Drum mixing / "premastering" question

[cap'n hopeless]

Howdy all. Been trying basic recordings for a while now and scouring the internet for tips, but this is bugging me:

When I'm mixing, and I feel as though I've reached a good balance, invariably my drum peaks look huge on the waveform, and my other instruments are pretty quiet in terms of dynamic range. SO: when I try to boost the track during "mastering", the drums disappear because they can't get any louder, whereas the levels of the other instruments come right up.

How does one record or mix drums so that they don't disappear when you "master" the track?

If I were to send my stuff to a professional masterer, would they be able to work with my "nice balance" or would the drums still disappear?

I've noticed that many (in fact most) commercial pop tracks are absolutely squashed against the limiter, the result being that they have about half-a-db of dynamic range... not that I want this type of result, but I do want to be able to boost it up some. You can still always hear the drums nicely on these recordings

Andrew

 

[Chibi Nappa]

H
When I'm mixing, and I feel as though I've reached a good balance, invariably my drum peaks look huge on the waveform,

They are supposed to. Drums are loud.

SO: when I try to boost the track during "mastering", the drums disappear because they can't get any louder, whereas the levels of the other instruments come right up.

The solution is easy. Don't boost the level in mastering. What is your goal in boosting anyway? Are you trying to do anything that a listener can't do with a volume knob? If not, why are you doing anything?

How does one record or mix drums so that they don't disappear when you "master" the track?

The better the recording (and to a smaller extent, the mix), the better the drum hits will hold up to volume boosting damage. A better recording captures a nice fat drum body sound that lives along side the sharp transient. That nice fat body sound does not poke way up above the wave form. You get it by listening carefully to overhead and room mic placement and keeping a careful eye on your phase relationships.

But more than that you have to take arrangement, tone, and really everything into account. You want to record guitars that have a tone such that you can push them higher in the mix without swallowing the vocal and the drum tone, for example. It's like the most complicated jigsaw puzzle in the world.

If I were to send my stuff to a professional masterer, would they be able to work with my "nice balance" or would the drums still disappear?

Depends on how loud you told them to make it. If you kept saying "louder, louder"...yeah. They would disappear. It all depends on how good the initial recording is.

I've noticed that many (in fact most) commercial pop tracks are absolutely squashed against the limiter, the result being that they have about half-a-db of dynamic range...

Yeah. That totally sucks.

not that I want this type of result,

I don't see why anybody would.

but I do want to be able to boost it up some.

Why? Again, what is the goal and why can't it be done with the end listener's volume knob?

 

[cap'n hopeless]

Thanks for the tip about drum waveforms.

I suppose I'm wary of having it play on a radio station, and having the station's compression turn my lovely song into what sounds like a tremolo as it clamps the big drum peaks Maybe this is not a real issue?

Andrew

 

[mixsit]

..I've noticed that many (in fact most) commercial pop tracks are absolutely squashed against the limiter, the result being that they have about half-a-db of dynamic range... not that I want this type of result, but I do want to be able to boost it up some. You can still always hear the drums nicely on these recordings

Andrew

Short answer(s)- and those drums will never have the sound of un-neutered transient (get to liking this other sound or don’t clip them off, or somewhere in between), and try mixing with the clipper’ (or whatever) on and sculpt’ the mix around them in ways to make them stand out.
Don’t claim to be a loud king’ here (hate the overdone end of it actually), but I find some amount of drum bus limiting goes a long way towards ‘loud enough w/o being damaging/being missed, and can add a nice amount of density to boot without necessarily crossing into crap mode.

 

[TexRoadkill]

The right limiter and/or settings will be able to give you more loudness with less harm to the overall mix. That is why a good mastering engineer is worth the money. Play with the attack and release times to try and find the sweet spot for getting more volume without killing the drums.

You can try using some limiting on the overall drum buss. That way you can get them to sit in the mix right without being quite as dynamic. It's also a fairly common practice to mix with the drums a bit hotter then you want them in the final master because you know they will eventually get squashed a bit.

 

[Chibi Nappa]

It's also a fairly common practice to mix with the drums a bit hotter then you want them in the final master because you know they will eventually get squashed a bit.

Yes, people do this. But more than a few warning alarms should be going off if you are intentionally mixing not to sound your best, but to anticipate massive damage in the mastering stage.

Don't do it. Instead, tell the mastering engineer that you will force his balls to fit into a 10 db dynamic range if he forces your music to fit into a 10 db dynamic range. The mastering engineer then reserves the right to throw you out of his building when you come back and tell him the end product is not loud enough.

 

[grimtraveller]

Don't do it. Instead, tell the mastering engineer that you will force his balls to fit into a 10 db dynamic range if he forces your music to fit into a 10 db dynamic range.

Won't his screams go well over that range ?

 

[Chibi Nappa]

No, I don't think the screaming would have much of a dynamic range. It would just stay consistantly loud. It would be grating barrage of shrill sound that wouldn't let up. Anybody who could hear the poor guy wailing would have to leave the room to rest their ears. Where have I heard that sound before?...