Close drum recordings can lack the sense of size and space that comes with more distant placements. Generating it from scratch takes more than just adding a reverb audio plugin, but the results can be surprisingly convincing. We show you how.

Capturing Drum Ambience

When tracking drums, if time and the number of available inputs allow, there is no reason not to put up some ambient mics in a suitable space. When this isn’t possible, there is of course the option to move an overhead pair in or out, but this can be at the expense of the best position for the main capture. Experimenting with polar pattern offers another way to reintroduce space to captured sounds, but in some situations such as live recording, any notion of ambient pickup quickly goes out the window! In reality, some or all of these factors conspire to leave engineers with a recording whose sense of place needs some work in the mix.

Plugin Reverb For Ambience

Some would ask why it isn’t possible to summon the required room sound after the event using any of the incredible reverb and ambience tools available to engineers. While this can work to an extent, even the best tools can only reverberate a close recording with all the attributes that make it so. This might sound familiar to anyone who has tried it... Moving the mics back can work wonders in the right room, but the effect is more than just a function of direct to reverb ratio. It’s been said that “air is the best mixer” and certainly the combination of increased reflections, HF attenuation and transient rounding that happens with distance are all needed to get involving ambience.

Beyond Reverb

Reverb and EQ can mimic the acoustic for ambience, but first the engineer can use a tool to blunt the transient edges using a transient processor. Oeksound’s Spiff is a great candidate in this role, offering spectrally aware removal of transient content. When used in Cut mode, results come easily, with the engineer able to adjust how many corners to catch, as well as having controls for filter width and recovery available.

Watch in the video as we use Spiff as the central element in creating believable drum ambience channels from a stereo overhead track. Taking a duplicate of the overheads, we get to work rounding off the onset of drum sounds in a room-like way. Augmenting the results with a high quality reverb, and compressing to magnify the ambience completes the effect.

Mics Versus Processing

Those working with limited inputs, overly dry spaces, and/or limited time to experiment have up until now been largely stuck when things need to be more convincingly placed further back. While the well established technique of re-amping can save the day, this still needs a suitable space in the first place. When reverb audio plugins alone cannot retrieve the missing perspective that ambient mics bring, using adaptive transient shaping really can save the day. Is it better than the real thing? Certainly this technique gives a level of control that doesn’t involve boring the band to death while getting a sound… When done right, this technique can really sell an ambient sound on dry recordings.