comes from the sound exploding through the room and the wave's impact on the other microphones, but even with a drum that sounds like a gunshot and a heavy-handed rim shot, with a mic a few inches off, the gunshot isn't really there so to speak.

Could transient response have something to do with this?
Does anyone have any recommendations for technique & or preamp selection that would help to capture the overall whole envelope of the snare better?

Regards
James

[emrr]

You can take this in a million different directions stylistically. Don't forget the transient response of the mic you've chosen, and the headroom figure that's set by the combination of mic and preamp.

[joel hamilton]

Does anyone have any recommendations for technique & or preamp selection that would help to capture the overall whole envelope of the snare better?

Regards
James

I use the Sage SE-1 preamp for snare no matter what room I am working in... neve, API, whatever room.... I have a nice old neve console with 32 amazing 33114's for pre's, and I still use the Sage's for kick and snare for the very reasons you outline above.

You will find that I am listed as one of the users of these pre's at their website. The remarks I have made about these pre''s, starting with an unsolicited tapeop review, put me on that company's radar. I am in no way affiliated with Sage electronics, other than really loving their mic pre's. I also like neve 33114's on toms, chandler germanium pre's for room mics, old manley VTL tube mono reference pre for mono room mic....

[cgarges]

I'll use different mics and different preamps for different situations and this is a key factor. If it's something that needs to be clear and pristine, I'll use faster, clearer mics and preamps and if it needs to be heavier or "more rock," I'll use something slower and heftier. There are even different versions of this. While APIs aren't all that much like Syteks, Millenias, or Buzz Audio preamps, they have a much more present sound and faster transient response than say Neves or Tridents. I'll choose which preamps to use based on what's going on stylistically and how far "forward" the drums need to be.

There are also times when certain combinations can be interesting. For years, I absolutely despised Neumann KM 184s. (Not the KM 84s, though.) The 184s are bright and fast and can be really irritating to me, especially when used as overheads with clear-sounding, fast mic pres. I discovered, however, that when paired with something really slow and mushy, like Neve 1272s, these preamps can make the source sound really macho and work well with those particular mics.

For a bright, cracking, natural snare sound, I'll use a mic like the Shure KSM 141, which represents well what an attack-heavy snare drum sounds like to me. For something a little more hefty or "thuddy" with a fatter sound, I'll use a mic with a slower response, maybe like a Beyer M201. From there, I'll choose a preamp that fits what I'm going for.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[UnlikeKurt]

Thanks guys.

Joel: I checked out the Sage pres & I started to think. I guess what you and chris posted sparked a new question in my mind. How can someone have a better understanding of what to expect from a preamp in regard to how fast and clean it is other than to trust corporate tag lines ("Super Fast, Uber Clean, etc.) or to have access to a myriad of preamps and compare? Through trial and error, and consistent and repeated use with a variety of models one could begin to develop a real understanding of those units characteristics and then apply them to certain tasks and match with certain mics based on their characteristics, etc. But, what about someone who doesn't have access to a room full of neves, tube techs, tridents, etc.?

Thanks again
James

[Phiz]

Two things about specifications and testing of pres.

Not many pre-amp makers post detailed specifications for their products, but "slew rate" is the spec that relates to how fast a pre is. A higher slew rate indicates that the pre can capture more high frequency transient information. Slew rate number are nice, because it is very straight forward to compare two numbers. But beware that slew rates often don't tell the whole story.

The impulse response of a pre will probably tell you more information than the slew rate. (The impulse response is the output you get when an infinitely short signal with all frequencies is applied to the input. This input signal can roughly be approximated by a hand clap.) The impulse response will effectively show you the slew rate by the angle of the initial attack. The additional information you get from the impulse response is how much the pre will continue to ring (a decaying oscillation of the output) after the initial input has stopped. An ideal clean pre would have an impulse response where the output looked exactly like the input - a single peak. However, with an real pre implementation there will some degree of ringing following the initial transient. This ringing effectively smears the transient out over time and results in a 'muddy' sound.

Hopefully that was informative, but you should trust your ears and not a bunch of test data. Give them a listen. Use what sounds good.

[Recycled_Brains]

For a bright, cracking, natural snare sound, I'll use a mic like the Shure KSM 141, which represents well what an attack-heavy snare drum sounds like to me.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

good recommendation. 141's seem to pull everything out of the snare attack. i used one on a player using brushes once, and i swear you can hear every one of those bristles hitting the head. i gotta get one o' them soon.

for beefier sounds i go to my 441. the neat thing about those is that it has the high/presence boost switch, so if you want more crack, just pop that in and you've got it (or just go to the corner and ask for a dude named Willy ).

i think i need to check out a 201 sometime too.

-ryan

[joel hamilton]

Thanks guys.

Joel: I checked out the Sage pres & I started to think. I guess what you and chris posted sparked a new question in my mind. How can someone have a better understanding of what to expect from a preamp in regard to how fast and clean it is other than to trust corporate tag lines ("Super Fast, Uber Clean, etc.) or to have access to a myriad of preamps and compare? Through trial and error, and consistent and repeated use with a variety of models one could begin to develop a real understanding of those units characteristics and then apply them to certain tasks and match with certain mics based on their characteristics, etc. But, what about someone who doesn't have access to a room full of neves, tube techs, tridents, etc.?

Thanks again
James

I think, really, in this case that trying the pre, no matter what pre it is, on a variety of sources will inform you better than anything else. There really is no substitute for experience. Getting to know a piece of gear very well is really the way to make that piece sound as good as it can really sound in your hands... like figurring out where it likes to operate... some pre's have a wider "sweet spot" than others, just like when you try an acoustic guitar and you cant seem to get it to sound right above the 7th fret, but on another one, it sounds great no matter where you are playing on the neck... even if the one with the intonation issues beyond the 7th fret may be just the perfect tone for the song that only uses 3 or 4 first position chords....

Knowing that guitar and its strengths would be why you chose it for that specific time/place/song/recording.

Same goes for any piece of gear made, mics, pre's, compressors, FX of all kinds... each one will do something you like in a certain instance, and knowing WHEN to use a certain pre is AS crucial as WHAT pre you choose.

That sort of thing does not come from slew rate stats, nor any other printed, empirical analysis of any given piece of gear. I KNOW that my dept of commerce compressor would "fail" on paper compared to almost anything, like a presonus compressor of any kind, but the reasons it would "fail" are precisely the reasons I cherish that compressor. Same goes for certain mic pre's... you would have to be nikola tesla to look at the stats for slew rate, and be able to predict exactly what a snare drum would sound like using that pre with whatever mic you imagine, with whatever drummer you imagine... sometimes the "slow" mic pre gives you an insane amount of attack and crazy depth and body to a snare, sometimes it just feels slow. Same for a kick drum... I choose high headroom pre's for kick and snare just to preserve as much of the original gesture as possible, then I limit that headroom on purpose to give the illusion of huge without swamping the mix buss...

Just keep trying every single thing you can get your hands on. Even learning where the mackie, or sytek, or presonus, or symetrix mic pre likes to operate is just as valuable as knowing the neve/api/whatever expensive thingy/// just keep recording!!! That really is the crux of the "issue" here.

[Recycled_Brains]

Thanks guys.

Joel: I checked out the Sage pres & I started to think. I guess what you and chris posted sparked a new question in my mind. How can someone have a better understanding of what to expect from a preamp in regard to how fast and clean it is other than to trust corporate tag lines ("Super Fast, Uber Clean, etc.) or to have access to a myriad of preamps and compare? Through trial and error, and consistent and repeated use with a variety of models one could begin to develop a real understanding of those units characteristics and then apply them to certain tasks and match with certain mics based on their characteristics, etc. But, what about someone who doesn't have access to a room full of neves, tube techs, tridents, etc.?

Thanks again
James

I think, really, in this case that trying the pre, no matter what pre it is, on a variety of sources will inform you better than anything else. There really is no substitute for experience. Getting to know a piece of gear very well is really the way to make that piece sound as good as it can really sound in your hands... like figurring out where it likes to operate... some pre's have a wider "sweet spot" than others, just like when you try an acoustic guitar and you cant seem to get it to sound right above the 7th fret, but on another one, it sounds great no matter where you are playing on the neck... even if the one with the intonation issues beyond the 7th fret may be just the perfect tone for the song that only uses 3 or 4 first position chords....

Knowing that guitar and its strengths would be why you chose it for that specific time/place/song/recording.

Same goes for any piece of gear made, mics, pre's, compressors, FX of all kinds... each one will do something you like in a certain instance, and knowing WHEN to use a certain pre is AS crucial as WHAT pre you choose.

That sort of thing does not come from slew rate stats, nor any other printed, empirical analysis of any given piece of gear. I KNOW that my dept of commerce compressor would "fail" on paper compared to almost anything, like a presonus compressor of any kind, but the reasons it would "fail" are precisely the reasons I cherish that compressor. Same goes for certain mic pre's... you would have to be nikola tesla to look at the stats for slew rate, and be able to predict exactly what a snare drum would sound like using that pre with whatever mic you imagine, with whatever drummer you imagine... sometimes the "slow" mic pre gives you an insane amount of attack and crazy depth and body to a snare, sometimes it just feels slow. Same for a kick drum... I choose high headroom pre's for kick and snare just to preserve as much of the original gesture as possible, then I limit that headroom on purpose to give the illusion of huge without swamping the mix buss...

Just keep trying every single thing you can get your hands on. Even learning where the mackie, or sytek, or presonus, or symetrix mic pre likes to operate is just as valuable as knowing the neve/api/whatever expensive thingy/// just keep recording!!! That really is the crux of the "issue" here.

this should be a sticky. great response.

-ryan