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12:1 Mixing basics
Mic channel usage
Using ambience
It’s important to remember you do NOT need all mic channels at maximum levels in the mix. In most normal mixing situations,
drum ambience is turned down to quite subtle levels. You wouldn’t normally have three wet reverb signals turned up as loud as
the dry sound, so why do it with real ambience?
The ambience in BFD2 is there if you need it. If you don’t, turn it down and work with the direct signals. Room and PZM signals
tend to be the biggest-sounding channels, which really give a heavy impression of space and increased sustain. If you want a dry,
intimate sound, turn these down. The Overhead channels still provide a lush sense of ambience without sounding too huge.
You can adjust ambience levels for each Kit-piece, using the Kit-piece Trim controls (as opposed to the Direct Trim). Therefore, if
you need a tight kick but a huge snare, turn down the Kit-piece Trim on the kick and leave it up on the snare. These controls act
like reverb sends, while the OH, Room and PZM faders are effectively like return levels for 3 different reverb algorithms.
Mic channel selection
There are all kinds of ways of using BFD2’s mic channels. Many recording sessions are conducted with just a set of stereo
overheads, perhaps with some kick reinforcement with a dedicated direct kick mic. There’s nothing wrong with just using one mic
bus such as the directs or overheads. It is entirely up to you and depends upon the sound you want to achieve. You can recreate
virtually every mic-ing technique in BFD2, so be creative!
A good technique for an all-purpose drum sound is to use the direct mic channels for punch, a touch of overheads for a sense of
space and a mono room dialled in to taste. Mono rooms are great because they sound very punchy and thick, and since it’s virtu-
ally impossible to get a symmetrical response that follows the stereo placement of a kick, this is a very common technique so as
not to interfere with a kit’s panning.
To bleed or not to bleed
In practical terms, using bleed gives a more natural recorded drum sound, as it always exists in real-world recordings.
However, artificial separation is an ideal situation: mix engineers often use gates to eradicate bleed as much as possible. You may
find that bleed is more problematic on some kit-pieces rather than others. Therefore the possibility of controlling bleed for one or
more kit-pieces is provided in the Kit-Piece Inspector.
If you’re not interested in bleed at all, and are only concerned with achieving separation of the different kit-pieces, you can eradi-
cate it completely by turning down the master kick and snare bleed controls in the Mic Tools panel in the BFD2 Mixer page.
Panning
Don’t be afraid to use mono when it comes to the ambient channels or panning the directs - it can help the mix to sound bigger.
It’s quite common to use a mono room signal with heavy compression for example. Although the directs are panned by default in
BFD2 to reflect the layout of the kit, it can be a good idea to put the kick, snare and hat in the centre of the stereo field - this can
give the drums more weight, presence and impact.
It’s also wise not to go overboard on panning toms and cymbals. The default pan positions in BFD2 are to match up with the posi-
tions in the overheads. However, you don’t necessarily have to stick to these. Again, ambience channels can be good in mono,
and reducing the stereo spread can give the drums more impact.
When dealing with stereo ambience channels, remember that the position of the different parts of the kit are ‘hard-coded’ into the
stereo image of the ambience channels. This is an unavoidable limitation of having stereo ambience channels. However, the am-
bience channels for any Kit-Piece can be flipped: for example, if you move the direct cymbal signal to the other side of the stereo
image, you can flip the ambience to match. Crash cymbals tend to positioned on the right of the kit, rides to the left, and splashes
towards the centre.
The ‘Drummer perspective’ setting in the BFD2 preferences flips all pan settings globally to reflect the drummer’s perspective sit-
ting at the kit, or back to the engineer’s perspective in the control room, watching from the other side. Which perspective you use
is entirely up to you.
Gain levels
When mixing drums (or anything else for that matter) in the digital domain, it’s a good idea to keep all individual channel gains
at sensible levels peaking between -12 to -15 dB. This means that even when you sum a lot of channels together you still have a
decent amount of headroom on the master outputs, meaning that any clipping is unlikely. Pulling your host mixer’s master fader
down to compensate for excessive levels of individual channels is bad practice, as is slapping a brick-wall limiter across the mas-
ter outputs.
Running your individual channels at sensible levels also means that any EQ and other processing that is applied is less likely to
clip its channels.
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