Adding compression/limiter to your drum tracks

[Rickson Gracie]

i read in the "recording engineers handbook" that some well known engineers add heavy limiter to their drum and bass tracks until they sound like theyre "breathing" and that this effect is very desireable.

is this done on each seperate track (eg..overheads, snare, kick, toms...etc) or is everything bused down to 2 tracks and compressed there?


thanks

 

[distortedrumble]

i think its seperate tracks but it would drive me crazy taking that kind of time using software compressors

 

[Chibi Nappa]

I usuallly do both (rock n' roll we're talking here).

medium (but audible) compression on each individual drum track. Different settings for each track. No compression on overheads.

heavy (squashed to death) compression of an aux bus containing all drums (but again no overheads)

Don't over-do it when you add the aux bus into the mix.

 

[xstatic]

I use very little if any compression on my individual drum tracks for rock. If you want that really squashed pumping sound, that is usually done either on just the overheads and room mic, or on the whole drum buss. You have to be carefull with buss compression. Often times your kick drum will be the only channel triggering the compression, but on a buss, when it deos trigger, it will compress everything.

 

[northsiderap]

Drum Compression...

I've gotten good results compressing all of the drum tracks....

The snare & Bass I compress a little for a touch of added sustain (longer release/depends on tempo) Usually it works out so there's just enough compression to sorta level out any majorly wild volume changes. Maybe 6-12 db threshold below average peak and possibly up to 2/1 ratio. No drummer is perfect. Especially me.

On the overheads, once again I *MIGHT* compress just a little. Just enough to remove any major unwanted volume changes if any.

I have found that compressing the tracks really brightens up the 'ess'ing in the cymbals, so I either try to multi-band compress the cymbals back down, de-ess, or EQ the cymbals back down. Usually between 5-10k depending on the cymbal/mic location.

For some reason, compression sounds better to me mixed back through an aux too...

Better to play & mic the drums the way you want them to sound first! This is ideal, but no drummer is perfect. Especially me.

A lot of people spend $$$$$ on mics, pre's, and compression for their sound. I am one of those people. Then I found that half or more of my sound was where I was putting the mics and what my drum room sounded like. Imagine my horror in buying my high dollar mics and getting almost the same sound out of them. Hmmm time to mess with the room & placement.

Every recording is different... Get us a link of your stuff for further discussion...

You can hear a clip of my drum room on another thread, 'HI-hat bleed thru the snare mic AAAARGH'