5 Ways to Make Your Room Sound Larger Than it Really Is

[@Dwolfmusic]

What I do is put a ''room reverb'' on my Room track and then eq & compress it. Basically treating it as if the room reverb track was already on the recording. Works great for me

[@Ninja6485]

I feel like there's an Xzibit meme in here somewhere...

[@vvessel_]

Doesn't that just disconnect the close-mics + overhead from the drumkit? I would rather send the whole kit to a reverb and blend that in. If you like that disconnect it's fine I suppose!

[@martinbergmartinberg]

And the Oscar for best instructionvideo in audiorecording goes to... Your approach using the room and make it work with you instead of the usual way of using absorbtion and dampening, and close-mic'ing everything is very inspiring. Thank you! I really love your videos- You make it sound so easy to make amazing recordings.

[@creativesoundlab]

You are so kind. Thank you!

[@nicholasnevins9941]

I belive Steve Albini delays his room mics. Thats the In Utero sound. I've never used a 57 as a room mic though. I'll give it a try on my next session. I liked what it did to the snare on this demo.

[@FunkAndFluff]

That's correct to my knowledge. In a seminar I heard Albini give, he stated he's fond of mixing drums as if you're sitting at the kit. Direct sound and early room reflections enter your room mics before they bounce back and reach the drummer's ears, so Albini often delays his room mics to simulate the sound of room reflections entering a drummer's ears.

[@creativesoundlab]

Exactly! That's the sound of that album for sure.

[@creativesoundlab]

Which part is incorrect again with how Albini approaches things? Because at the end you said he delays the room mics...confused.

[@FunkAndFluff]

Sorry, I worded that poorly and subsequently edited my comment. No part of what Nicholas said is incorrect, as far as I know. In typical drum recording setups, most early reflections reach your room mics before they reach the drummer's ears as they play. By using carefully-timed delays, Albini uses his delays to make his room mics sound more like reflections coming back to the drummer's ears as they play. His delay times are often based on the size of the room where drums are tracked; the bigger the room, the longer the delay. If I find this seminar again, I'd happily share it if you'd like because it would probably be better to hear described by Albini himself.

[@creativesoundlab]

Ok cool, that makes more sense. Yeah, so it's basically the sound going out and back in to the drummer ears, instead of just one trip out to where a room mic is located. I know he's got that crazy tall room with the CR up top.

[@dillonvado]

Really great tips all around! Appreciate really utilizing a 57 for a ton of mileage for very cheap thanks brother

[@kapers5772]

Wow that was really cool.

[@sl3102]

Love your channel, man! I've studied audio engineering but I'm starting to realize that our teachers were pretty close minded. Four channels suddenly seems like all I need.

[@martinklatt6937]

Great show! Thanks!

[@tommibjork]

I usually add reverb to the room mic to add space. Makes sometimes more sense than adding longer reverb to the close mic tracks.

[@thiago-kaz]

Really nice tips! Thank you!

[@fleshtonegolem]

Great tips! For my space, my all time favorite setup is a ribbon mic on axis about 10' away on track A Boundary zone mic behind the drums track B 1. Send both hard panned to a parallel room bus and level match. 2. Squash the ever living snot out of it. 3. Add a phaser at 2x bpm (60/bmp use the decimal as your milliseconds x2) 4. Fold back the room bus to taste Gives a beefy sound and has a tiny bit of Zeppelin phase in there during solos/fills.

[@pezmoz2835]

Thanks Ryan. This is a great video which has stirred my laziness from just slapping up some room mics. Most of us are recording drums in small rooms and really should take a few extra minutes on room/mic placement and some subtle DAW treatment. Thanks ...

[@creativesoundlab]

Great comment and thanks!

[@skylarcarlson7745]

Awesome stuff. Thanks

[@NakkilaPetri]

6: You can also use transient desingers ;)

[@Not-Only-Reaper-Tutorials]

I do use them and layer them, based on the kind of song I’m mixing. I find them very effective. I do use them also with other instruments rather than drumkits

[@MatthewParsonsDrumsAndAudio]

Great tips! I actually never thought to put a delay on room mics to make the room seem larger. I might have to give that a shot.

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah, one of my favs.

[@FrankBittom1]

very good room techs ilustration Ryan, thank you.

[@yashirhenriquez4843]

Nice video!

[@miked5487]

I've been building a good room to track drums so i'm definitely going to try some of these out! I'm using a version of arqen diffuser as well which has helped tidy up the sound a lot. Thanks for the tips again.

[@creativesoundlab]

Ah, I've never had one of those diffusors in my studio, but I've seen them.

[@ichbrauchmehrkaffee5785]

Method N°6: Mid/side aka Blumlein. Requires a mic with a cardioid pattern and another mic with a figure of eight pattern. The cardioid mic is pointed at the kit, the other is placed in a 90° angle towards the kit directly over the first mic. On the console / in your DAW, the figurer of eight mic is routed to two channels, which are hard panned in opposing directions, one of the channels has polarity switched (gets thrown out of phase). On their own, this will sound terrible, but bring in the cardioid mono mic and see the magic happen.

[@creativesoundlab]

There's a difference between "Wider" and "Larger" for the purpose of this video, and MS and Blumlein are not the same either. This video showed a mono mic and making the room larger, that avoids using the stereo image as a crutch for novice engineers (Or to get confused with "Wider" vs "Larger"... more diffused sound). Doing all these concepts with a single mic, mono, and even dynamic at that made for a good teaching tool that anyone can pull this stuff off. I love the different approaches of both MS and Blumlein. Blumlein is off-axis for both mics, where MS one mic is on-axis. A stereo ribbon like the AEA R88 could do both Blumlein and MS by pointing one side directly at the source and using the decoding/mixing technique you described above, but a purist would say that MS is Cardioid down the middle, not figure-8. I'm not a purist, but I'm sure it will sound different to have a fig-8 vs a cardioid down the middle of a MS config. Finally, MS sounds very different to me from Blumlein. I could be that most of the time MS is used, it's often to pair two different mics, such as a SDC in the middle, and an LDC as the Fig-8, while Blumlein is always two of the same LDC or ribbon.

[@gribb5967]

Love the video and the concepts, anything that can be done organically rather than using plug-ins gets a big thumbs up from me. The last time I tracked drums I experimented with something similar to what Burkhard Schmidt described using a Lauten FET in figure 8 ( as the "S" mic) with the null pointed at the drums (about 6 ft out) and a Cascade Fathead ribbon directly above the Lauten pointing at the drums . Not sure what the effect of the "back" of the Cascade had on the overall sound but it was an interesting experiment and definitely added some space, (but frankly a lot of trouble for something I could have dome much easier with a mono room mic and some split delays). Unfortunately I had to edit the drums so heavily for these songs that I wasn't able to utilize these tracks much. I bought the "close drums" course the other day, and looking forward to digging in more as I'll be working more in an ( even) smaller space soon.

[@petervoigtmann]

man, your videos are so helpful! Thank you for your work!

[@timothyberner9938]

Interesting to see a dynamic as a room mic! Cool man

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah, but not all of them make good room mics. The 57 works well for some reason.

[@AudioEcstasyProd]

Really cool ideas!

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks!

[@coreybuystedt]

Awesome

[@eliotripley659]

Great lesson, great video, wonderfull technics! Thank U!

[@SeemoreDunkan]

Love your stuff

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks!

[@erichzann3414]

Effective and awesome techniques! Thank you.

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks Erich!

[@djentlover]

Sounds really good and professional!

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks man!

[@DailyDrumLesson]

Hey Ryan, thanks so much for this video. I am constantly looking for ways to make my rather small room sound bigger. Haven't tried the delay and the shelving trick yet. So thanks for the input! That's a gorgeous sounding kit you got there.. 60's Ludwig in Blue Oyster? - hard to tell.

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks man! It's a early 70's Ludwig Standard.

[@DailyDrumLesson]

thanks for the quick replay.. sounds great anyway!

[@AdamRainStopper]

I actually usually have to tighten my drum sound up as much as possible, since there's always a lot of room in the overheads, but I have taken the close mics and overheads and duplicated them, then put the duplicates all through aggressive high and low pass filters (everything below 400 and above ~3.5K) and render it all down to one mono track. I then run that mono track through heavy compression and then either a distortion plug-in or re-amp through a dirty guitar amp. If I don't do the re-amping, then I also pull it back a few ms, but if I do, it usually ends up getting there on its own because of going out through the amp and then being picked up by a mic that is placed a few feet away. I might also use the reverb on the amp or a stereo reverb in the box. I find that I have to be very careful about this, as it can result in some phase-cancellation if the "room mic" track sounds too similar to the rest of the mix, but with enough high/low-pass and compression and dirt, it can be pulled off without problems. I suppose the same is generally true of actual room mics too, and obviously the overheads and close-mics can get in each other's way as well, but there are ways around that of course. The room mic techniques you showed here, though, I have actually used on lead guitar, AND backing vocals, especially where you have a bunch of voices singing "whoa oh whoa" or humming or "ahh" sounds or similar. I think I have even used the "null" technique with a ribbon mic on a lead vocal. I've used both that AND a blocking piece of furniture at the same time for an acoustic "singer-songwriter" type who was playing and singing at the same time. THAT comes out sounding HUGE. You have a mic on her guitar and another up close to her face, then a cubicle-divider at the door of the room with a LDC on the other side, pointed toward the stairs. It's a great technique to capture and dramatically advance the sort of humble majesty of a single person sitting in a room and belting out some honest, heartfelt *PAIN* over the accompaniment of an old acoustic guitar.

[@creativesoundlab]

Nice, yeah I've done a little bit of vocal recording where I use the R88 and point the on-axis ribbon at the vocalist, and use the off-axis ribbon as a free vocal reverb. So the re-amping of the mono drums is how you handle getting less of the room, and more of the "Meat" of the drums in your mixes?

[@AdamRainStopper]

No, the re-amping IS the "room" in my mix. It is just a mono track, but it basically takes the entirety of the kit, and sends it back out through a real room, then to be picked up at some distance by at least one "room" mic (might use a stereo pair, though I find it sounds pretty huge with just one). This allows me to send the drums - eq'ed and compressed - out to anywhere that I can put a small combo amp, the stairway from the studio down to the ground floor, the living room, the basement, wherever I want. That way I can track drums where the kit is, not have to move it anywhere, but then get some "room" sound by re-amping. I can also fake it really well if I use just one close-mic on the amp and then either add stereo reverb in the mix or use the spring reverb on the amp.

[@leop3655]

hi what kick drum mic were you using?

[@J-DUB-F1]

Great ideas!!…...I want to try the blocked method with a piece of ply wood. Experiment with putting the mic(57?) right up against the board with just the tiniest bit a space left..ie: pzm mic ;-) Maybe putting a mixing bowl in front of it, metal or glass, different sounds ;-) I've had mixed results with pointing the null of the mic at the kit. The room I have to work with right now does not sound so good, and that technique only amplifies how poor it sounds. In other rooms it works great.

[@RiotHomeRecording]

Great video, great info! Love the look of those drums!!

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah, they are a early 70's Ludwig Standard.

[@galacticdrum311]

Do you think you'd get a similar result with other active ribbon mics of a similar build, or is the AEA N22 just that awesome? Basically, is there a more affordable microphone that can provide a similar result? Thanks!

[@hoborec]

Hey Ryan! How big is your room? Sounds really good.

[@creativesoundlab]

15 ft wide, and about 25 feet deep. 12 high.

[@zakwasny]

Yeah, this is a thing I noticed in first place - all the tips are useless if room sounds crappy.

[@creativesoundlab]

I know it's easy to give up, but there's a lot that can be changed with a room. I know my rooms are larger than a small bedroom (Which would be the most difficult to alter and get good sounds out of) but there is a huge swing in results based on what's in the room and how you add or subtract materials from it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4fSiKGXnq9lo8U

[@davekeehl]

Is it possible to download the stems?

[@elleniaw]

Great video. I also think your videos have come a long way!

[@creativesoundlab]

This video follows the format that I used a lot in 2015, and I'm dialing in my style to play to my strength/the best areas of content.

[@leamonsqueeze]

Awesome video I always learn something in your videos! have you always used logic? I would love to see some more production based videos in the future ... anyway your awesome thanks!

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks man. Production based, meaning mixing in logic videos? I'm just getting started on Logic now. Eric Sarafin got me going on it.

[@adamwasthefirstman]

Awesome video! I had been using ORTF facing away from the kit, as that angle gave me maximum distance to reflective surfaces, but am about to experiment with trying MS in combination with various delay settings + compression. Possibly with a barrier. Seems like an easier setup with more flexibility. Any thoughts, anyone?

[@Charlyfromthenuclearcity]

I often combine method 2, 3, 4, and 5 at once ! :P

[@creativesoundlab]

Nice!

[@nicknovak5514]

Albini method: Place omni mics on the floor for room mics. Delay each one by a different amount.

[@creativesoundlab]

Nice, I'll have to try that.

[@weeschwee]

I've been think about trying method 2 with a kick Mic. I have an akg d112 I could use but I'm out of preamps. Currently I bus all my mics to another track and fake it with some reverb plugins and compression. It sounds decent enough, but it's not perfect.

[@creativesoundlab]

If you're out of preamps, then play a mono mix of your drum tracks through a speaker or monitor in your recording room, and record the room that way.

[@weeschwee]

Creative Sound Lab that's a great idea. I'll have to try that sometime. I'll admit I haven't been recording as much lately. I could actually use some more projects. I still play frequently though. And I do use plugins despite the threat of latency. That's why I would like to have another Mic instead of my fake processing.

[@the_nondrive_side]

I like the blocked bass but the null was more true.. I guess you'd want to highpass out the kick cancelations

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah it's always a give it take so use whatever you like best.

[@OlesMusic]

Where do you guys pan your room mic? about center?

[@creativesoundlab]

I usually hard pan them if I have two. If not then centered.

[@aaronbird9437]

Great stuff man! I'm actually working at making my room sound bigger. So this vid hits home. I get a decent room sound, but I'm building baffles (bogo's) to help with my 90 degree angled room. I'll experiment with everything you just showed us. Thanks for the work you do!

[@chasenicols]

Hey Ryan, have you tried using a mic with a figure 8 pickup pattern? Aiming it "away" from the kit(towards the walls)? or would you be better off with setting it to cardioid and nulling it?

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah, I have lots of LDCs and Ribbons for Fig8. Either way is fine, I mentioned in the video that if you had Fig 8 it's just as legit because it's just another way to null out the kit. Works great. However LDCs can sound real funny in figure 8 at a distance from a source such as a drum room mic.

[@M.Holland]

Hey Ryan! Great Video! :) Have you ever tried „the wurst“ mic technique by Moses Schneider? He Is a German engeneer wich worked with depeche mode and Other greats. It’s a Room mic kind of thing, But in the middle of the drum Kit. I tried it in my last Session and it helped the drum Sound Come alive much more than anything ive ever tried. Would love to Hear your thoughts on that :) Thanks! :)

[@creativesoundlab]

Yeah, I've used it quite a bit. Great technique. I'm going to reach out and see if I can do a colab with him someday on it, just as I did with Mixerman and the Recorderman technique.

[@M.Holland]

Creative Sound Lab that Would be so great! As I said, I am pretty interesstet on your opinion and explonation :)

[@Bluesguitarwork]

Great video !What cam do you use?Sharp and vivid colors!

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks, see my other video a couple weeks ago about the BMPCC that I use and lens.

[@yourtulpa]

Great stuff, thanks once again, Ryan! I've got a question though. Everyone seems to care so much about making the room sound as big as possible when in reality not every song may really need this. Do you still recommend to achieve the big sound no matter what and then blend it to taste or placing the make closer is more sensible?

[@creativesoundlab]

Of coarse. Move it closer if needed. Check out my video on "Reverse Overheads" where the room mics are right over the drums but still get a "Room" sound.

[@yourtulpa]

Creative Sound Lab Certainly will. And I think I've got a pair of nice condensers with circle pattern to get this kind of job done.

[@DarkoP9.13]

Ultimate studios inc. use 57 directly at a wall surface a credit card distance away.

[@kos.studio9304]

hey Ryan, thanks for your hard work ...when did you switch to logic X ? did you like it better than Reaper?

[@creativesoundlab]

I tried for so long to like Reaper. Visually it was hard to see what was going on, and the folder system taking everything below a track is nuts - Meaning my vocal track would go into my drums and I'd have to cycle through the folders to get it out.

[@kos.studio9304]

wow, that 's kinda pain to work around when you on creative flow. Thanks for quick reply. Btw what is your new interface? did you make youtube vid about that?

[@guidoguidi2816]

Hey Ryan! Great vid! It's been some time since I last tuned your channel and noticed you migrated to Logic. I recently moved to Logic as well and after about six months I'm pretty happy mixing but having some hard times while editing. I come from PT. How is it going for you? Thanks. Sorry for the offtopic

[@riotmultimedia8736]

Nice video Bryan! Will be recording some garage rock stuff Ill make sure to try those technics to get that trashy drum sound. 👌👌👌 Keep the good work Bro!

[@creativesoundlab]

Awesome! Yeah, a dynamic mic for room is great for that trashy sound. Use compression!

[@riotmultimedia8736]

Creative Sound Lab cool thanks!!

[@weglimir]

Really Cool!

[@stuartbradley2692]

I've missed you man! 😁

[@creativesoundlab]

Thanks! These videos take a lot of time to create. It would be a lot easier to just have me talking, but I don't think that is what you guys deserve.

[@MeTuLHeD]

I've heard that Bonham's room sound on 'When The Levee Breaks' was a miked up stairwell and a bit of tape delay mixed with the close mics. Also, if you block that room mic and then compress it, wouldn't that mitigate the cymbal wash issue?

[@ianhendrytube]

This guy just seems like an absolute dude ! Please can i be your friend !

[@creativesoundlab]

Ha thanks man.

[@Napalm93]

man Ryan smoked so much weed it started growing out of his head

[@creativesoundlab]

Haha, I much prefer sipping Bourbon and chilling.

[@galcohen9208]

Great stuff! Thanks!

[@galcohen9208]

Good idea is to gate this mic using a side-chain bus feed with some other gated close mics like Snare and Toms! Helps later in the mix!:)