Tominator: new cymbal bleed remover plug-in sale 'til 7 DEC

[mhschmieder]

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2016/12/ ... om-tracks/

https://joeysturgistones.com/collection ... 8472554189

I hope to try this out tonight or this weekend. If it does what it claims, it is well worth the introductory price of $39.

Apparently it focuses on removing bleed from close-miked drums; hence the emphasis on toms.

Not sure if it would also work on kick and snare, timbales, etc.

[mhschmieder]

Although the demos did not impress me, since I don't like compressed drums, I bought it anyway as it appears to be a unique plug-in that could come in handy.

I went over some project notes and noticed that I've been focusing more on removing kick and snare bleed from hi-hat and ride spot mics than removing cymbal bleed from toms, snare, or kick -- for those drums I have been dealing more with resonance control than anything else.

It can't hurt to try this plug-in on my own, with my personal tastes, meaning I will likely set it to 5 kHz for a more natural sound with more three dimensionality to the overall mix, and just take some of the edge off of cymbal and hi-hat bleed.

[David Polich]

Hey Mark! Allow me to save you some cash and trouble. I demoed Tominator some months back.
It really doesn't work that well. Basically it's a frequency-dependent gate. Like Melodyne, it doesn't work in real-time either - you run the audio track through it and it supposedly analyzes the audio and
then you can select the frequency you want to get rid of.

I also bought the Wilkinson Audio De-Bleeder which does the same thing but in real time. Another
waste of money.

There is only one way to get rid of drumkit bleed - by recording on an e-Kit and triggering drum
software. Its fine to record the e-kit with real cymbals and a hat - the mics don't really pick up
the drummer hitting the pads that much, so you still have the separation, and the drummer gets
to play his/her real cymbals and hats.

I'm a total fan of recording drums with e-kits now. Engineers have been trying for the last 80 years to get rid of drumkit bleed. They didn't have any other options until the advent of MIDI and GOOD
drum software, the first of which was BFD. Before BFD, sampled drums sounded like crap. BFD
changed the game.

Drums recorded the traditional way always present the same problem - the mics all pick up the
entire kit. The hat mic pics up the snare, the snare mic picks up the hat, the overheads pick up the
whole kit, the kick drum mic picks up the snare. And if the drums were recorded with the rest of the band in the same room, you have the freakin' band instruments bleeding into the mics too. It's almost 2017, traditional drumkit recording methods date back to 1945 or maybe earlier.

For my own productions, since drums was my first instrument, I play the drum part from top to
bottom on keyboard triggering drum software. Then I record each kit part as audio so I have all the
separate tracks, and I can swap out the kit pieces later if I want. And I'm happy and I'm not wasting time trying to fix problems which really cant be fixed. Problems which can include being stuck with poorly recorded drums.

Traditionalists will say well what's wrong with kit bleed, it's natural. I don't feel like being a traditionalist anymore...because I'm the one who has to mix the thing.

[mhschmieder]

Hi Dave, thanks for the info -- too late on the purchase but it's only a small amount to waste.

Yeah I know one local pro drummer who only uses high-end e-kits now -- especially the Zen series (?) cymbals from Zildjian -- and says he'd never go back as almost no production work is needed for bleed issues and the like.

I was almost going to try out some Beyerdynamic tom mics but ended up buying two more Audio-Technica ATM250's for a total of six, for metal drummers who have two floor toms and four rack toms, as splitting one mic in between two floor toms at my last session didn't work so well.

The Beyer mics are hypercardioid so would have less bleed, but after lots of on-line listening, I felt that the ATM250's still have the most warmth, depth, body, and articulateness of any mic on toms.

Toms are not my biggest bleed issue though, as I tend to trim the tracks and carefully edit and fade the tails. Hi-hat bleeding into snare and kick (outside, not inside mic) has been a bigger issue, but I'm going to experiment with other miking techniques at next week's sessions.

[EMRR]

Oh well, someone has to try, right?

With the amateur drummers, excessive cymbal hitting will always be a thing and we will always have to fight the bleed on some level.

I still mostly find using automation to be the better path than any gate triggered by an audio path I've tried, and usually a 6dB volume drop around semi-actively played drums is the sweet spot for me between bleed reduction and avoidance of obvious processing. I use a fairly full range overhead sound fairly high in the mix, along with stereo distant mic, so 6dB does a lot in that case.

I have had good experience a few times recording drum triggers on acoustic drums and letting those side chain the gate. Can't always dedicate the tracks and supporting analog side to it though.

The really bad light tom tappers / cymbal crushers can overcome any mic technique, and you can be just as well off with omni's on the toms so the bleed at least sounds natural and not twisted up by the off-axis pattern. Then you can go the other way, and turn the OH's down!

Be interested to hear what you land on and how you like it in regards to mics.

[David Polich]

Oh well, someone has to try, right?

With the amateur drummers, excessive cymbal hitting will always be a thing and we will always have to fight the bleed on some level.

I still mostly find using automation to be the better path than any gate triggered by an audio path I've tried, and usually a 6dB volume drop around semi-actively played drums is the sweet spot for me between bleed reduction and avoidance of obvious processing. I use a fairly full range overhead sound fairly high in the mix, along with stereo distant mic, so 6dB does a lot in that case.

I have had good experience a few times recording drum triggers on acoustic drums and letting those side chain the gate. Can't always dedicate the tracks and supporting analog side to it though.


The really bad light tom tappers / cymbal crushers can overcome any mic technique, and you can be just as well off with omni's on the toms so the bleed at least sounds natural and not twisted up by the off-axis pattern. Then you can go the other way, and turn the OH's down!

Be interested to hear what you land on and how you like it in regards to mics.

This still confirms for me that recording drums
the traditional way is just dumb when there
is another option. Of course we have two
factors to condider..most drummers dont like
e-Kits, and there isnt always an e-Kit in
the studio.

If bleed wasnt an issue then there would
never have been workarounds to get rid of it.
Including plugins like Tominator. But the fact is
I dont know any engineers who love mic
bleed or who enjoy dealing with it.

[EMRR]

Well I come from the opposite place, all I record is acoustic musicians playing together in free air. Recording drums any other way would be dumb for me. I record the kind of music in which bleed is good, on average, but there is still 'bad' bleed, otherwise known as 'mix imbalance' to contend with.

[mhschmieder]

I'm at both ends of the spectrum myself, as I record and write in every genre you've never heard of. Been a world musician since 5th grade, when my music teacher brought a bunch of instruments from around the world and invited musicians from different nationalities to give lectures.