Originally Posted By: VintageGibson
3. Auditioned each Stem separately and find there is a lot of bleed in from the Snare in the Cymbal and Toms Stems. For example there is not a massive difference between the HH Stem and the Mix, is this normal?


Yes. Just look at pics of drum kits in a recording studio, there's no way to avoid lots of bleed. People have been requesting this for years and some kept saying they could do all these great things but I think they were thinking of midi, not real audio stems. I've said for years the bleed through on the mics will be a problem, it won't be as great at some think. It's still useful because you can control the mix 'somewhat' but it's not perfect. You want to bump up the snare, you'll bump the kick and cymbals too, after all they're right next to each other with live mics. Still, you can achieve a decent mix you just have to experiment with rebalancing the whole kit.

When I was recording live bands I would spend more time on the drums than anything else. One way to use live drum stems is to put them into a DAW and use midi triggers that track individual drum kit parts and replace the audio with midi and them play the midi with a good drum program. But, the downside to that is you lose the live feel of the real drummer. Everything's a tradeoff. There are many techniques to use. Say the kit has an open hat and you want a closed one. You could use a midi closed hat and take the kit hat to zero and the trigger system would match the rhythm. There will be some bleed through the open hat from the overheads but the midi closed hat would mostly hide it. You can also use EQ to eliminate some of the bleed. Having drums stems to play with can be fun but it's a lot of work. No instant gratification.

Bob

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