Any good EQ settings for drums anyone wants to share?

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RedCrownStudios
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Any good EQ settings for drums anyone wants to share?

Post by RedCrownStudios » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:10 pm

I have been feeling like my drums are a little "flat" sometimes, enough oomph in the kick, but not alot of definition, or not enough crack to the snare.

Anybody got any good eq settings that they rely on for their drums, can you share?

If you have PT and can export your settings and post, that would be SWEET.

I am using an Audix D6 for kick and Shure 57 for snare so I think my mics are pretty good, not what I want, but should be usable.

Any tips?
Thanks guys!
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ledogboy
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Post by ledogboy » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:32 pm

This is asinine.

What drums are you using. What type of heads? How are they tuned? What is the size of the room? Is it reflective? Dead? How hard is the drummer hitting? Nylon tips, or wood? What style of music? etc., etc., etc.

How do they sound to you? Boost and cut until you are happy, or maybe just tune them better, find a different drummer and record them sans eq.

Of course, at the end of the day, perhaps you just wish the drums sounded more like samples.

Sorry to be a bit gruff, but there are alot of these questions around here, and they are unanswerable. If it were that simple, mixing boards would come with a button that said "snare" and you would engage it for all snare recording.

Use your ears!

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Post by JohnDavisNYC » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:33 pm

you just gotta listen... unless someone tracked something in your room on your drums and mixed it, their EQ settings will have no pertinence on what will make your drums sound better, in terms of any specific EQ choices...

for instance, some snare drums need a huge boost around 10K, some need a cut in the low mids, others need the low mids boosted, some need some extra 'knock' in the high mids...

overall, though, if you feel your drums are 'dull' sounding, i would experiment with pushing the top end more than you usually do, and ITB, i like to do that on a buss... something seems to work well to me about winding on a few DB of 8k over the entire drum mix, for example... (frequency and ammount of boost will OBVIOUSLY vary depending on source material...)

even though people on the interwebs will say things like 'boosting is bad, you should only cut, and only do that as little as possible', if you want open and brighter drums, you gotta boost....

A/B some of your favourite records and focus on the top end, and see if you can find some of the frequency components that you like in those recordings and bring them out in your own.

so much of it is mic choice and mic placement, but EQ can definitely help...

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RedCrownStudios
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Post by RedCrownStudios » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:53 pm

Thanks toaster, I know there are alot of variables, room, the drums themselves etc, I guess I was just wondering if anyone had any starting points.

Example: I found that the eq settings below give a really "metal" sounding kick
Image

I shared this with a friend a while back and even though he is recording in a totally different room, it helped him get a similar sound that he was then able to tweak from there.

That kind of thing is what I was aiming for.

Saying it is asinine is kind of like say suck my dick.
Oh yeah, suck my dick
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thieves
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Post by thieves » Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:57 pm

Image
Image

RefD
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Post by RefD » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:30 pm

thieves wrote:Image
dammit, i thought that was gonna be our little secret! :cry:
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metanoiastudios
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Post by metanoiastudios » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:31 pm

thieves wrote:Image
hahaha. Those are sweet 8)

RedCrown, what style of music? you feel the drums are kind of "flat". "Flat" how? to me, there is a difference between flatness and definition. Flatness may be more of a corrective issue, where you can maybe add a little extra presence to the snare around 5k or so. Toms can sometimes benefit from some "smiley face" EQ if you are using dynamics.

If the drums are missing "definition", you may want to revisit your mic setup, as well as your signal chain. You can use an exciter, I suppose, to bring some of the high end back into your tracks, if that's what you mean by definition, but if the source is lacking detail, it is better to get it right during the tracking, rather than trying to play doctor in the mix.
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Post by RefD » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:33 pm

try using a multi-band compressor as an EQ, that'll learn it!
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JohnDavisNYC
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Post by JohnDavisNYC » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:40 pm

that winamp eq is actually supposedly physically modeled from the RSEQ...

john
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Post by RefD » Thu Aug 14, 2008 3:45 pm

toaster3000 wrote:that winamp eq is actually supposedly physically modeled from the RSEQ...

john
damn damn damn!

this isn't happening! :shock:
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ledogboy
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Post by ledogboy » Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:03 pm

RedCrownStudios wrote: Saying it is asinine is kind of like say suck my dick.
Oh yeah, suck my dick
No, it isn't at all. I gave you a laundry list of reasons of why any advice would be spurious. If you are looking for meaningless presets, knock yourself out- but don't be surprised when one man's recipe for awesome makes your drums sound like ass.

If you want advice that is at least based in reality, you could put up samples of your drums and have them critiqued.

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RedCrownStudios
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Post by RedCrownStudios » Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:09 pm

Fair enough. Will do in a bit.
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Mr. Dipity
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Post by Mr. Dipity » Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:15 pm

This has been discussed to death, and a superb, inclusive conclusion was arrived at. Do a search in the archives for the Radioshack EQ - it's all you'll ever need.

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firesine
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Post by firesine » Thu Aug 14, 2008 8:00 pm

From my experience with drums, mostly in small rooms, 500hz is not your friend. If they sound dull, try scooping some low mids... 400hz on kick, 700 on toms, usually narrow bandwidth, see what works for your room.

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Post by firby » Thu Aug 14, 2008 9:05 pm

If your drums sound dull, maybe try eqing them in the context of the mix. It sound like you may be soloing them and then tweaking away there. Thats good for a start but you need to eq the mix and not neccesarily the drums. so try tweaking with the rest of the mix playing so that you can hear what is masking what.
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