Parallel Drum Compression

[bluedaffy]

I usually route all my drum tracks to a drum bus and then insert a compressor, squash it down until I like the thickness it's giving me and then use the mix % knob to dial in how much dry/wet signal I want. Before inserting the compressor the drum mix sounds balanced but when I bring up the compression to my liking the cymbals are overpowering the rest of the kit, if I turn it back down I lose the thickness. Is this something that is routine with parallel compressing the drum mix?

 

[Greg_L]

Don't route the overheads to the drum bus. Me personally, I've never liked the sound of compressed overheads.

 

[guitarplayr82]

Yeah, and if there's still too much cymbals (after removing the overheads) coming from the room mics you can just use a high shelf on the paralell compression bus to tame it a bit.

 

[bluedaffy]

I didn't use room mics on any of my recordings, usually just kick snare and overheads (some songs had Tom mics too). Also, because the compressor I use has a mix % knob, I use that to dial in how much compression I want blended with the 'dry' drums, so I can't eq the compressed drums as far as I know. I assumed that using the mix knob would do the same thing as the conventional method of parallel compression (creating a send from the drum bus, compressing, and blending that back with the dry), let me know if this is sound logic (pun intended). My mixing world is upside down right now, maybe I should think my avenue for getting the thickness!

 

[sixer2007]

I didn't use room mics on any of my recordings, usually just kick snare and overheads (some songs had Tom mics too). Also, because the compressor I use has a mix % knob, I use that to dial in how much compression I want blended with the 'dry' drums, so I can't eq the compressed drums as far as I know. I assumed that using the mix knob would do the same thing as the conventional method of parallel compression (creating a send from the drum bus, compressing, and blending that back with the dry), let me know if this is sound logic (pun intended). My mixing world is upside down right now, maybe I should think my avenue for getting the thickness!

Using the mix knob does do the same thing as the double bus trick, except as you noticed, you can't EQ it. So, just set up 2 busses. One for the drums, then a second, where you only send the tracks you want the parallel processing on. Ie, the kick, snare, maybe toms, etc..

Now you can EQ that second bus to your liking, and simply bring the fader up until it feels good. It's a better approach than the mix knob because you get more control.

 

[bluedaffy]

Are there any values for eq tweakings on the compressed drums that have been known to be useful that you know of? Kind of like how it's common to hear that overhead tracks benefit from a little cutting in 300-600 area. I know whatever sounds good sounds good, but sometimes when you get into having to shape the sound (or not shaping it) it's nice to know about frequencies that have a tendency at times to be uninvited on a certain instrument or effects.

Also, I've never tried to send the same track to 2 current busses before, how would I go about doing that?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Also, I've never tried to send the same track to 2 current busses before, how would I go about doing that?

What software? The terminology and details differ but the basic idea is the same. You would assign the outputs of the channels to the first (all drums) bus and use post fader aux sends routed to the second (compression) bus. In most software you could route the compression bus to the drums bus so you can process it all as a group if desired, or route the compression bus to the main bus independently. If you're eqing on the drums bus you'll probably want to route the comp bus there as well.