Our studio

Welcome to our small, but perfectly formed cymbal studio. This is where we record all our stock cymbals.

We record all the cymbal sound files with no EQ, compression, plug-ins, filters or sound processing of any kind. This means that you can hear the real sound of every cymbal.

We spent a long time experimenting with different sound treatments and mics. Our studio monitors are right at the kit in the drummer's playing position. It took many (many!) hours of recording, listening and adjusting everything until we were happy that the cymbals sounded the same in our recordings as they did live in the room.

The mics and equipment

We use a 3 mic set up to capture the most natural and organic sound of the cymbals and drums. Nothing is close miced. The 2 over heads are about 2 meters off the floor and the bass drum mic is at least 30/40cm from the front skin.

The mics are an Earthworks DK-25R set. They have an extremely flat response and are specifically designed to capture the real acoustic sound of cymbals and drums. Their signal passes through an Audient interface, which has very neutral drivers and adds little or no colouration of its own. That sound is fed into our DAW where we don't add or take anything away from the raw signal. And that's our approach - direct from cymbal to sound file with nothing changed along the way.

If you have any questions about our sound files