How do you mix the drum bus?

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pasnu

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Do you guys compress the Drum bus? If so what are your usual settings? and what other effects do you usually put on the Drum bus?
 
pasnu said:
Do you guys compress the Drum bus
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I compress a drum bus, but I always have 2, one compressed one not. I also don't run all my drums through the compressed drum bus, it all depends on the desired sound and the type of music, for example Jazz would have no compression, metal would have lots. A mix I did on the weekend only had the overheads and hats to the compressed buss, they were also in the non-compressed bus.

pasnu said:
If so what are your usual settings?
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All depends on the player, drum sound, required drum sound etc etc, no usual settings.

pasnu said:
and what other effects do you usually put on the Drum bus?
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None, the effects are from the channel aux sends, snare, toms, etc, I do feed the effects back into the non-compressed drum bus, or sometimes the compressed drum bus.

I add compression to individual drum tacks before the bus, i.e. the snare and kick tracks. But don't overdo it unless you want a compressed sound.

You may have realised by now that there are no rules, no magic setting, you have to learn by trying things out. However I hope this helped a bit.

Alan.
 
I do ny compression all the time. On on track I leave it clean maybe some EQ and light compression then create a send to a new track and that one I crush using the black76 compressor. Then mix to taste.
 
I usually use really light compression with a analog modeled plugin. A little bit of pumping is ok as long as it kind of "breathes" in time with the song. If I need to fatten them up a bit, I'll use ny compression on the desired piece or the whole kit. Very rarely do I use EQ on the drum bus unless its a low pass around 14Khz because sometimes the overheads and room mic, together create some harsh sounds in the highs. The best advice I can offer you is don't mix drums by themselves. Mix them into the guitars, vocals, bass, keyboard, etc.
 
I usually use parallel compression on the bus. sometimes I like to really smash the copy so it sounds completely ridiculous by itself. It can add dimension and give it a cool subtly distorted sound.
 
Definitely! I even love doing that on vocals and guitars too!
 
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