Bus compression versus track compression

Y

Yareek

New member
Alright, either I'm a really good drummer or I have no clue what I'm doing.

I find that on my latest project, at least on the drums, I don't like compression on any of the tracks. And it's pretty edgy/aggressive rock stuff. I find the best results are from EQ'ing the tracks so they fit together, and then slapping a color comp like a Vintage Warmer on the drum bus to add a little grit and edge.

And I'm doing similar things with guitars except with a smoother comp. And for background vocals (although I do put about a 2:1 lower threshold comp on the vocal tracks to smooth out the levels because I'm too lazy to edit 50 tracks of them).

Is that a common way to mix? I guess it doesn't matter as I'm happy with the result. At the end of the mix, it needs less compression/limiting and it sounds a lot louder. I'm probably knocking off maybe a couple dB's on the instruments...it just seems weird.
 
That is about what I end up doing too. Sometimes I compress the snare and kick, not to keep the dynamics in line, but for the sound of the compression.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Just curious: 50 vocal tracks?

G.
Click to expand...

Over four songs. The kids started out singing, then I would comp together vocal tracks, then they would lay down a few harmony vocals, then we did some group shouting stuff, then there was screaming...it's a mess. It took me probably 8 hours to comp together all the vocals.

I'd say your average song has 8 vocal tracks. And with it being a demo disc, I didn't want to screw around too much.

But yeah, the Vintage Warmer on the drum bus is kind of slick once I started figuring it out. I just want a little bit of glue, I don't want to kill the dynamics at all (I guess as a drummer I'm pretty consistent), and the multiband mode lets the kick drum through more than any other comp.

I'm hoping to have something to post tomorrow so I can get some feedback; it's just weird that I don't have to compress like usual. Maybe I'm actually learning something :D
 
you are probably just a consistent drummer. Stranger things have happened.
 
Personally for drum busses, I like using a pultec with an 8k or 19k boost followed by an La2a in comp mode (assuming you have a UAD card).
 
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