# A tale of 1 drum take & 2 desks - Drum sound



## audiodruid (Dec 15, 2012)

Having recently recorded a killer drum track using my tried and tested glyn johns variation and eagerly got the results home to mix.
Disaster , why does the monitor mix CD copy sound better?
So i fought for days, in the end i had gates and compressors everywhere and EQ madness.. and sleepless nights.

So i returned to the beginning and to the monitor CD and the recording chain.

First i unplugged all the dynamics from the studio desk, not just bypass but actually out of the chain.
A big improvement.
Then i flatend out the channel eq's and re set the mix with the classic 3 overheads in the fore front.
Even better but still not as good.

So to details , in the tracking studio I used the old Alan & Heath desk with the eq's in bypass.
In the mixing studio we have a Soundtracks 40ch studio desk.

I am now certain the A&H pre amps have a much warmer color than the studio but I also found out that moving the bass drum mic channe lo another channel never used before for the kick made a BIG difference.

Obvious now , for the last 20 years this desk has had kick on ch 1 and the eq üicture has faded where you need it.

So what do we do now?
Well the A&H comes here on Thursday, we will mix the 10 channels of drums plus the stereo guitars, the bass & vocals over it.
Let's see how it sounds
Peace from the Rock Farm control room
Simon


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Its been a while since Ive done some studio work but are you using different monitors at your home studio? Even room placement and size difference can dramatically change how it will sound. Alen&Heath make a nice board (Ive live mixed on a 32 and 40 channel A&H and loved the clean sound) for the money they do well for them selves.


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## audiodruid (Dec 15, 2012)

I use Tannoy Reveals at home and we have NS10's to check the tracking.
Home studio is almost flat & i know what i'm hearing is true, during tracking I check on headphones.
I use AKG K702 master phones, these are $400 phones, they go as low as 10 - 39k!

I trust them having used them in many situations.
Simon


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## AudiocRaver (Jun 6, 2012)

audiodruid said:


> So what do we do now?
> Well the A&H comes here on Thursday, we will mix the 10 channels of drums plus the stereo guitars, the bass & vocals over it.
> Let's see how it sounds
> Peace from the Rock Farm control room
> Simon


How did that session turn out? Did you resolve the signal path issues?


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