WARNING: I can't play the drums. I'm not saying this to be modest, I'm saying this 'cause I'm actually really bad.

Also, thank you to the good people at the Maker's Mark distillery for their influence on these clips. You've been warned.

Drums: Pearl custom shop maple kit. 24" kick 14"x8" snare, I forget what tom sizes. 14" and 16"? Cymbals are all nice Zildjians.
Drummer: Me.

Mics:
Overheads- Røde NT5s in a... vaguely spaced pair. ART DMPA w/NOS Mullards for a pre. Via SPIDF into my Focusrite.
Room- slightly modded Nady RSM-4 ribbon. Internal windscreen removed. About 10 feet back?
Snare- Shure KSM27 LDC, -15db pad engaged, low cut on in the "sorta lowcutting" mode.
Toms- Shure Beta58As.
Kick- ...wait for it... a plain old Shure SM57. Ghetto-fabulous!

Close mics on the snare and toms are... not that close, really. About a foot back aimed at the center of the head.

All mics are wide open, unless you count expanders on the close mics. Plugins are stock dynamics and 5-band EQ in Logic, plus my good friend SoundToys Decapitator.

You get to hear me hitting the rims of the toms by accident and everything! Some tribal tom shit and a straight-up 4-on-the-floor rock beat.

Snaxodrums: http://maplifiers.net/dload/file.php?id=28
Snaxodrums, room mic muted: http://maplifiers.net/dload/file.php?id=29
Snaxodrums, no close mics, only OHs and room: http://maplifiers.net/dload/file.php?id=30

For whatever it's worth.

Somehow I liked the one without the room mic the best...


Your drums, they sound pretty different from my own...

Well, they're not my drums, the drums themselves. The drumming, unfortunately, well, I can say without a doubt I like yours better a tiny bit...

What do you feel the room mic is adding or taking away? It's subtle-ish, but I like it there myself.

The OH/Room-only track is included for reference, really, to gauge how much of the overall sound is coming from the distant mics.

Well, that was my judgement going through on one listen, but now that I am back-to-backing them the room mic one is better, yeah. The dry one seemed to have more immediate punch, I suppose because there wasn't any sort of reverberation going on to extend the sounds.

I'm half-tempted to throw some guitar over these to give them a proper workout, but I think the timing may be a bit... rough.

I felt even without an under-snare mic there's still enough snare sound going on versus close-mic top head "donk!".

to Geoff: the dry one is punchier. Nature of the beast. I'd like to find a way to get the room ambience and retain the punch from the close-miced tracks... maybe send the close mics only through parallel compression...?

Everything sounds good, but too much cymbal in the mix fo-sho. Especially the hi-hats. Of course, there is a reasonable chance that your drummer will be harder on the snare and kick and lighter on the cymbals, making the balance more, well, balanced, for the purposes of a bandmix.

As with Unstrung's first thought, i also tend to prefer the no-room version. It is to me, more punchy, tighter, cleaner.

Lately i have not been using the room mic at all in mixes, but one thing you might try doing is getting it as far away from the kit as possible and see if you can retain some of the big echo qualities without the echo coming so quick that it tends to blur the drumsounds. In many cases, more delay will sound cleaner. Think of it the same way as why delay/echo tends to work better live than reverb does for the purposes of clarity.

All in all, a good sounding drumkit though. The snare is tuned low, and i am generally not too into that, but it is kind of just on that borderline between what works for me and what i might feel is too low. Maybe a little tweaking on the kick mic, and i could see how everything could work really well in a mix.

I think his kit balance is a tad bit better than mine. I don't hit very hard or very consistently.

The snare is... actually higher now since it's been re-skinned than it was prior. It's super-deep, physically, so I guess that's kinda to be expected.

I'd prefer something else as a kick mic, but all I had on hand that wasn't already going somewhere else at the time were 57s and 58s.

i have heard good kick sounds with SM57s. This actually sounds pretty good too. Just some compression and eq, and bring its level up and it would definitely do the trick.

Anyhow, didn't you used to have a couple proper kick mics? A D6 and somethingelseiforget?

I don't think it came out that bad, the kick, really, though it wouldn't be my first choice.

Re: kick mics- a D112. I own neither and frequently borrow them from a friend who does when I need them for something. I'd like to have a D112 of my own on hand at all times 'cause I love the thing on a bass cab too. Though I'm almost tempted to pick up another big condenser for that purpose as I don't have a source I don't like them on, really. I'm trying to think of what I haven't used my Shure on and the answer is nothing. I'm trying to think of what I haven't liked it on and the answer is also nothing.

I liked the clip with the room mic the best. But I am going through a quick listen on bad headphones, I'm at work.