Sputnik Music Forums - View Single Post

ares · 06-05-2011, 09:10 PM

I'm personally a fan of somewhat-clicky kick drum sounds. It's a necessity for most metal recordings: without the 'click', it's very hard to get the kick drum to have any presence in a dense wall of guitars without eating up loads of headroom. Yeah, for jazz and other types of music it can work fine to have a less-defined kick drum sound, but to say that that sound is a bad thing is short-sighted.

As a monitor engineer, a lot of the time when I can't turn up the kick drum any more (would clip the amps), I add high-end presence in order to make it perceptually louder to the artist without a significant increase in amplitude.

As for the D6, I think it's a terrific microphone for kick drum. I don't think that it is substantially clickier than a Beta 52 (though the click is a little higher, 3.5-4.5kHz vs. 2.5-3.5). The real win is in the low end where the D6 is much fatter than anything I've heard except for maybe the Sennheiser e602 or e902.

I'm curious what kind of sound you think of as ideal (recordings would be great).

06-05-2011, 09:10 PM	#4
ares Expirator Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Chapel Hill, NC Posts: 173	I'm personally a fan of somewhat-clicky kick drum sounds. It's a necessity for most metal recordings: without the 'click', it's very hard to get the kick drum to have any presence in a dense wall of guitars without eating up loads of headroom. Yeah, for jazz and other types of music it can work fine to have a less-defined kick drum sound, but to say that that sound is a bad thing is short-sighted. As a monitor engineer, a lot of the time when I can't turn up the kick drum any more (would clip the amps), I add high-end presence in order to make it perceptually louder to the artist without a significant increase in amplitude. As for the D6, I think it's a terrific microphone for kick drum. I don't think that it is substantially clickier than a Beta 52 (though the click is a little higher, 3.5-4.5kHz vs. 2.5-3.5). The real win is in the low end where the D6 is much fatter than anything I've heard except for maybe the Sennheiser e602 or e902. I'm curious what kind of sound you think of as ideal (recordings would be great).