While it’s not compulsory, most people take action to suppress spill from at least some mics on a drum recording. If you are going to do this, the two approaches are using an expander/gate or manually editing the spill out. Often the cure is worse than the disease when removing all the spill but if done with care then this technique can be useful, particularly on toms as they tend to be played less than the central elements of kick and snare.

Strip Silence With A High Threshold Using Clip End Pad To Capture Decay

Strip silence can semi-automate the process of removing spill from tom mics, in this free tip Pro Tools Expert team member Julian Rodgers shows how using as high a strip threshold as possible and using the clip end pad control to lengthen the separated clip to catch the appropriate amount of the tom’s decay. Using a batch fade operation can be used to remove the abrupt stop and the end of the separated clips and remove the most distracting side effect of removing the spill.

Watch the free video tutorial to see it demonstrated.