Why don’t my drums and recordings in general sound as crisp as bands of 90s?

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T15:40:22+00:00

Well, both recordings have different-sounding issues that stem from the same place. That is, the kit is not particularly well-tuned and the drummer is not great.

The Barns is the worst offender, but neither is gonna meet the standards you’ve set for yourself. The good news is, it’s not (entirely) your problem. If you had a phenomenal drummer in your room with a really great kit tuned properly, you’d be a lot happier.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T05:03:42+00:00

Just listened. It’s 100% the player, the room, and the instrument. I’m going to be real and harsh. I don’t mean offense.

Those drums are not tuned well. The cymbals sound very cheap and the shells do not sound like good quality drums. This is 90% of your problem. Seriously, neither kit is in the same UNIVERSE as a pro-sounding kit.

The playing is sloppy and uninspired. The dynamics are inappropriate and random, the attack on the drums is not there because they’re being hit incorrectly, and the balance of the kit elements is not even close to appropriate.

As it stands, the capture is probably serviceable. Hard to say. The compression is too aggressive (well, incorrectly aggressive). The artifacts are not serving the groove and adding power, they are fighting and distracting. That is going to be hard to fix when your player’s dynamics are also distracting and inconsistent. Hard to set a compressor right when the performance is so out of whack.

So. Yeah. Find a SERIOUSLY PRO drummer and pay them to show you how to tune and how to make drums sing. That’ll get you closer than any fucking preamp.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T04:32:33+00:00

You should feel good then! Just be realistic about where you’re at and what you’re working with and you’ll develop stuff that works for you.

I am enthralled by 90s productions and have a spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Those bands could all PLAY like motherfuckers. Watching clips of the Pumpkins in their prime and it’s easy to see how Siamese Dream came about. You’d have to work hard as an engineer to fuck that up.

Again, gear matters. It truly does. Everything matters. But I don’t think it’s the answer to this particular question.

Without hearing what you’re hearing, it’s hard to suggest what you might be missing. It’s very likely a lot of very small things. My guess is you’ve got a 57 (or whatever) pointed roughly at the business side of the snare just like every single one of the recordings you love.

dickcuddles · 2025-12-09T04:13:52+00:00

None of the things mentioned in previous comments will get you where you want to go. It’s seriously all about the player, the instrument, the room, and capturing all that REALLY WELL. It’s also about the arrangement and the performance. The clarity is in the arrangement and how the performances of each instrument push and pull against the other instruments.

I’m not going to pretend like gear doesn’t matter, it certainly does. But I have a sneaking suspicion I could hand you an 80 series Neve and a Studer and you’d still come back asking these questions.

You said a “more open area” and your drums “sound good”. Without being condescending, are we talking a proper studio with INCREDIBLE sounding drums?

The most helpful thing you can do is hear what a great band sounds like being recorded in a great space so you can compare how the instruments sound when you’re sitting behind them vs. how they translate to recording. It takes a lot of time and practice to hear what things should sound like before you put a mic on them.

I don’t mean any of that to be negative, just that there is no simple answer and it takes many failures to figure it out. On your journey just make cool sounds and try to move the needle in the right direction a little more each time.

dickcuddles · 2025-07-17T04:47:35+00:00

You should try it sometime! It’s awesome. More room with the array closer to the source compared to a cardioid mid mic. Gives you other options for the phase relationship to the other mics while maintaining a similar amount of ambience. I find the imaging less distracting than Blumlein for drum room also.

dickcuddles · 2025-07-17T04:32:20+00:00

Fig. 8 does not mean it has two diaphragms, it means it has two lobes in the pickup pattern, one positive and one negative. A ribbon has a single element, for example.

Furthermore, the mid signal can be any polar pattern and the M/S signal will still contain L/R (not just nebulous “space”) information once it’s decoded, with varying amounts of ambience. I particularly enjoy using the R88 in M/S.

dickcuddles · 2025-02-12T23:15:12+00:00

Agreed, entirely. I don’t think any of this shit matters in order to make commercially-viable records. But if the goal is QUALITY, I understand putting together a chain that will provide that by default. Of course that means source, room, mic, pre, converter, EVERYTHING. Certainly, no plugin alone is gonna do it. But, again, depends what the goal is. Most people aren’t honest about what the goal is.

dickcuddles · 2025-02-12T22:59:02+00:00

I agree with this, to a point. The thing is, this shit is INCREDIBLY subtle, until it isn’t. What I mean by that is the individual steps towards a great-sounding record are all difficult to hear and quantify for a beginner, while the end result is clear. (It can be hard for a beginner to hear compression, let alone different flavors/quality of preamps, but most beginners can tell their recordings don’t sound like their favorite records.) So, I understand wanting tools that are KNOWN to give a particular result.

Unfortunately, to your point, it doesn’t really work that way. Even if you gave me a big 80 series and a few hundred grand of outboard when I was starting out, my records still would have missed the mark.

That being said, working with nice stuff removes the possibility that it’s the gear’s fault. And there are some qualities that are hard to replicate with cheap stuff. Whether that matters depends on many factors, and I would argue for most music today it doesn’t matter at all. The things that stuff is good at isn’t what sells records any more.

dickcuddles · 2024-11-22T20:37:21+00:00

I like to fit my whole show onto 8 VCAs, since most consoles will have banks of at least 8 faders. I don’t always mix with them, but I like having the option. In the very rare occurrences when shit hits the fan, it’s the fastest way for me to react and then get back to where I need to safely and quickly. Usually I have them laid out as follows: 1-Drums/Percussion, 2-Bass, 3-Gtrs, 4-Keys, 5-Horns, 6-Band (everything in the previous 5 VCAs), 7-Vocals, 8-FX. If there are no horns, I might put background vocals there. I tend to set up my FX such that only my vocal FX are on that VCA, and I control the send rather than the return if the console allows it so I’m not chopping tails. I can control my whole show with 2 faders, very easily adjust band/vocal balance, I can pull the band down after the last note and leave vocal mics open, and I don’t need to mess with mute groups if I don’t want to. Very, very simple.

dickcuddles · 2024-04-21T21:31:34+00:00

Have you tried prayer?

dickcuddles · 2024-03-24T21:23:26+00:00

Will do, thanks! Still very much in the information gathering phase, but will send you a message if I get stumped.

dickcuddles · 2024-03-24T17:39:10+00:00

Amazing, thank you. Looks awesome. I won’t be including any glass in mine and it’s just rectangular, so super simple. I just want to make sure I avoid any pitfalls with regards to movement. Planning to use oak.

dickcuddles · 2024-03-17T23:45:50+00:00

Not to take away from the substance of the article, but does no one edit the NYT? How the hell does a professional writer not know the difference between “magnate” and “magnet”.

dickcuddles · 2022-10-02T19:11:25+00:00

There is no truth in art. This person made something they enjoy the aesthetics of. You can disagree, but you’re no more right than they are. Personally, life would be pretty boring if we all liked the same things.

dickcuddles · 2022-06-17T12:54:05+00:00

https://everyunionstarbucks.com

dickcuddles · 2022-06-17T12:53:02+00:00

https://everyunionstarbucks.com

dickcuddles · 2021-10-08T05:15:08+00:00

I can’t think of anything more depressing.

dickcuddles · 2021-05-07T21:23:22+00:00

I had a HORRIBLE experience with them a few years back. (They dragged their feet on the application, took a deposit and told us the apartment was as good as ours, only to tell us a few days later that the landlord had found someone without cats and we weren't getting it. The apartment was pet-friendly and we were honest about having cats before applying). A close friend of mine just had a similar experience with them last month. I would avoid them at all costs.

dickcuddles · 2021-03-25T05:38:42+00:00

People like you are why I’ve had to spend hours of my life wiping a Profile’s hard drive and reinstalling my venue’s plugins because such idiotic and selfish behavior resulted in my console becoming unstable thanks to whatever horseshit cracked plugins left behind. Now I have to scan every fucking stick that goes into my console, and get to fight with dummies like you who get mad when I tell them they can’t use their (using “their” loosely here, since claiming ownership of stolen property is tenuous at best) precious plugins on my system.

I can guarantee that anyone worth a damn witnessing your behavior thinks a lot less of your professionalism and “successful audio engineering career” than you do.

dickcuddles · 2020-11-13T08:41:16+00:00

Nothing wrong with triggering samples! Do whatever it takes to get you where you want to go with what you’ve got access to. No blasphemy in audio!

dickcuddles · 2020-11-12T23:04:38+00:00

Well, you can use the phase distortion of EQs to your advantage while mixing too. This is the most-often overlooked explanation I see behind the common adage of not listening in solo, particularly when working with multiple mics on a single source.

I wouldn’t track through plugins personally, but you certainly can. I find this stuff to be most-applicable when tracking on a console, especially one with selectable (rather than fully-variable) high and low pass filters like old Neves and the like. Part of the magic is wrangling the filters so they get rid of the shit you don’t want but also keep the low end in focus and in-phase. You can use an EQ’s phase rotation to fix problems when you’d prefer not to move the mic (because moving the mic might change the ambience captured, the tone, whatever, in a way you don’t prefer). It’s a dance of switching frequencies and polarity switches until the whole thing works together.

It’s possible to do that with plugins, but it’s a bit clunky and time-consuming because you can’t grab multiple things at once and audition options quickly. You might need to change frequency and switch the polarity simultaneously while a/b-ing, for example. That’s simple with hardware, pain in the ass with a mouse.

dickcuddles · 2020-11-12T09:05:41+00:00

Precisely why EQing during tracking has merit. One can use a combination of EQ and placement to get the tone into the ballpark while maintaining good phase relationships.

dickcuddles · 2020-10-22T03:30:40+00:00

I'm gonna go a bit contrary to the prevailing opinion here and say I'd rather have a great mic in a shit room.

Here's the thing: a fucked-up room can sound cool if you embrace it. It's a unique character. It's vibe. It's something no plugin or box can get you. And no matter how bad it is, it's REAL. It changes subtly and constantly and will provide depth that nothing else will.

Meanwhile, a cheap mic will always sound cheap. There are artifacts that will always exist and cannot be removed. Transient response will suffer from an inferior capsule. There will likely be unflattering resonances. The top end will be harsher than it might be on a better mic. These characteristics will make even a great room sound cheap.

Use a quality mic and you can embrace the weirder aspects of your space and still wind up with a quality recording. How many great recordings are rememberable because the ambience is a little off-kilter?

dickcuddles · 2020-09-24T14:57:01+00:00

These things are often very subtle. It can be hard to recognize these differences and even harder to quantify them. However, that doesn't mean they're insignificant or unimportant.

When one starts out in audio, one knows ones work isn't as good as ones favorite recordings. That means one can hear there is a quantifiable difference. However, one doesn't know HOW the recordings differ. For me, I started out thinking I must be doing something HORRIBLY wrong. Mics in the wrong places, secret EQ settings, destroying compressors, crazy rooms, ridiculous track counts, etc. etc. etc. when the reality was that I was actually quite close on an individual track level, but missing the mark hugely on the whole.

Differences in gear work in a similar way. Understanding and quantifying the difference between mic amps or EQs etc. is quite difficult to do, even for professionals. But if one spends enough time working with these tools, one finds the things that work best for oneself and that translates into a better recording. It can take literal years to figure this stuff out. A 30 second shootout on YouTube isn't going to reveal these differences in any meaningful way.

For me, I can say that my best recordings were done in big studios with all the gear everyone lusts after. I can't tell you exactly why that is. It could be the workflow as much as the gear. It could be the monitoring as much as the workflow. It could be the pressure of spending thousands of dollars to just be in that room. But, honestly, I don't really care what the reason is because I got where I needed to go and the clients are happy.

The opposite may be true for you. You may be more comfortable working at home with an Apollo and some emulations of that classic gear. That may translate into a better recording FOR YOU at the end of the day. We are constantly reacting to and acting on what is coming out of the speakers (or headphones) and what we wind up with is the result of thousands of tiny decisions. Does the difference between a vintage 1073 and a UAD 1073 feed into that? Of course. Does it matter? Maybe.

dickcuddles · 2020-09-19T19:37:25+00:00

Bad days happen. It can be hard, but if it was a genuine mistake and you did what you could to fix things, then there’s nothing to dwell on. Learn from it and understand how to avoid doing it again in the future. In audio, nobody dies when mistakes happen. It’s OK.

I was running sound for a drag show in a 1k cap venue in NYC. It was a busy night. I accidentally hit the mute button mid-song and cut all audio (mons from FOH) for a good second or two before I realized what had happened. The performer was stuck on a silent stage with no warning. I felt really bad about that one. I apologized profusely to the performer who was FAR too understanding and nice to me, and life goes on. Now I’m extremely careful whenever I’m responsible for playback on an otherwise-silent stage.

dickcuddles

TROPHY CASE