Toms ‘woofing’ on final hits of some rolls (audio attached)

[Miscreant]

Hi everyone,

Please find attached a file illustrating what I mean. The audio is entirely unprocessed and you’re hearing only tom 2 in solo; so no ambient or OH mics. It’s Metal Machine EZX played through S3; the tom is the 10×12 Tama Star Classic Bubinga.

When you listen, notice that on on rolls 3 and 4, the final hit in the roll (of 3 hits total), ‘woofs’ a bit at the end. Crucially, the toms don’t always do this (as rolls 1, 2 and 5 illustrate). But when they do, it’s really distracting as the ‘woof’ almost introduces some distortion that is unpleasant (and nope, not clipping). Tom 2 is just an example–I get intermittent woofing on almost all of them.

Often I can process much of this out, but not always. And if you’re really listening you can hear it in the mix. I don’t think this has anything to do with the envelope or with gating, since not all rolls woof.

Any tips?

 

*SEE POST #3 FOR CORRECT ATTACHMENT

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: Windows 10

• This post was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Miscreant.

Topic

[Red Gear Music]

The audio files are silent…

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Thanked by: Miscreant

[Miscreant]

Yikes, that’s embarrassing…corrected file posted here. Thanks.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: Windows 10

[Red Gear Music]

You will want to adjust the decay, hold, curve slope, and release of the tom’s.  I do this quite a bit as well because I don’t want some toms to ring as long as they do or be too boomy.   So I adjust these settings in the envelop and offset menu.

Like this screen shot, I adjusted the floor tom to be pretty flat response with little ring…

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• This post was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Red Gear Music.

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[Miscreant]

Thanks for chiming in, Bryan. I’m familiar with the envelope control here, and I do use it frequently. But I am actually wondering why the tom ‘woofs’ only after some rolls and not others. Any insight here?

Relatedly, I am trying to learn how to mix drums outside the virtual environment, where I do not have access to all the tricks available to me in Superior. How would someone handle this woofing on a real kit? I’m assuming with compression and gating, which I am already using.

Any other tricks anyone uses to control tom sustain and woofing?

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: Windows 10

[Brad]

Miscreant wrote:

Thanks for chiming in, Bryan. I’m familiar with the envelope control here, and I do use it frequently. But I am actually wondering why the tom ‘woofs’ only after some rolls and not others. Any insight here?

Relatedly, I am trying to learn how to mix drums outside the virtual environment, where I do not have access to all the tricks available to me in Superior. How would someone handle this woofing on a real kit? I’m assuming with compression and gating, which I am already using.

Any other tricks anyone uses to control tom sustain and woofing?

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: Windows 10

The “randomness” of the “woofing” could be dependent on the velocity of the hit. (that’s a guess). Is it a specific kit or preset?

As far as live recorded drums, you could try deadening the heads with tape, cloths, other gauze based items. Remove the bottom head (which granted changes the sound of the tom…. but) Post recording; if you have your tom close mics printed  to separate tracks you could try a transient shaper/designer  plug-in.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.4
Operating system: macOS Big Sur (11)

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2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

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[Red Gear Music]

I was going to suggest exactly what Brad just mentioned…velocity variance and did you change anything on the Velocity curve menu for the toms?

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[Miscreant]

Thanks, everyone.

Re: velocity. Between the hits you’re hearing in the clip I posted, there is a maximum range of 7 between their respective velocities, but they average out relatively evenly. So I do not suspect velocity variance is the culprit, unless I am wrong about how sensitive the samples are to variances of on average 3-4 or so. Maybe I am wrong about that.

As for the kit, it’s the Tama Star Classic Bubinga in Metalmachine EZX, run through S3.

I’m going to revisit the gating to see if I can shape the envelope more to my liking, even if the ‘woofs’ are relatively random right now. If that doesn’t work I’ll use the envelope shaper in S3, though I do always want to see if I can do more with my standard, core mixing tools. So a bit of a bummer.

[Author]

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