Sorry if this has been covered but I’m confused about how to group my mics on a drum kit, which ones to align, etc
My setup is:
r-121’s overheads as a spaced pair about 50” above the kit.
Two Coles 4038’s are behind the drummers shoulders each about 48” from the snare.
A Lauten ‘snare mic’ on the snare top with a sm57 underneath.
A sm57 at a 90 degree angle pointed at the top rim of the snare about 3” away.
The kick has a d112 pointed through a hole in the front (resonant?) head angled to be pointed at the beater.
There’s a Warm wa47-f (u47 FET clone) as a close mic pointed at the kick front head.
There are md-421’s on top of the 3 toms with sm57’s under.
A Royer sf-24 stereo ribbon is 5’ in front of the kit at an angle that tries to keep the snare and kick centered.
Aston starlight small condensers on the high hat and ride.
ksm141’s as room mics in Omni laying on the floor in each far corner.
What’s the recommended process for using auto align 2? In regard to which mics to include in the alignment, what takes priority etc I see things on the web saying to group certain mics, choose the key mic of the group, align groups to each other etc etc but haven’t seen a real clear description of the best overall approach.
In terms of Grouping, in general, all the drum tracks should be in one group as they make up one sound (the drums) and all the mics bleed into each other.
As always, there’s room to experiment, and the A/B/C/D preset slots are your friend here.
Here’s what I’d suggest:
Insert AA2 and all your tracks and Align - This will be your first initial alignment.
If you’re capturing into the plugin, for best results, capture the whole song.
Move to preset B,
If your stereo pairs are recorded on two mono tracks, select each pair, right-click → Configurations → Stereo Link.
Do this to all pairs and ‘Align’.
This will make Auto-Align 2 analyze each pair as a Stereo track, which can give a wider image.
In preset C, you can try selecting the Room mics, right-click → New group. Hear how it sounds with the rooms in their own group.
Compare the three options and see which sounds best.
You can also audition alternate correlation points by hovering over tracks and using the +/- buttons and more.
There’s no option to align a group to another group. All the tracks within a group are aligned against each other.
The Manual can be found here and explains everything in detail: