Phase Align Snare to Your Overheads When Recording

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Produce Like A Pro is a website that features great tips to help the beginning recordist make incredible sounding home recordings on a budget.

[Producelikeapro]

What are some tips you can share for when recording drums?

[RichardTheWizard]

Great tip! I’d say phase alignment is probably the most crucial part of drum recording.

[javierduhart]

Another tip: if the studio is carpeted and you want more snare drum power, put a rectangular hard board under the snare stand. The sound waves that travel downwards from the snare will bounce upwards on the board, amplifying the snare sound.

[gabrieleponticiello]

This should rather be called time alignment, which very rarely coincides with phase alignment. At 42 inches apart, phase is 180 deg off around 160 Hz ... I am 99% positive you'd have to flip the polarity of the two OHs in order to obtain a better sounding phase "alignment".

[snapascrew]

The snare drum may not have phasing issues when comparing L overhead to R overhead but it still could have some serious phasing issues with how it arrives to them in comparison to the close mic!!! I always push back the close snare mics, and any close mics that remain open (hat, ride, etc) to the overheads with a snare hit as the reference.

[RichmondDrumLessonsBC]

Solid tip. Is 42 inches maximum or minimum distance? Or does is matter? I'm using Km184 stereo pair

[whatskraken]

Remember that the measurements have to be exact here! it doesn’t take much to throw off the phase alignment of your tracks

[jamesadams]

Can you center off the bass drum instead of the snare?

[Studio-cts]

So much better than trying to align it after the fact, like when receiving someone's tracks to mix!

[pablovazquez]

I use the same concept, including the bass drum, because i have a small room

[javierduhart]

And if you don’t have a tape measure at hand, you can also use a mic cable, because you don’t really need to read a number, all you have to do is make sure it’s the same distance, and you can do that with a mic cable and finger position.

[catloverextreme]

Clients look at me crazy when I do this but the proof is in the lasagna as they say...lol. Other tips include using under/bottom mics for the toms and flipping the polarity between the top and bottom mics, it gives so much more low end its insane. Also, a small diaphragm condenser mic on the snare top will give you much more attack and intensity as opposed to a dynamic mic. Use both at the same time and experience heaven! One last trick for overheads is to put a compressor on the overhead buss with an extremely fast attack and high ratio, this will catch the snare in the microphones and duck it briefly (depending on your "release" settings) so the actual snare mic track can pop through. (Tom Lord Algae trick). Cheers

[MideosVideos]

I've been doing that for years....Good tip!

[michaelmoore]

I have a laser tape measure for this! Don't have to worry about the tape measure sagging, and they're as cheap as $25 online

[suburbankid]

what about the room asymmetries? for reverb and echo?

[billyhughes]

I've always done this, measure to the TEE, (overheads always sound good on there own) but have struggled to get my snare sounding right (full lowend and punchy), and even the kick. When I flip the phase on my overheads, WAH-LA, so much better. So I've been using Sound Radix Auto Align and it works like magic but I don't want to lean on that so much. I want to do it right at the source.

[manhattanfl]

great tip, definitely will help me a lot in the future

[jorriffhdhtrsegg]

This is time and level alignment. It ensures a central panned snare. It doesn't ensure phase since phase rotations occur when mic from different angles!

[jamielailey]

In all honesty I think taking the measurement from where the beater hits the kick drum seems to work better most of the time. Never feels right using the snare as the centre as the kick always seems to pull to the left on the OHs...