Gating Madness!

[Multibomber]

Hi again! I have a question that goes way beyond my knowledge. I've recorded some drums and have 4 inputs: kick, toms, snare, overhead. These 4 are the children of a folder called Drums Submix. I noticed something strange... when I have the gate on my toms on but the gate is closed, my kicks sound deeper and meatier and awesomier. When I have the gate off, the fundamental note of my kicks is not as low, not as meaty, not as awesome-y. BUT when the tom gate is on and the gate is open, like when I hit my toms and them start hitting the kicks, the fundamental note of the kick is higher until the tom gate closes; then when the tom gate is closed, the fundamental goes back to deep, meaty, awesome.

To recap:
Gated/EQ'd/compressed toms, gated/compressed/Eq'd kick
Tom gate on, gate closed: deep, meaty, awesome-y kick drum sound
Tom gate on, gate open: not as deep, meaty, or awesome-y kick drum sound
Tom gate off: not as deep, meaty, or awesome-y kick drum sound

What i THINK is happening is that my tom mics are picking up the kick drum hits and coloring the sound. Since tom mics are tom mics, that sound coloring is raising the overall perceived pitch of the kick while mushing up the attack. Of course I could be completely wrong.

What I really need is a solution. Has anyone experienced this before or have any possible solutions? I'm using ReaGate, Waves Reneissance REQ, and ReaComp on the toms. I'm using the ReaGate tom gate preset. If I lower the release from 500 to 100, the problem is gone but them the gate cuts off the ringing of the toms too early.

ANy help you can give would be GREATLY appreciated!

[DVDdoug]

Try flipping the polariy of the kick (or the toms, but not both). They might be out-of-phase. That would cause cancelation when they are both on (gate open) and both picking-up the kick.

But that might muck-up the relative phase/polarity with some other mics, so you should probably flip the polarity of one mic channel at a time (or in pairs/sets if you have a pair on toms & overheads, etc.) with the gating disabled to make sure everything is acousically mixing correctly.

Or, maybe don't use the gate if it's not making the sound better! Actually, if you are getting enough "leakage" to cause cancelation, the gating may never sound right because it might to have too much affect on the leaked sounds as the gate cuts in & out.

[Swamp Ape]

I agree that phasing is probably your culprit. This is likely why you still get some cancellation even when the toms are quiet. Rather than simply flipping the phase (assuming that's what's causing it) you could try a phase rotation plugin like Phasebug to tweak it in increments. Turn the gate on, and during a space where it's closed, flip it off and tweak the phase to where it matches up to what you're hearing with the gate on. Then only use the gate if you absolutely have to.

[Multibomber]

Phasebug! Sounds simple enough. I'll try it!

Not sure if this is relevent at all, but another thing I noticed is that the order of my effects chain makes a humongous difference in overall sound quality. The deep, meaty, awesome-y sound described earlier only happens when I have my effects chain in this order: ReaGate-->ReaEQ-->ReaComp. Any other order and my kick goes back to less than deep, meaty, awesome. Do you have any idea as to why this is?

[jerome_oneil]

Pull the EQ out entirely and see if that changes anything. Then do the same with your compressor.

[Multibomber]

Well nothing worked at first! I tried messing with Phasebug... no dice. Tried turning off various effects... I could only make it sound consistently worse rather than better. Shortly before throwing my laptop through the wall, I thought that maybe if I changed the high and lowpass filters on the gate, it might work... nope. Then I decided to mess with the EQ of my toms... nothing still. Finally I gave my toms a tiny boost at 150hz, from +4 to +6 db... PROBLEM SOLVED!!

Which now begs the question... why was a 2dB boost at 150hz on my toms able to change the way my kick sounds when the tom gate is open?

[ashcat_lt]

Probably because of the phase smearing caused by the EQ, and/or because you've changed the relative levels of the bleed in the tom against the kick drum so that they're no longer close enough to cancel noticeably.

[Multibomber]

That makes sense! But why wasnt Phasebug able to fix the problem?

[Hoodee]

I would suggest another approach to the problem, it's subjective, but here's how I would do it:
1)Loose the phasebug. Check your tracks to see if each hits starts as "positive" (the wave should go up). Reverse the phase if needed. This is just so the speakers "push" air instead of "sucking" it, but it should considerably change the way you feel the punch out of every hit. If you really must, then adjust the phase of each track to your OHs. Then apply the gate the way you want it too work for each track.
2)Compress before eq'ing. Compression, beside giving you control over the dynamics of a track, can be a fun tool for adding colour. Set your compressors to faster attack and moderate realease times, start with something like 5ms for att. and 200ms for rel. and adjust your settings to taste until you can either hear more "click" or "thump", whatever suits you better (again - check Reaper's native plugins presets, GREAT starting points). Don't go too far, but don't fear to be too agressive. Often times, even 12dbs of compression are a reasonnable amount.
3)Use a high pass. Always. Set your Q so the slope goes almost straight down and set the filter. From 50hz with the kick all the way up to 250 for your snare. Eq out everything below 120 hz for rack toms and around 90 for floor toms. Apply a high pass around 500hz for overhead mics. "Why?". Why not :P Works for me at least.
4)Use paralel compression on the whole set. Duplicate your drum buss and apply heavy compression. First : you'll get a lot more "sparkle" from the cymbals. Second : the drums will appear to be beeffier and have a lot more punch. Google search how to do that or PM me if you want.

Sorry about the rant and all

[Multibomber]

Hell ya!! Thats the kind of advice I'm looking for! I'm going to try it right away!

[Multibomber]

So i just implemented your recommendations. Some of them I had already done, such as starting with Reapers native plugin presets and parallel compression. So I used them and your recommendations as a starting point and my sound is REALLY coming together! High passing and slightly compressing my overheads worked WONDERS! It was really a game changer!

One thing I noticed was that my kick sounds louder, more defined, and pushes the meters less with the High Pass at 77hz versus 50hz. It also loses almost no bottom end either. Maybe its because I'm using a homemade subkick as well as my regular kick mic to get a mix of attack and oomph... I'm not entirely sure why, but it sounds pretty damn great!

[Hoodee]

Subkicks don't affect as much what you hear, more what you feel if you ask me. I do too have one of those diy bad boys but I tend to first get a good kick drum sound by playing with both the sub kick and the "regular" kick track levels(That sounds like Cpt. Obvious). Then I do everything else, so that HP at 50hz is good enough for me to get rid of the mud etc.

Lately, I've been pushing stuff a little bit too far and my recipe for the kick is both subkick and kick track at -3/4 bd (to avoid clipping...Cpt Obvious Strikes Back), both sent to a buss, quite "natural" stuff done to get a good kick drum sound, then there's a second buss, without the sub, to which you apply the same agressive settigs as for parallel compression and an HP starting from 2.5khz and further. You get an annoying, clicking sound you can use to add definition to your kick in louder parts in songs or get an early 90's death metal kick or even to just boost the level of your kick.

Just my 2 cents.