Some things I've been learning while mixing music:
time alignment discusses issues arising from sound arriving at different microphones at different times. When mixing the various channels of a drum multi-microphone configuration, aligning sounds can offer some level of improvement to the overall mix.
If the sounds are not time aligned, they can vary between constructively and destructively interfering with each other. The article suggests, by adding in a delay path, aligning the snare and the hi-hats individually to the overheads. Of course, because the two overheads are located at different distances, a little artistic license needs to be added for aligning the sounds to the pre-dominant overhead for that sound.
The article goes into additional techniques for isolating the mics in order to reduce multi-mic bleed. Microphones have dead zones, so orienting a mic with the dead-zone oriented to the secondary drum kit components will help reduce bleed. Mix oriented equalization can help reduce interference between channels. Low frequency drum kit components have a different EQ curve from higher frequency drum kit components.
Other pages on the web site have additional informative articles on expansion, gating, compression, and equalization.
- Links:
- Pro Tools Expert
