help me to understand how drum mics work????

[liono9]

ok recently was looking for mic for the drum kit and saw those kits which comes with mounts and mics ,great so far but my question is that the signal from all these mics , i mean that how we consolidate all these signals and send em as one?do these wires from all the mics go in one box and a single signal source is formed? and also is it ok to amplify it through the PA system?:eek13:

 

[WeatherReport]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

Its done with a mixer.

 

[RW James]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

I'm assuming you are talking about mics and not triggers... in which case they are just like any other mic. The difference is their sensitivity to the different drum frequencies and how they are mounted.

We have a Shure drum mic kit - it has a kick drum mic, a snare drum mic, two high toms, a floor tom, a hi hat and two overheads.

The kick drum has a special low mic stand stand, the hi hat and overheads use standard mic stands with booms - the rest of the mics use special clips that attach to the rim of the drums.

All of these are fed into the stage snake that goes directly into the PA.

We had one situation where we set up outdoors and the snake didn't have enough channels, so we used a small mixer just for the drums that mixed it down to two channels for the snake.

So there are a lot of possibilities... but to answer your question - yeah it all goes into the PA.

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

I'm assuming you are talking about mics and not triggers... in which case they are just like any other mic. The difference is their sensitivity to the different drum frequencies and how they are mounted.

We have a Shure drum mic kit - it has a kick drum mic, a snare drum mic, two high toms, a floor tom, a hi hat and two overheads.

The kick drum has a special low mic stand stand, the hi hat and overheads use standard mic stands with booms - the rest of the mics use special clips that attach to the rim of the drums.

All of these are fed into the stage snake that goes directly into the PA.

We had one situation where we set up outdoors and the snake didn't have enough channels, so we used a small mixer just for the drums that mixed it down to two channels for the snake.




thats the kit we are thinking of purchasing but if all these mics have thier own cable its going to take all the channels on the pa,does the stage snake consolidate all these cables into 1 or 2 ,or we have to get a mixer for all these cables as we have 8 channel pa and we are using 3 of them for vocals ,bass amplification and rhythm plus what kind of mixer you guys suggest ?

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

thats the kit we are thinking of purchasing but if all these mics have thier own cable its going to take all the channels on the pa,does the stage snake consolidate all these cables into 1 or 2 ,or we have to get a mixer for all these cables as we have 8 channel pa and we are using 3 of them for vocals ,bass amplification and rhythm plus what kind of mixer you guys suggest

 

[RW James]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

thats the kit we are thinking of purchasing but if all these mics have thier own cable its going to take all the channels on the pa,does the stage snake consolidate all these cables into 1 or 2 ,or we have to get a mixer for all these cables as we have 8 channel pa and we are using 3 of them for vocals ,bass amplification and rhythm plus what kind of mixer you guys suggest

Yeah, a small mixer will run that down to one or two channels. If you have a spare channel on your PA, you might run the kick out to that channel and run the rest of the mics through the mixer.

And depending on where you place your PA mixer, you may not need a snake. (A snake is just a bunch of mic cables all bundled into a single wrapped cable - usually with a box with plugs at the stage end)

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

thanx a lot guys ,i am pretty clear on how these are gonna work great help thanx again

 

[muttonchopsrule]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

if you're going to invest in drum mics, then you might as well invest in one large mixer for your PA that you'll be able to plug everything into. there's no sense in spending more money on a seperate mixer for just the drums when it sounds like you need to upgrade your PA anyways.

 

[WeatherReport]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

You will need 8 channels with mic pre's to handle 8 mics. Makie 1604 could do it. If you are on a real budget crunch and its just live use the Behringer stuff will get you by

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

if you're going to invest in drum mics, then you might as well invest in one large mixer for your PA that you'll be able to plug everything into. there's no sense in spending more money on a seperate mixer for just the drums when it sounds like you need to upgrade your PA anyways.

do you think a large mixer will accomodate everything i mean thats the only thing i would need for all my amplification needs?

 

[muttonchopsrule]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

do you think a large mixer will accomodate everything i mean thats the only thing i would need for all my amplification needs?

ideally, you're going to want a mixer with enough inputs for whatever you are going to run through it. if you've got, say a 5 piece drum kit, that's 8 channels there (kick, snare 3 toms, hi hats, and 2 overheads), one for each guitar, one for bass, and however many for vocals. that can easily add up to 14+ channels, so you'd be best off getting at least a 16 channel mixer.

as far as amplification goes...if we're talking powered mixers, then you don't need an anp, unless you're going to be driving a lot of speakers or monitors. if we're not talking powered mixers, then you'll need a power amp to drive your speakers. that's almost a whole new ballgame, but for a PA you'll want as much power as you can possibly get as long as you can stay within the specs of what the speakers can handle.

 

[tone4days]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

behringer has a 3 space rackmount 8 ch mixer - i think it'd be great for the drummer to buy the mics and this so he can control the drum sub mix and not hog up a bunch lines on the snake or main board ... he can eq and effect the drums too

t4d

 

[RW James]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

do you think a large mixer will accomodate everything i mean thats the only thing i would need for all my amplification needs?

The number of channels really has no affect on the amplification power - in reference to your other thread on this subject, you need more power, that is more watts.

But yeah, a large mixing board could be run into your little system - but you still only have the same power (in terms of watts).

Personally, I think a mixer plus power amp is the way to go, then you can upgrade one or the other as needed.

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

great guys thanx so much i'm much more wise on the subject

 

[liono9]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

guys can somebody reccomend a mixer for the drummer so he can hook all his mics in there so all these cables dont hog the main board,also this mixer would not be powered right

 

[muttonchopsrule]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

guys can somebody reccomend a mixer for the drummer so he can hook all his mics in there so all these cables dont hog the main board,also this mixer would not be powered right

if you're going to run the drum mixer into the main mixer, then no, you don't want it to be powered. you only want a powered mixer when you're using it to drive speakers.

 

[marvar]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

Speaking as a pro sound engineer, putting the drums into a seperate mixer and mixing to 2 channels and sending that to the main mixer, really is a hard way to go, the soundman loses all control of how the drums sound, and can't make needed changes in the individual drums. As the night progresses, the kick and snare need to be made louder and snappier, because after a couple of hours of rock and roll, your hearing starts playing tricks on you.

 

[RW James]

Re: help me to understand how drum mics work????

Speaking as a pro sound engineer, putting the drums into a separate mixer and mixing to 2 channels and sending that to the main mixer, really is a hard way to go, the soundman loses all control of how the drums sound, and can't make needed changes in the individual drums. As the night progresses, the kick and snare need to be made louder and snappier, because after a couple of hours of rock and roll, your hearing starts playing tricks on you.

I agree... that is why when we made this compromise, I pulled out the kick and snare from that pre-mix. I then put all the overheads on one channel and the toms on another channel... mixing 8 mics down to 4 channels
1. kick
2. snare
3. toms
4. overhead(cymbals)

We pre-mixed the toms and cymbals as well as we could, then the sound tech just balanced the rest as well as he could.

I agree this isn't ideal, but in our case, we were limited by the snake we were using - and I didn't want to cut vocal mics, which was the only other option.