"NY Compression"

Todzilla

Todzilla

New member
Been fiddling around with this technique in which you compress the living hell out of drum bus, record that to a stereo track, then blend the uber compression in with the regular uncompressed drums.

Gives a good punch and sounds great, but one finding:

I find that I have to exempt overheads and room mics from the uber compression. Why? because it boosts the hell out of the hi-hats. The drumming performance in question is a great drummer quite skilled in hitting the drums hard and cymbals gently. The uncompressed drums are very drum heavy, with just a little hi-hat. But the uber-compression brings out the grit and grain of the hi-hats like nobody's business. Once I exempt the OHs and room mics, the resulting NY Compression works great.

Is this normal?
 
Ive toyed with parallel compression but havent found a use for it yet...maybe its just the stuff I record...i dont use OH or room mics so dunno ;)
 
Chibi Nappa said:
As far as I know, the "standard" way to mix NY drums omits the overheads and rooms from the compressed buss.
Click to expand...

Well, that's validating!

Thanks!

I do like the super-crushed drums on some stuff, like Los Lobos's Collossal Head, which is compressed beyond all legal limits.
 
I've been trying this which is similar but different :p:

Use a send to send some of the snare kick and maybe toms to a bus compressor (I've been using the SSL G Bus Comp)
Set the comp to slowest attack fast release. set a mid range ratio and a fairly low threshold
blend the return from the bus comp into the drum bus

The effect is that the initial transient of the drum hits isn't grabbed by the compressor so as you blend the return back into the drum bus it really can give a hell of a lot of punch to those drums.
It's very easy to over do but I like how it works

I also tried a really fast attack to kill the transient and in this way you can make really ambient sounding drums because you can emphasize the sustain, can work really well if you want really boomy, ambient toms
 
Mild thread jacking

So fearful of being labeled a thread jacker
I use NY (or Parallel) compression, not on drums, but on my piano tones.
I really love it for the potential it has to keep a nice dynamic range in my music, while at the same giving my quieter sections a much needed (but mild) boost in volume.

the way I set it up is sending my clean (read un-effected) piano tone to a bus
and on that bus set an EQ into a compressor.
The EQ is there to manage any issues I may have with bass being over represented when it comes time for the compression, the compressor I set to a very fast (less than 5ms) attack, quite high (10-1) ratio and boost my gain normally about 10db. threshold varies quite a bit from song to song and the gain does get tinkered with as well.

As far as mixing the bus into the "clean" signal, I find one of the louder parts of a given song, and then bring up my Send volume from the clean to bus tracks until i can just barely hear the compressed signal coming in.

The overall result is to have a nice even volume coming into quieter bits but you still get the natural attack and decay of the piano in the louder parts...
Also makes my life much easier when it comes to mixing my vocals in as I don't have to be riding the volume slider quite so vigorously in the automation phase.

P.s It also means you get to keep that phenomena most despised in modern recordings (for the most part anyway)
DYNAMIC RANGE :O
 
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