frequency response of cymbals

hifijohn

hifijohn

Active Member
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http://imgur.com/uuVd87m

if you have ever wonder what is the frequency response of instruments ,here are some graphs I have made.
the graph is peak hold, and it doesnt seem to go beyond 17khz, Im sure cymbals go into the ultra sonic.

cymbal bell - Im hitting the bell of the 16" meinl cymbal,strong energy at 400hz and a peak at 3.5 khz.

cymbal close- hitting a 16" meinl at about 1 inch.its amazing how much bass is in a cymbal ,down to 40hz ,as good as any bass guitar.

cymbal- hitting the cymbal at about 1 foot, its interesting that the large 435hz is the 1/2 wavelength of the 16" cymbal.

hi-hat- the stock hi hat that came with the drum kit played open and closed and in between,very strong energy in the 400 to 600hz range

tamburine-old wooden remo tamburine,very sparse, a peak at 2.4khz the it builds from 3.5k to 9k.

remember this is not absolute, instruments like cymbals have a different response depending upon how hard you hit it and where you hit it also how far is the mic.
Ill be posting more in the future when I have the time.
 
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Very interesting, thanks!

I read of a Motown producer saying that a tambourine will cut through anything. I think the tambourine graph illustrates why.
 
New toy eh ? Cool.

That everything rolling off at 17 K might be your mic. That is the upper limit of alot of them, including some pretty good ones.

Interesting how much energy there is at the lower frequencies though, it seems the higher frequencies do tend to dominate our hearing perception to some degree.

This is not new, like the tambourine being heard over things, the piccolo in an orchestra overcomes the rest. this also goes into the different types of distortion in audio equipment. The thread is out there but I'll recap real quick. Even order distortion, like 2nd, is more tolerable. Now when you get 11th harmonic distortion it sounds really bad, even if there is less of it. It is more separated in frequency.

Sometime soon maybe, I will be looking for some accurate mics. Not sure, might have to move in a couple of months, but if not I intend to set up a lab like that and get down to some speaker work.

BTW, how do you mix down this drum set ? Me and a couple of buddies have been thinking about it but the cost of new stuff is a bit too high for just a hobby. Now I got a connection where I can get for example an eight channel mixer with like one or two channels no good. I figure like five mics for a drum set. One for the kick, one for the usual two toms, one for the snare and one for the high hat, and then another one a bit away for the other cymbals, crash/ride/whatever.

Or should I use two for the toms and pan them to different channels ? Another thing is stereo for the big cymbals. You can HEAR when that thing swings. It would be nice to reproduce that phase shift that occurs when it does that. It has been done but I can't think of a good example right now. Maybe CCR- Suzie Q ? You do not hear it alot.

Anyway, 17 K is alot. It is higher than FM stereo will do. (FM mono will do 67 KHz) It is higher than most cassette decks, or even R2Rs at 3¾ IPS.

Wish I could hear it LOL.

Now what we need is some SPL measurements. Tear into that snare, kick the kicker. Be nice to see what that puts out. Problem is you might have to back off as it might overload the thing.

In fact I am working on just that, not a mic compressor, but a mic damper. You all will hear about it once I get the thing designed. It could be helpful for micing drums. My intent is for singers and Karaoke, but hey, it might also work well for this.
 
One for the bass drum, one for each tom, 2 for the snare (one above one below with pahse reversed), 1 for the hihat, 2 overheads. Sum to mono for the overheads to check for cancellations before you start.

Watch this video for a fun thing to do: (Also reverse phase and only in addition to a normal mic)

 
Last edited:
JURB said:
New toy eh ? Cool.

That everything rolling off at 17 K might be your mic. That is the upper limit of alot of them, including some pretty good ones.

Interesting how much energy there is at the lower frequencies though, it seems the higher frequencies do tend to dominate our hearing perception to some degree.

This is not new, like the tambourine being heard over things, the piccolo in an orchestra overcomes the rest. this also goes into the different types of distortion in audio equipment. The thread is out there but I'll recap real quick. Even order distortion, like 2nd, is more tolerable. Now when you get 11th harmonic distortion it sounds really bad, even if there is less of it. It is more separated in frequency.

Sometime soon maybe, I will be looking for some accurate mics. Not sure, might have to move in a couple of months, but if not I intend to set up a lab like that and get down to some speaker work.

BTW, how do you mix down this drum set ? Me and a couple of buddies have been thinking about it but the cost of new stuff is a bit too high for just a hobby. Now I got a connection where I can get for example an eight channel mixer with like one or two channels no good. I figure like five mics for a drum set. One for the kick, one for the usual two toms, one for the snare and one for the high hat, and then another one a bit away for the other cymbals, crash/ride/whatever.

Or should I use two for the toms and pan them to different channels ? Another thing is stereo for the big cymbals. You can HEAR when that thing swings. It would be nice to reproduce that phase shift that occurs when it does that. It has been done but I can't think of a good example right now. Maybe CCR- Suzie Q ? You do not hear it alot.

Anyway, 17 K is alot. It is higher than FM stereo will do. (FM mono will do 67 KHz) It is higher than most cassette decks, or even R2Rs at 3¾ IPS.

Wish I could hear it LOL.

Now what we need is some SPL measurements. Tear into that snare, kick the kicker. Be nice to see what that puts out. Problem is you might have to back off as it might overload the thing.

In fact I am working on just that, not a mic compressor, but a mic damper. You all will hear about it once I get the thing designed. It could be helpful for micing drums. My intent is for singers and Karaoke, but hey, it might also work well for this.
Click to expand...




The kit is just for fun any rythym track you hear on my recordings is my yamaha keyboard,or are the rythym tracks sampled form a song then looped. as far as the recording there are tons of how to videos on youtube, usually 3 mics is all you need, almost all old records used just 3 mics or less.,the eagles first album and all of ringos stuff is I believe only 3 mics, now engineers put 2 mics just on the snare.
 
Interesting. Thanks for posting. It may help some people understand why the amp/speaker interface is important.

As a person's learning curve starts to grow...

Lets say you have a speaker that is "rated" 8 ohms...

then you learn that the 8 ohms is the nominal or average of all the impedances between 20-20k (sometimes a manufacturer is a bit optimistic in the nominal value they give their product :idea:)

then, if your lucky, you see a graph of the speakers actual impedance across that spectrum and see that it might be fairly flat (resistive) or vary wildly (reactive). The more reactive it is, the more critical the amp choice will be. There are other factors of course but to stay on the thread topic of what the range of just a cymbal bell is (back to post #1), let alone an entire symphony orchestra, you are going to want an amp that is just as happy reproducing 400 Hz as it is at 3.5 kHz just to do a good job of reproducing that bell. If that speaker is around 2 ohms at 400 Hz and 16 ohms at 3.5 kHz you better have an amp that doesn't mind dishing out that extra current when needed.

Just some food for thought which now has made me hungry. :)
 
cymbal close- hitting a 16" meinl at about 1 inch.its amazing how much bass is in a cymbal ,down to 40hz ,as good as any bass guitar.

I know, right?
I've always noticed that with my old 20 inch zildjian ride cymbal...there's a ton of bass coming off it if tapped on the edge with a soft mallet...
 
Cymbal low end often gets in the way of mix clarity, so it's often one of the first things to be EQ'd out when doing a "traditional" pop mix -- assuming you want, and have, enough isolation thru mic technique to address them independently.

Chip
 
Here is an informative graph from the Audio Control C101 manual.
 

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