Affordable Drum Compressor

  • Thread starter Thread starter RecordingMaster
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RecordingMaster

RecordingMaster

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