This is something I've really struggled with over the years. I'm not the hugest fan of room mics. I've got two extra spidif channels after I close mic everything I need to on the kit, so I just run a stereo pair of SDCs for the hell of it in a "V", roughly equidistant from the snare (approx 138 inches away from the snare), pointing away from the kit, very close to the ground. I've tried room mics 200,000 different ways and this is what has worked the best for me in my room, but - it hasn't worked that well. I usually end up dumping them in the mix in favor of just sending whatever components of the kit to a reverb and making my own "room"...

Today, I had to mic up an accent cymbal, and I only had one extra SPDIF channel, so I said fuck it and threw up a mono room mic (arbitrary detail: akgc391b pointing away from the kit very close to the ground with the high pass filter engaged, about 138 inches away from the snare) and by gosh if it wasn't about 1,000x more useful in the mix than all this stereo garbage I've been capturing for years now. I remembered back to when all I did was capture a mono room... Why didn't I just stick with that?

Anyone have any thoughts/ experiences/ tips on how they utilize room mics in the mix specifically for drums? Do you mainly dump them? Do you rely heavily on them? Do you high pass them? How do you treat them? What kinds of mics do you favor for them? Are you strictly a stereo guy/ mono guy, or does it just depend? Please chime in.

Thanks.