Distorted Floor Tom Sound When Recording

Well after a fair bit of messing around and taking up all your suggestions (thankyou for all your contribution) I finally found the source of the problem. I believe TNA had the closest idea, which was the vibration of the floor tom and the the sound of the skins which were interfering with each other when I had the mic placed on the drum hoop via a little mount. I picked up a short length mic stand and placed the mic on that, and there was no problem at all!

I am very happy and have got quite a nice sound from my drums. I never realised that the vibrations of the drum shell and the actual sound produced could interfere to create such an annoying problem. Anyway I hope this thread is useful to anyone who has the same problem: Mount your mic on a stand!

Check out my little recording! I would like to know what you guys think :)

Yeah, miking the drums in the studio using drum mounts cause "mechanical noise" which doesn't matter as much live but in the quiet space of a studio causes huge problems. mark me as one of the guilty ones!

Mike

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Reading down the posts the first thing I thought of was a tuning issue.

Listening to the second, although it sounds better, to me it still doesn't sound great. Sounds like there's a tuning issue with the drum heads.

But... If you're happy with the sound then it's all good.
 
If all else fails pull the mic's back; 3 to 4 feet from the bass drum and probably the same for your tom. If your tom is on legs putting spongy foam under them will open up the sound quite a bit. I am not a fan of close micing in recording situations and distance usually produces the best sound. If you are a Zepplin fan or even if you are not; check out info on Glyn Johns and you may get an idea or 2. I also enjoy recording jams and rehearsals etc. so I feel your disappointment. Here is a link to get you started.

http://en.wikiaudio.org/Drum_micing:Glyn_Johns_technique

Cheers
 
Reading down the posts the first thing I thought of was a tuning issue.

Listening to the second, although it sounds better, to me it still doesn't sound great. Sounds like there's a tuning issue with the drum heads.

But... If you're happy with the sound then it's all good.

Yeah I have been doing some fine tuning since and it sounds a bit nicer. However my crappy overheads dont have a great frequency response so I only pick up the slap/stick of the tom sound so to speak. So at the moment the toms dont sing with tone all that much. I am looking forward to investing in some better mics, particularly overheads!

Cheers for the link bruce, I will check it out.
 
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