New York Compression On Drums

[lurgan liar]

Hey guys... Need a bit of help with compressing drums... I read this in the Mixing Engineer's Handbook... but i can't seem to be able to work out how to do it in Sonar....

Here is the excerpt from the book...


..."The New York Compression Trick

One of the little tricks that seems to set the new york mixers apart from everyone else is something i call the "New York Compression Trick". It seems like every mixer who's ever mixed in New York City comes away with this maneuver. Even if you don't mix in NYC, once you try it you just might find yourself using this trick all the time, since it is indeed a useful method to make a rhythm section rock.

Here's the trick:
1) Buss the drums, and maybe even the bass, to a stereo compressor.

2) Hit the compressor fairly hard, at least 10dB or more if it sounds good.

3) Return the output of the compressor to a pair of fader inputs on the console.

4) Add a pretty good amount of high end (6-dB at 100 Khz or so) and low end (6-10dB at 100Khz or so) to the compressed signal.

5) Now bring the fader levels of the compressor up until it's tucked just under the present rhythm section to where you can just hear it.

The rhythm section will now sound bigger and more controlled without sounding overly compressed. "....

My question is this ...how exactly would i do this in Sonar 5 ... i'm not sure if i should be using SENDS....and i don't see how it is possible to RETURN the output of the compressor to a pair of faders in the console ...

The only way i am able to do this is by SENDING a "dry" Drum Buss to the "compressed" Buss which i then SEND to the "EQ" Buss ...

Please Help...

 

[gtrman_66]

Not sure about exactly how Sonar works, but if you can submix the drums, and bass if you wish to create a seperate stereo track, insert that wav into the session and then apply your compression and eq plugs to it and mix it back against the dry tracks, I think you would accomplish basically the same thing.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Lurgan,

All parallel compression is - and "NY compression" is just parallel compression on drums - is throwing a compressed version of a track or tracks uner the uncompressed version of those tracks. In any DAW editor, there are several different ways that can be accomplished.

I'm not familiar with the detailed capabilities of Sonar, but one basic way you can accomplish parallel compression is just just make copies of your drum mix tracks to other tracks. Compress the copies, and then mix them with the original uncompressed tracks at a lower level than the uncompressed ones.

The idea is it just makes the overall drums sound fuller. BTW, the same kind of parallel compression trick when applied to vocals is often called "Motown compression."

G.

 

[RAK]

Southside's idea of just copying the tracks should work just fine.
Otherwise, why not just send the tracks to an aux track and put a compressor on the aux track and then return it to a new track. That's basically what they're describing anyway.

I've done the same thing with overheads (bussing them, compressing, and then adding into the mix) and I'm in Chicago. Never even been to NYC.

 

[metalhead28]

I use Sonar, and I do this.
Just create a stereo buss and insert a send to that buss on all the drum tracks that you want to run through the compressor. I usually send everything but the overheads. No way I want any of the overheads sound getting squashed like that, but that's just me. You control how much of each drum hits the compressor by adjusting individual send levels. You also need to adjust the panning of the send for toms, etc.
Insert the compressor in that buss' effects bin and proceed to squash the crap out of it. Then you just use the fader on that bus to adjust the level of the compressed drums underneath the original drum sound.

To elaborate, I would have two busses for the core drum sound. I would have the output of all the drum tracks routed to a buss that I would just call "DRUMS", and I would also have a send from each track going to the "Drums Compressed" buss, and I would have both of the buss outputs routed to my master fader. Once I got comfortable with the level of the drums, I would bump up the volume of the "Drums Compressed" buss until it was just fattening up the drum sound a little. I might end up juggling them to get the levels right.
I approach it the same way I do reverb for drums. I also create a seperate buss for reverb and put a send on all the tracks I want to add reverb to.