Affordable Drum Compressor

[RecordingMaster]

Hello there,
I am looking for an affordable compressor solution for when I record my drums. I am recording mostly rock type stuff but it varies. I use a Behringer mixer with an AUX 1 and AUX 2 available as well as individual AUX adjustment knobs for each channel. I use a Shure SM57 on snare and CAD brand mics on everything else. I mic each drum separately and I have two overheads.

All mics go into the Behringer which goes into my PC's Music In Jack. I use Cool Edit 2.0 (retro I know) but it works well for what I need plus uses a lot less overhead in the program.

I can get a pretty decent, balzy, and clean sound out of my home recordings, however the only things besides vocals that have proved (for my recordings) to need a compressor are the kick and snare. I want something that won't squash the sound and ruin the overall drum track's charm, that's affordable and easy-to-use.

Is there such a thing out there? Please give me your suggestions and a ball park cost if you know it off hand.

Thanks for any help!
Cheers.
J

 

[mixsit]

(That's) mono pair- peak limiter + compressor. 'Emphasis on style/color, control, or both?

 

[darrin_h2000]

Alot of us like that FMR RNC...and I know you can do alot worse...if you want affordable used is the way to go...Ive got 4 channels of dbx160 because a hifi guy on craigslist didnt know what he had...costed me $100...I recently bought an old fostex 3070 for $50...I think it is better to concentrate not on what home recording marketed gear you can afford new...but to get what pro studios have used...and in this economy it is a buyers market.

 

[Bobby Darko]

Really Nice Compressor!

 

[dintymoore]

The Alesis 3630 is a good bang for the buck unit. I read that the VCA's are DBX. Those sell for cheap.

Since compression is a "minus" thing instead of adding, it has always been easier to find not bad cheap compressors that go to 20KHz than say delay or reverb units.

I had 3 3630's and now I'm down to one. I still have a pair of old Boss RCL-10 compressors that were cheap and sound good, and a pair of Summit TLA-100A's I paid $2600 for. The tube compressors and the solid state ones are two different animals.

The compressors that come with Cubase are incredibly good and useful.

 

[witzendoz]

The 3630 is good bang for the buck, some on this forum don't like them, I own 3. Also Behringer composer I own 2 of these, also some on the forum don't like Behringer, but I have had good service from both.

However if you have the bucks buy a FMR RNC compressor, I have 2 and they are great. I just did a demo for a cover band "the Nasty Dogz" and I used an RNC on the Drum bus for the first time (I was impressed), I also used a 3630 on the kick (in manual mode not soft) and a composer (manual mode) on the snare, both before the drum bus. This was mixed very quick as it was a demo, less than 1 hour per song and the 5 songs were done in a 10 hour day, all the songs on the myspace site but "some light" which I did not do.

To get the drums to crank and not sound too compressed I had 2 drum buses set up one with the RNC and one with no compression. I mixed the 2 to get the overall sound. This called parallel compression, look it up, I also use this on vocals.

Cheers

Alan.