Hello,

i'm looking for tips to get rid of snare, kick (well, kick is not much a problem) and also other "bustles" in cymbal track. This track was recorded by hobbyist and those kick and snare sounds are very prominent. I have mixed success by using high pass and spectral gate, but sound is not great. On snare and kick tracks i have used drum replacer, so mixed drums are already miles better than original. This evening i want to play with cymbals more. Maybe i use some ai stuff?

It's my first song to "master", as i'm learning.

Thanks and have a great day

 

Have you tried using the close kick & snare mics as a side-chain signal to suppress them in the overhead mids?

 

First try. I know you already did this ; but I would use another gate plugin, to shorten tails. Sonible Smart:Gate preferably. It is AI and if a gate is going to work for you, it would be that one.

Or you can use a Transient Designer to shorten the tails, by lowering the Hold, Release, Sustain parameters; like you would with a reverb. You can use a pretty lightweight plugin, all it does is shorten the notes/tails, hits. those are the only adjustable parameters on the plugin you use will need. You just have to adjust it properly, and it's not very hard either.

You could also use a Multiband Channel like Bluecats MB-7 Mixer. Or a drum separation plugin, like Fuse Audiolabs Drums SSX. It's just a multiband also, not AI. You would just mute the bands you didn't want anymore.

If you were using Logic, you could even have your samples flipped to Midi with the Drum Machine Designer and triggering slices. That way you could delete the offenders. Or Recycle or Melodyne to get the midi first.

You have so many options on drums. You DAW may even have a Gate on all your audio channels already.

 

Last edited: Jul 11, 2024

Thanks for replies Much appreciated.

I uploaded short sample of original tracks, if anyone is curious. There are three tracks, OH left, OH right, and HH. Uploaded wav file contains a few seconds from each of them. I have nothing to compare, but i think, that's pretty horrible

Right now i'm playing with:

* eq to get rid of low frequencies
* sonible gate
* spectral gate (melda's spectral dynamics)
* sidechain compressors
* eq to tame one big resonance
* reverb to have more natural sound after processing
* tape for coloration and for fun

Yea i have tried, but i guess i was too impatient, will do it again, thx <3

Great and inspirative reply, thanks! I have already tried smart gate, but i guess without too much effort, i'll try again.
I will try transient designer for sure, that's good idea.

 

High-pass filters and spectral gates are a start, but they're not always perfect. Trying AI tools could help isolate and clean up those cymbals effectively.

 

Embrace the bleed. It's part of the drumkit. Sometimes a dedicated hihat mic isn't needed if the hihat is loud in the overheads (or the drummer has a dominant hihat hand as part of his/her sound/technique). You can swap hihats to less loud (thinner) pair, if available.
You can even use foam screens or gobo between the hihat and snare mic and/or overhead mics.

You can dip the "worst" hihat resonances (530Hz, 3.3k, 5k, etc in this case). I would also notch that 561Hz and 1170Hz ringing(!).
Then parallell compress that overhead mic (it doesn't seem to be stereo). The good stuff is the softer bits between the harder parts.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2024