Mo Facta
Farts of Nature
First off, I like the whole idea and I get what you're saying. I recently tried a "bus level only to start things off" mix, and liked the drums, but did go back and add extra compression individually.
I get the idea of mixing into a compressor in terms of the master bus because I've tried it enough times to have a feel for the best starting point. So I can just sorta set it where I think usually works, mix for a bit, then recheck it a bit later down the road.
But, for drums I'm not sure I wouldn't ruin everything
I suppose you just did it over and over until you found a good starting place?
Could you elaborate on how you might choose initial settings?
Well, of course it depends on what the material needs. Not all styles will require smashed drums, which is primarily a rock approach. I record a lot of rock so my described technique is becoming a standard practice.
In a nutshell, I will bus my individual drum tracks to sub-groups. I generally use two mics on the kick and two on the snare, so those mics will be consolidated into mono groups for kick and snare. I then group the toms, overheads and room tracks into their own stereo sub-groups. The room will often get its own compression, often in conjunction with some sort of subtle distortion using either the built in distortion plugin in Cubase combined with a UAD 1176SE or by using the SSL LMC-1 plugin. I will EQ it to taste until I get the sound I want.
Then all of those sub-groups will be routed to a master drum group where I'll apply my compression. My go-to compressors for this task varies and so the settings will vary. Here's what I use along with typical settings:
UAD 1176LN: Ratio: 4:1 to 8:1, Attack: 3 (med), Release: 7 (fast)
Yamaha/Steinberg Vintage Collection 260: Ratio: 6:1, Attack: 15 to 30ms, Release: 30 to 100ms
Variety of Sound Thrillseeker LA: All toggles on the left to the left, Attack: 15 to 30ms, Release: 30 to 50ms, Interstage: In with a bit of saturation
The ThrillseekerLA has a sidechain which I sometimes enable to let the low end through while grabbing the midrange portion of the waveform. That way the low end of the kick remains intact while the snare gets compressed more.
Also, because you're compressing the whole bus, the overheads will come up. For that reason I'll usually attenuate the overheads around 6dB or in relation to the gain reduction happening to keep them from pumping too much. If you dig into the compressor enough with the kick and snare, their transients will mask the sucking effect on the overheads. This keeps the compression smooth while still supplying a pumping effect. I will also adjust the kick and snare at the group level to push "into" the compressor to get the balance I want. I am looking for the compressor to apply its character more than anything so that is why using the emulations is the way to go.
Of course, the room tracks will be affected so you'll probably have to attenuate them as well.
Hope that clarifies.
Cheers
