Kick Drum Mic Shootout – with Sound Samples

How much difference can a microphone make in the sound of your kick drum? You might be surprised. I decided to try out a variety of kick mics in the studio — some old standards that I’ve used throughout my career and some newcomers. See if you can hear any difference. You’ll notice they are labeled as 1 through 11, with no mic names. Yeah, I did that on purpose. Let your ears decide. As you listen, take notes about which you like the most (or least) and why. Then I’ll tell you what they are. Put on your best headphones or crank up your monitors.

In these clips you’ll hear two bars of just the soloed kick mic, then two bars with the room mics added, and then the rest of the kit comes in. Finally the other instruments kick in so you can hear how the drums sit in the track.

Kick Drum Mic Playlist




Nick D’Virgilio’s drum kit showing the kick drum mics and positioning of the DPA 4011C overhead and AEA R88 room mics.

What did you think? Could you hear a difference? Did you have a favorite? Or two?

Most of the people I played these for at Sweetwater thought they recognized two things:

The sound of the mic they’ve been using for yearsA mic that they prefer more

Without a doubt, the sound of the kick drum has a huge impact on concert sound and on records. Getting a great kick drum sound is far easier when you have the right mic. And the best part about getting a new kick drum mic is that it’s so affordable. The majority of the mics you just heard are under $200, and only two of them are over $400. So you can make a drastic improvement in the sound of your kick for not a lot of money.

Of course, the player and the instrument have the biggest impact on the sound — no one would argue with that. But as a player or engineer, the influence of the kick drum sound on the music mix is undeniable. Combining the thrust of the bottom end with the snap of the beater and doing that in a way that fits your drumming and musical style? It’s crucial for coming up with a killer mix.

So Which Was Which?

Before I tell you, let me explain how these recordings were made.

Kick DrumMic SelectionMic PlacementMic PreampCalibrationProcessing

Kick Drum

It all starts with the drum. If you don’t have a drum that sounds great, then you’re swimming upstream. If you have a good-sounding kick drum, it’ll make your job much easier. For this session, Nick D’Virgilio, Sweetwater’s resident studio drummer, picked one of his favorite kick drums from Sweetwater Studios’ drum collection — a Drum Workshop 18″ x 23″ Cherry Gum kick similar to this. It was fitted with a Remo Powerstroke 3 clear head and played with a DW 9000 kick pedal with a felt beater. It sounded incredible. Lots of low end, lots of attack.

Here are the other parts of the kit:

Snare — DW Collector’s Series Aluminum 6.5″ x 14″Snare head — Evans Power Center Reverse Dot coatedHi-hat — Sabian HHX Legacy 15″Ride — Sabian HHX Legacy 22″ HeavyCrash — Sabian HHX Legacy 18″

Mic Selection

This is NOT the actual mic positioning you’ll hear.

I’ve worked with dozens of kick drum mics over the past 40 years, and I went through several rounds of “favorites” before I finally landed on a combination that worked great for me. But like most engineers, I’m always looking for better tools. I started with a list of nearly 30 mics and whittled it down to these few, including five mics I’d never heard before. For the room mics, I chose a pair of DPA 4011C as overheads and an AEA R88 stereo ribbon mic behind the drummer for room perspective.

Mic Placement

Looking through the batter head showing the laser sighting used to center each mic.

Ask a dozen engineers what’s the best position for a mic on the kick drum, and you’ll get a dozen different answers. For this comparison, I went with a common placement — the mic centered right in the hole in the resonant head. I aligned the mic diaphragm with the plane of the resonant head. Any engineer knows that moving the mic in or out of the drum makes a drastic difference in the sound, but that’s a different article. The important thing here is that they were all in the exact same place.

Krystal Davis uses the laser sighting to verify the correct mic position while Lynn Fuston tweaks the placement — as Nick D. waits patiently.

Mic Preamp

For this test, I used my Millennia Media HV-3R preamp, because it’s very clean and has lots of headroom. I’ve used this preamp on drums for years. Sometimes I reach for a preamp with more attitude or grit as the music demands, but the Millennia preamp was perfect for this and gave us an accurate representation of each mic.

Calibration

Using a laser to get the mic positioning consistent in front of the speaker where we calibrated the preamp levels.

Making sure there’s a “level playing field” in terms of level is a huge part of any shootout that I do. Because mic output levels (sensitivity) can vary by as much as 20dB–30dB, we calibrated the levels of the mics before we put them in the kick to make sure each was fairly represented.

Processing

For this listening comparison, I decided not to use any processing at all, although that rarely happens in the real world. Frequently lots of EQ and compression are applied to the kick mic. You can download the 24/96 source files and do whatever processing you like to these raw samples.

Why Are There Such Drastic Differences?

While flatness of frequency response is a desirable goal for many microphones, among kick drum mics that is definitely NOT the case. I gathered up the frequency response charts from the manufacturers to help you see why there are such drastic differences in sound. The frequency response charts below will help explain what you hear. Although it won’t change your preferences, glancing over these may help you understand why each mic sounds the way it does.

The Reveal

1 — AKG D112 MKII




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2 — AKG D12 VR

(set to blue position)




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3 — Audio-Technica ATM250




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4 — Audix D6




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5 — Electro-Voice RE20

(no highpass)




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6 — Shure Beta 52A




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7 — sE Electronics V Kick

(Classic settings)




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8 — Sennheiser MD 421 II

(set to M)




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9 — Sennheiser e 602-II




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10 — Telefunken M82

(set to flat)




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11 — Electro-Voice ND68




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In Conclusion

If there’s a mic here that you heard and were impressed with, I’d suggest getting one. It’s an easy way to quickly improve the sound of your kick drum. I discovered one or two in this lineup that I plan to get. Call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700, and they can get your new favorite kick drum mic on its way to you on the next truck out of here.

But Wait – There’s More!

As I started discussing how to execute this shootout with other engineers, someone said, “Lots of people use two mics on kick.” I know that’s true — I’m one of them. I decided that since we were setting all of this up, it would be easy to just add a few options. So I put up the mics you see pictured above. If you’ve never had a chance to use these on kick drum, now you can hear what you’re missing. I recorded these three mics with each pass and included those tracks with the download sessions so you can add them in and see what different combinations sound like.

Shure Beta 91A boundary mic — Most engineers just toss it inside on a pillow and it sounds great — and it’s so easy.

Neuman U 47 FET — Whether on kick drum or bass amp, it sounds great — there’s a reason that it’s a standard.

Royer R-121 — Position this several inches away from the resonant head at 45 degrees to the front head. “You’ll blow it up!!” I frequently hear. Well, my R-122 (the active version of the R-121) has been parked in front of every kick drum I’ve recorded since 2004, and that’s a lot of kick drums. It’s never been re-ribboned once. (Heresy, you say? Don’t believe me? Look in the Royer manual. It’s got a picture of how to do it. No kidding.)

Download the original 24/96 files

Download the original 24/96 files

If you want to hear the full-resolution recordings and access these extra mic tracks, you can download the 24-bit/96kHz files (440 MB) by clicking here. For Pro Tools users, set your Pro Tools session for Solo X-OR [find it at Options > Solo Mode > Solo X-OR (Cancels Previous Solo)], and you can listen to each mic by soloing that track. For non-Pro Tools users, there is a folder named Audio Files inside the Kick Drum Mic Shootout folder. Select all those files and import them directly into a 24/96 session that you create with your DAW. The files are named so that the tracks should stay in the proper sequence and groupings. All the files are identical in length and have the same start time, so you can import them to start at the beginning of the session. The tempo is 130 bpm in case you want to line them up on a grid. Check out the included READ ME file if you have any questions about how to use the sound clips.

Download the original 24/96 files.

CREDITS: Thanks to Sweetwater Studios staffers Dave Martin, Krystal Davis, Bobby Dellarocco, and Nicholas Morrow for their help imagining and executing this shootout. I couldn’t have done it without them.
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