Dealing with Spill/Bleed

Tyger

Senior Member
Hey Folks,

Just wanted to get some tips and advice on dealing with spill/bleed when recording, mainly from my snare mic.
With my set up the hats are fairly close to the snare as with most set ups. I've raised the hats as high as possible without feeling uncomfortable to play.
I'm using an Audix i5 to mic my snare.

The issue I'm having is that when I EQ the snare, I tend to bring up the highs a bit to emphasis the crack and brightness. Doing so however increases the bleed coming from the hats.

How are you all dealing with spill? Are there other things physically I should be doing? Are you using gating, filters or eq techniques?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
I'm not too sure what to tell you with out seeing some pictures of exactly how you have everything miked. I know for one thing, by what you said, accentuating the high frequency equalization is an open door for the higher frequencies of the hi hat cymbals. I use I5 microphones on some of my snares and find that they have a very decent cardioid polar pattern when if positioned correct at your snare drum, should attenuate most of its sound. I know if I clip the hi hat channel on my board, there is very little leakage from the hats into other microphones around the kit, including the overheads.

I just need a bit more information and there are others that might have suggestions for you.

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Dennis
 
Thanks for responding.

I could post some pics but I think I've figured it out. My set up in terms of the snare is similar to yours. but my issue was in post. I'm still learning how to properly adjust the sound in Logic 9. I've been doing a lot of reading on compression, EQ and everything related. I'm still a newb at audio editing/recording

Although there is still some noticeable bleed in my recordings, my work flow was the issue. I was doing EQ first and boosting way too much. I've learned that EQ should be done last in the workflow and should be used sparingly and wisely. I'm seeing that compression first, and adding some high/low shelf yield better results and then EQ last, even just a little. Like I said still getting some bleed but that's expected, but it's not as harsh now, especially in the higher frequencies.

I'm still messing around with some settings but I'm getting pretty close to the sound I like.
I'd still like to hear peoples feedback on the topic though.
 
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