u/fucksports

In an effort to prevent phase issues, the general advice with spaced-pair overheads is to place both mics equidistant from the snare drum so the snare stays centered and phase-coherent.

What confuses me is that this usually means the left and right overheads end up at different distances from their respective crash cymbals. In practice, one crash often sounds more direct and defined while the other sounds a little farther away and less detailed.

On parts where the drummer alternates between left and right crashes, I’d expect them to feel relatively even, but instead one side can sound noticeably different because that cymbal is physically closer to its overhead.
How do you all deal with this? Do you just accept the tradeoff as part of spaced overheads, or are there techniques to keep both the cymbals balanced and the snare phase-coherent in the center image?

Curious how experienced engineers approach this.

I’m micing up my drum kit with 4 mics: a spaced pair of condensers as overheads, plus close mics on kick and snare. The room I’m recording in is less than ideal, so I end up high-passing the overheads pretty aggressively (around 500hz) to tighten things up and get rid of mud and ugly room buildup. It actually sounds pretty solid overall, but I do lose some depth and body from the shells in the process.

If you were adding a fifth mic to help bring back some fullness and dimension to the toms/shells, what would you choose and where would you place it? Curious about both mic choice and positioning.