Personally, I see nothing wrong with placing mics like the N D868 outside pointed right at the resonant or batter head.
I mean, I have the Beta 52, and I love the sound achieved by placing it outside pointed right at the resonant along with no other mics except two small diaphragm condensers as overheads. I have an Aquarian Super-Kick I batter and a Regulator with no hole as the resonant. I also have a rolled up bath towel inside which is placed against the batter head. I tune my bass drum similar to John Bonham which means I use a higher tension than most people, and the result is a thunderous bass drum sound like a human heartbeat and I also get a wonderful pedal feel. I've never considered pointing the 52 at the batter, but that nice bass drum sound is still captured at the resonant head and it sounds fairly clean to me.
Another thing I like is that the while the overheads are capturing the entire kit, the Beta 52 is capturing the low end of my toms too. So it kinda sounds somewhat similar to having a mic on each of the toms - especially the ones over the bass drum.
Actually, here's a recording I made almost 2 years ago because I was incredibly bored:
http://home.comcast.net/~twocables/Test1.wma (3.34 MB) Please don't judge my playing if you can help it!
I can't make any more recordings because I no longer have 24/7 access to my drums. Plus, the room they're in now sounds terrible.
Recording details:
I don't have any photos, so I'll do my best to describe everything. I know I don't have to provide these details, but I am worried that someone might want to know. I know I would.
Mics:
I had two M-Audio Pulsar II's as overheads (I have the "
Matched Pair" pack). They were on the included mounting bracket positioned as far apart as possible. Even though this was my only option, I still did my best to position them similar to the way Dave Weckl positions his SM81s (even at a similar height), except I was also trying to capture my toms too. I had the Beta52 pointed directly at the resonant head (no angle) about 2-3 inches away, and it was dead center. I also have my first two toms on a double tom stand over to the left of the bass drum so that I can have the ride in closer. Actually, the entire kit is centered around my snare, kinda like a double bass setup.
Recording equipment:
The mixer is a Peavey PV8:
http://www.peavey.com/products/proaudio/mixers/pv/index.cfm/item/115033/index.html
I used the Tape Out on this mixer going directly into the Line-In on my sound card which is an X-Fi XtremeGamer. My software was Sony Sound Forge 7.0. Everything was 100% dry. But I think I EQ'd the mics very slightly to improve the sound to my liking.
Levels:
I got my levels before doing any actual recording by isolating the mics and visually comparing the levels. For this recording, I had a little more of the Beta 52 in the mix than the overheads. I made five other recordings after this just to play around some more, but none of them sound as good to me because I started experimenting with lower levels on the Beta 52, and the result was that the toms had less low end too - especially those first two toms.
Drums and bass drum mic setup:
The drums are Yamaha Stage Customs that were made in 1997. Their sizes are 10"x9", 12"x10", 14"x12", and 22"x16". The toms are retrofitted with RIMS style mounts, and their heads are clear G1s for batter and resonant. The snare is a 14"x5½ Ocheltree "Heavy Metals" Carbon Steel with a coated G1 on the batter and a Hazy 300 (Ambassador weight) on the snare side. The sticks are Vic Firth 5ANs, and most of the snare hits are rimshots. The bass drum setup is just as I described above:
"I have the Beta 52, and I love the sound achieved by placing it outside pointed right at the resonant along with no other mics except two small diaphragm condensers as overheads. I have an Aquarian Super-Kick I batter and a Regulator with no hole as the resonant. I also have a rolled up bath towel inside which is placed against the batter head. I tune my bass drum similar to John Bonham which means I use a higher tension than most people, and the result is a thunderous bass drum sound like a human heartbeat and I also get a wonderful pedal feel. I've never considered pointing the 52 at the batter, but that nice bass drum sound is still captured at the resonant head and it sounds fairly clean to me."
I forgot to say that I also have the resonant head tuned a little higher than the batter.
Cymbals:
From left to right, the cymbals were 16" Paiste Sound Formula thin crash, 13" K/Z Dyno Beat Combo hats, 10" A Custom Splash, 14" A Custom Crash, 20" K Custom Medium Ride, 16" A Custom Crash, and an 18" Oriental China "Trash".
Oh, and I have LP's red and blue Jam Blocks on my far left.
Bass drum beater?
The bass drum beater is just a standard round felt model that came with my Flying Dragon positioned to hit dead center.
The room:
The room was a 12'x15' with a 12-foot ceiling that had real acoustic tiles (with 3 feet of space above the tiles to the real ceiling). This room was a part of a practice studio complex located in the basement of a large building. So, the floors were cement with high-traffic carpet, and the walls were sheet rock covered in the same high-traffic carpet. I was set up parallel to the 15' wall.