The snare drum drives the energy in your song, so when it’s not recorded perfectly, the entire mix suffers. Part of this comes from poor microphone placement, bad acoustics in the room, or a poorly tuned or cheap snare itself. Any of these factors can contribute to a ringing in your snare. Thankfully this is typically something you can either mitigate or fix outright in the mix, so let’s identify the snare ring frequency and how to remove it from your snare.
Snare Ring Frequency
The snare ring frequency you hear is roughly 800Hz.
While a static cut works well, you might try experimenting with a dynamic EQ cut to attenuate more (or less) as necessary with each hit.
I say that because the pleasant roundness of the snare also exists around that same frequency point at 800Hz. You can bring out more of this frequency with a boost here if ringing isn’t a problem, but because you’re here I’m assuming it is.
Still, it’s worth mentioning that a static cut can potentially eat into that roundness or attenuate the ringing more than necessary, regardless of where you set it. A dynamic cut requires you to set a threshold the which I recommend setting to the hardest hit in the performance.
Get 3-5dB at most in gain reduction at 800Hz, then every lesser hit will be attenuated less/proportionately to dampen the ringing without gutting that roundness frequency altogether.
I also like dynamic EQ because a touch of ringing in the snare sounds natural, or maybe better said if you have ringing in your snare, then gutting it completely might sound UNNATURAL to your listener by virtue of how much you have to cut to eradicate it completely.
Check out my tutorial on how to use dynamic EQ for more information on setting it up and hitting that sweet spot or better said the best compromise with any track and frequency range you’re using dynamic EQ on.
By the way, if your EQ doesn’t allow for dynamic filters, check out my overview on the best FREE EQ plugin, the TDR Nova.
Of course snare ringing isn’t the only unwanted “artifact” associated with the drum.
Snare drum buzz is another issue which draws the listener’s attention away not just from the snare or drums but the entire mix.
This occurs higher up in that transient rich 3-5k region as I explained in my recent tutorial on how to fix snare drum buzz.
With that in mind, make sure you check out my entire snare EQ cheat sheet for tips on how to treat every single frequency range of note on the snare drum from the lowest to highest frequencies.
In that link I go into more detail about how much to adjust whether it’s a cut or boost and more importantly WHY I recommend those moves and the effects they have in benefiting the overall tone of your snare.
While you’re at it, check out my complete drum EQ chart and better yet my COMPLETE and ULTIMATE EQ cheat sheet which has detailed graphical guides for the best adjustments to make on key frequencies for every single track in your mix.
