Turtlerock Forum

One of the few topics that doesn't seem to have been covered....

What's your preference? Where do you place them? Why? Why not? hmmmm?

For me, being a drummer (ha!) I always imagine the kit from the driver's seat, so things are panned to match the kit arrayed around me and usually the drums are placed centrally (3-D) in the mix

audience perspective

Drummers perspective.
Or mono.

Audience perspective. The other way feels wrong to me!

When you say "audience perspective" do you mean largely mono?

Dunno what gigs you're going to Ian but I certainly don't mix drums mono live.

Occasionally when listening to others recordings on headphones i'll have to flip them around to keep those hats on the left. Really get used to what your used to!

Nothing more disorentating than early Beatles with the kit on one side through headphones. Stick to speakers for that. (Or the proper mono release)

In the studio - drummers perspective

Live - audience perspective

Mono or drummers perspective.
Or hard panned to one side. I really like that.
Paul

The only issue I have with mixing live to anything other than mono, especially for a seated audience, is that only the patrons in the centre line seats will hear all of the drums, those on the extreme right or left will only hear half.

In recordings I pan for audience perspective.

I never pan mono sources hard left/right for exactly that reason, though I've never mixed for a seated audience.

Kurt wrote:Dunno what gigs you're going to Ian but I certainly don't mix drums mono live.

Gigs? Me? Nah, none of the bands I like come to Oz.....

I may have misunderstood your meaning of audience perspective - e.g. when you're in the audience the drums are usually centrally located on stage, so they don't have much width at all, thus I assumed you meant generally centred in the mix (i.e. mono).....

From the drumstool the kit sounds fairly hard-panned for ride / hats and just off-centre panned for BD / snare, and the toms span the stereo image (depending how many toms there are) - that's my panning preference.

So to elaborate on the question... do you gents hard pan any kit parts to span the width of the stereo image or just keep it (e.g.) between 30 degrees and 330 degrees (assuming 0 degrees is directly in front)?

I go for about 50% ether side for the overheads (in my set-up they are usually more like ride/hats) toms spread evenly from 50%/50% kick(s) snare centered. No hard panning.
I do the same itb, though I might widen the overheads if they maintain a strong image.

I will often keep the overheads a bit narrower in verses and automate to hard wide in the choruses to give it a bit of a bigger wider feel. I usually have the hhat on the right so I guess i am panning from audience pers. but I play left handed so to me it is drummers pers.
I don't like toms super wide but I'll usually let the image in the overheads determine where I pan the close mics.
I've also mucked around a bit with having the lower end say below 80 split off the toms and sent to a mono buss that is panned centre, so the bottom end of the mix isn't bouncing all over the stereo image,which I like.

For live, I usually mix pretty mono so everyone gets the same experience. Only a small portion of the audience would benefit from the stereo image, most (at least 2/3rds) are only really hearing either left or right speaker.

For albums, stereo all the way.

I mix drums from the listener's perspective as that's where 99% of the population would be used to hearing it from, not that they really care.

I pan from drummers perspective.

I asked a lot of people about this, every drummer I spoke to was adamant it needed to be from drummers perspective.

Every drumming engineer was adamant it needed to be from drummers perspective.

The deal breaker for me was an engineer who was also a drummer pointed out he pans during tracking, so drummers perspective it is.

So from that point on it was always drummers perspective.

I also go with the drummers perspective and place the close mics where they are in the OH's stereo field.

I don't understand going for drummers perspective, whenever I was mixing I'd pretend I was in the audience looking and listening to a band and building the sound stage accordingly from audience perspective, it just made more sense to do it that way. Not many people watch from behind the stage so why mix it that way...... I mix live the same way or mono, depening on the rig.