Here’s how I dial in a snare on the X32 in a real worship mix, both the top and the bottom mic, and how I blend the two so the snare has body up front and sizzle on top. These are the actual settings I landed on, so you can use them as a starting point and tweak to your room.
Snare top
First thing I do is get rid of the boxy junk in the mids that most snares have, that hollow cardboard sound. Then high pass around 100 Hz to clear the low rumble that the snare isn’t really producing anyway.
For compression, I’ve got it working between 3 and 6 dB of gain reduction on a 4:1 ratio, attack at 24 milliseconds, release at 20, with 4 dB of makeup gain. On this particular snare the drum itself was a little dead-sounding, so a lot of the work is just cleaning it up and letting the compression add some punch.
Snare bottom: flip the phase first
The very first move on the snare bottom is to flip the phase. The bottom mic is hearing the drum from the opposite side of the top mic, so it’s out of phase, and if you don’t flip it you’ll lose low end and body where the two mics fight each other.
Then here’s the thing about the bottom mic. I’m not using it for tone, I’m using it for sizzle. So I compress it pretty hard, with a fast attack to knock off that initial crack, and a fast release to let go of it quickly. That pulls the transient down and lets me push up the length, so you get a longer sizzle instead of just a smack. I also cut off a lot of the low end on it, probably more than some people would suggest, but I like it that way since the top mic is carrying the body.
Blending the two
With the top mic doing the tone and the body, and the bottom mic adding that ch sizzle on top, you get a snare that’s full and lively without being harsh. Bring the bottom in underneath the top until you hear that sizzle come alive, and stop there. Then you can decide whether to add reverb, though depending on the style of the song you might hold the verb off until later in the mix.
For the full, slow walkthrough of a snare from scratch, including all the reverb settings, check out my complete X32 snare guide. And if you want these settings ready to load onto your board, they’re in my X32 preset packs.
