compression trick i figured on drums

  • Thread starter Thread starter wannabecomedeat
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wannabecomedeat

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hey

I might be the dumbest guy not to have figured it out before, but I figured out how to get less ambience in the drum mics. I didn't wanna get rid of it, but wanted a bit less bleeding between the mics.

I took a compressor and instead of compressin with 3:1 ratio or whatever else, I set it at 0,6:1 with the treshold just higher than the ambience. This way, suppose you're working on the snare mic, just the snare hit will be expanded, so louder. You set the attack at 0,5 and a long release, like 300, so you don't loose anything in the snare. This way you can push the volume to a lower level, which will lower the bleeding volume but keep the snare as loud as it was.

You keep the ambiance, but edit the snare more precisely

I then added another compressor with a fast attack (maibe 10) and fast release (80 or something) with the treshold setted to where the snare it happens, and a big ratio like 20:1 (well known technique I think).

Then I got an exciter in the chain, messing around till I get a satisfying sound.

I did that to kick, snare and toms. worked real good and wanted to share it with people around here.
 
Uh, so you are saying to put a noise gate followed by a compressor? :eek: Who would have thought of THAT?!?!?!?!?!

Yeah, I think this might be somewhat well known. ;)

What is cool is that in the plugin world, you can have "look ahead" noise gates. TRUE look ahead where the gate actually opens right before the hit, so you don't chop off the leading edge of the drum hit.
 
Hey

The distinction is it keeps the ambiance in, but to a lower volume. I might be wrong but I think the noise gate will simply not play anything other than what passes the treshold. Am I right?
 
I use software gates for this all the time, looking ahead on the fly is a great thing and shortening the decay will close the gate before the ambience ends cutting it down as much as you want. Watch out not to close the gate too early and cut off the end of the hit. You can make a kit sound really unatural very quickly doing that as Ford Van will tell you after him listening to some of my mixes ;)

Peace
 
wannabecomedeat said:
Hey

The distinction is it keeps the ambiance in, but to a lower volume. I might be wrong but I think the noise gate will simply not play anything other than what passes the treshold. Am I right?
Click to expand...


No, the threshold is the volume at which the gate opens, you determin when it closes by time, not by volume.
 
wannabecomedeat said:
Hey

The distinction is it keeps the ambiance in, but to a lower volume. I might be wrong but I think the noise gate will simply not play anything other than what passes the treshold. Am I right?
Click to expand...

You can set noise gates so that they only lower the volume when shut by any amount you choose.

It is the same exact thing you are talking about. ;) Expander's and noise gate's are exactly the same thing.
 
In fact, one of the biggest mistakes you can make using a noise gate is trying to TOTALLY eliminate the sound under the threshold. Depending on what you are using it on, you generally only need to lower it around 18dB to be effective!

On drum tracks, it is often desirable to leave some background noise in to help "gel" the sound together a bit. Also, it makes the effect of the gate opening/closing a bit less obvious.
 
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