And let me start off by saying these things rock!!




I did some recording earlier and I was highly impressed with them. They sounded really good with only panning and volume adjustments and nothing else. Considering the fact that my drums and my room acoustics suck (and I mean REALLY suck) I'm very happy with their "dry" sound and I think that a little compression, reverb and maybe EQ will make them sound even better.

I remember Dot saying that these mics had good off-axis rejection, but I had no idea they were THIS good. I forgot to turn off my window air conditioner because I had my ear plugs already in when I went out to play and couldn't really hear it. I thought for sure I was going to have to re-record it later with the AC off because it is very loud and from past experiences with running test recordings with the AC on, it is very audible in the recordings. I was very shocked to press play and hear dead silence before I even started playing. I cranked the volume on my Aardvark card all the way up and I could just barely hear it. That's too cool, now I won't have to fry anymore while recording drums because it gets very hot out there with the AC off.

These mics are also built heavily and look like they can take a major beating (no I'm not going to test that ).


The only thing that has me worried about this is one of my overhead mics may be bad.... Here's a picture of the waveforms from the two overhead mics:
http://www.artistcollaboration.com/users/tekker/Samp%20.../DrumMicWaveform.JPG

The spikes inside of the red circle are where the signal "pops"... you can hear them in the recording at 2:57 and 3:00. I tried doing some test recordings by beating on a plastic bin with a drum stick and this time the wave was shorter on the bottom side. But at least it didn't look like there was a limiter on one side of the wave. I'll have to try some recording over the weekend on my drums again and if I get similiar results, this mic is going back.


So without further delay, you now get to listen to my wailings on the drums.... It's about 4 minutes and 20 seconds long and I cut it down by over half since I don't think anyone would want to listen to this for that long. Anyways, these tracks are completely dry with no effects what-so-ever. I had one mic for the two high toms, one mic for the two low toms, and then I double miced the snare (one on top and one on bottom). The overheads are at 0dB, the kick drum is at -10dB, and everything else is at -15dB. The overheads are hard panned left/right and the toms are panned just over 3/4th of the way left/right. I was going to pan the two snare mics off center from each other and it does sound pretty cool, but for this clip I left them both centered.

In the beginning I run through each drum and do some simple rythms and fills so you can hear how each drum sounds.... Then I try to cut loose later...
http://www.artistcollaboration.com/users/tekker/Drum%20Mics.mp3


Thanks again Dot for these amazing mics!

-tkr

Hey Tekker,

Nice sound (considering what you said about your room's acoustics). Thanks for sharing this impression.

Cheers, Gerald

Cool

Dumb question, but are we supposed to hear the volume ramping up and down like that?

those clips in the .jpg are a little concerning and I see what you mean.

Not too shabby at all

Considering the issues you noted, I'd say you got some good sounds.

Congrats again!

quote:

Originally posted by Bazz:
Dumb question, but are we supposed to hear the volume ramping up and down like that?

Yeah, that was my editing. I faded sections in and out to put the clips together.

quote:

those clips in the .jpg are a little concerning and I see what you mean.

Hopefully Dot will see this because I don't have a receit for these, so I don't know if I could send them back since I can't show when I got them. Hopefully my mic is ok, but I just want to make sure I can send it back if something is wrong with it.


As for my drum room, it's a small little room we built off the back of our house. There is just enough room to squeeze around my drumset to get in front of it and I have this soundboard stuff on my wall that is pretty reflective and bed egg crate foam on the wall facing the house. one part of my room is also completely carpeted (walls and ceiling) that I use for recording vocals. So you could say it is less than ideal for recording drums. My drums themselves don't sound that great in person either, it is a Tama Rockstar and is badly in need of new drum heads. lol

-tkr

quote:

My drums themselves don't sound that great in person either, it is a Tama Rockstar and is badly in need of new drum heads. lol

I've had between 15 and 20 drum sets come through my studio and the best sounding kit so far was a well tuned Tama Rockstar with new heads.

Hey Tekker, cool to see a little write-up. And you're getting some great sounds with those puppies!

If you get to the point where you really think there might be a problem with one of the mics, just lemme know. It'll get squared away.

quote:

Originally posted by Dot:
If you get to the point where you really think there might be a problem with one of the mics, just lemme know. It'll get squared away.

Great, that's good to know just in case there is something wrong. Thanks!

quote:

Originally posted by 8th_note:
I've had between 15 and 20 drum sets come through my studio and the best sounding kit so far was a well tuned Tama Rockstar with new heads.

What other kits have you had? The Rockstar is a very decent kit, when these heads were new it sounded pretty good.... Of course it sounded nothing like the DW set at my old church, but then again what does?

-tkr

It sounds pretty good for a quick recording and first time using your mics. I like a little more low end on the kick and even overall, but that might be hidden some by the mp3 encoding.

Wow - nice sound, especially considering all the acoustics, old heads, and the like described above...

quote:

Originally posted by SoulFull:
I like a little more low end on the kick and even overall, but that might be hidden some by the mp3 encoding.

It's actually just my kick drum.... It doesn't really have much low end to it at all, it's more of a "thud" sound like what you hear on the mp3. I'll need to spend some time tuning, and if I had money I'd just get new heads for everything as well.

-tkr

great sounds for raw. You have everything you need there for a killer sound after some tweakage! Nice chops too.

Cos.

Ok, I finally got around to testing that mic again today and something is definitely wrong with it.

I tried switching positions, mic cables, and inputs on my soundcard to eliminate all other possible causes... So it is definitely the mic.

http://www.artistcollaboration.com/users/tekker/Samp%20...DrumMicWaveforms.JPG

The blue waveforms are the "bad" mic.

The levels on both mics are also very different. There is a 3dB difference between the first and second takes. When I swapped positions I had to re-adjust the levels for both mics.


So what do you want me to do Dan? Should I send these mics back to you? Are the overheads supposed to be matched pairs? If so, should I send you the two overheads so I can get another matched set in place of these? All the other mics seem to work great and I've been using the kick mic at church, so I'll probably just send these two mics back.

Thanks,
-tkr

Bummer, Tekker. I've contacted Red5 and we'll sort it out.

Excellent! I recieved an email from Red5 already and they said a new pair of RV4's should be here by Wednesday!

So I'll be packing up and sending my pair back to them tomorrow.

The Red5 customer support gets an 11 out of 10.

-tkr

That was fast. gj, RED5

Did the price of these mics go up recently?

Just curious, as I remember them being a lot cheaper.

It looks like the diaphram has a problem moving in one direction , I thought it was a bad power supply in a mic pre at first but you isolated the problem so !!!

Cool that they are taking care of you

LAter
Buzz

PS: Thats why I moved to Saw Software Tekker !!!!!! as well as Dusty

Cool sounds, and even cooler playing