drum levels for professional mastering

J

jon_SKR

New member
Hey all,
I'm about to have a full album I recorded mastered professionally for the first time. I've heard that you should leave the drum shells a bit loud in the mix so that the mastering engineer has enough to work with. from my own amateur mastering experience it always seems to help to have a lot of drum volume. Since I usually mix through a main mix limiter and compression, I'm not sure how to anticipate what the mastering engineer will be doing to the mix later....

Should I mix through my normal main mix compression and limiter (fairly extreme reduction) then just remove them before mixing down for the mastering engineer? Or,
should I mix without any main mix compression and then just give the drum shells a little bump after I've got it sounding good in anticipation of the mastering engineer's compression?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
thanks!
 
I'm not sure if that's the proper way to approach it. If the ME has to compress loud drums, it'll compress the whole song, and you'll have a pumping sound going. Which may be what you want.

With that being said, I found with my monitors that while I'm in the mixing process, the drums do stand out more. So I'll mix drums kind of hot, so once I'm done with two-buss compression and listen on my other average playback devices, the drums sound normal. If I mix the drums on my monitors like I'd typically hear drums, they're going to be buried in the end.
 
I think it should be a lot simpler than you've described.
Mix it so it sounds good, and don't use any master limiting or compression.

I mean, the latter isn't a hard and fast rule, but why limit the dynamic range and leave the ME less to work with?
 
Seafroggys said:
I'm not sure if that's the proper way to approach it. If the ME has to compress loud drums, it'll compress the whole song, and you'll have a pumping sound going. Which may be what you want.

With that being said, I found with my monitors that while I'm in the mixing process, the drums do stand out more. So I'll mix drums kind of hot, so once I'm done with two-buss compression and listen on my other average playback devices, the drums sound normal. If I mix the drums on my monitors like I'd typically hear drums, they're going to be buried in the end.
Click to expand...

right on, I personally like the pumping sound but I don't think it would fit the album in question... So it sounds like I should keep the drums where they sound good in the uncompressed mix, which is usually good and loud anyways since I'm a drummer.. thanks for the reply!
 
Steenamaroo said:
I think it should be a lot simpler than you've described.
Mix it so it sounds good, and don't use any master limiting or compression.

I mean, the latter isn't a hard and fast rule, but why limit the dynamic range and leave the ME less to work with?
Click to expand...

I never planned on leaving the master compression on for the ME, just using it as a tool to judge what the compressed mix may sound like.
I will most certainly follow your advice!
Thanks for the reply!
 
jon_SKR said:
I never planned on leaving the master compression on for the ME, just using it as a tool to judge what the compressed mix may sound like.
I will most certainly follow your advice!
Thanks for the reply!
Click to expand...
You can certainly test your mix through your own compression/limiter to get a ballpark idea as to how mastering compression will affect the drums. Then send the guy the tracks however he wants them.
 
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