SONNOX Oxford Drum Gate £170

Much as I love building up rhythms and beats using a good drum sampler and pad controller, there’s nothing quite like the sound of a well-played live drum kit for groove, energy and spontaneity. Recording and mixing an acoustic kit is, however, one of those sound engineering challenges that really separates the pros from the tinkerers.

The most fundamental part of the challenge lies in how to mic-up such a large and complex – not to mention loud – sound source. There are techniques for using just two or three mics, but these rely on excellent live-room acoustics and spending an awful lot of time honing the position of those mics prior to recording. In any event, such approaches limit flexibility at mixdown time, hence why we normally surround the kit with microphones, capturing individual drums up-close along with various stereo