Forums - Mixing & FX
Subject: sub grouping drum compression
Original Message 1/21 21-Jan-05 @ 12:27 PM - sub grouping drum compression
Message 2/21 21-Jan-05 @ 02:34 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
Message 3/21 21-Jan-05 @ 03:51 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
Message 4/21 21-Jan-05 @ 04:14 PM Edit: 21-Jan-05 | 04:15 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
For dance music, often times the kick will be too prominent to send to the drum compressor full on at the level you want to hear it in the track. With all the low-end EQ gain you're probably doing, it will rob headroom and suck the life out of the rest of the drums. When this happens, I use an aux send or cloned track to send to the compressor with the rest of the drums. The main kick, which has its own compression (maybe compressed together with the bass), goes to the main buss. That way, you still get the "suck" when the kick hits, but you can control how much with the "ghost kick" clone track/aux send thingy. Just be VEEEERY careful of phase alignment when you do this. Plugin delay compensation can't always keep up with these kinda of routings. Again... use yer ears!
Message 5/21 21-Jan-05 @ 04:37 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
Message 6/21 22-Jan-05 @ 08:25 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
The main thing to ask yourself when faced with the "should I compress?" question is "will it make it sound better?"
The way I see it, compression falls into three main categories:
Transient manipulation: This is when the attack and release settings are used to drastically alter the waveform of the incoming material. Mostly used with drums and bass with slow attack and fast release to make them "punchy" or "pumpy"
Leveling: This is using a compressor as you would your hand on a fader, riding the material so that the quiet parts aren't quite so quiet and the loud parts aren't so loud... reducing the dynamics (which a compressor always does, but in this case, you're trying to do it unnoticeably, with little distortion to the original waveform shape) slow attack and release, gentle ratios, soft knees, and make up gain are the key ingredients to this function.
Gain: This is what your mastering limiters (read: fast compressors) are trying to achieve. High threshold and fast attack/release times catch just the most transient of material, allowing you to brickwall headroom-robbing peaks and bring up the entire program to make the apparent level louder without clipping. This is usually only done in mastering, though it can be nice for certain elements in mixtime.
As you learn and experiment more with compression, keep these three main ideas in mind, and they will help you decide if compression is really required for any particular situation.
"Do I need to change the 'punchiness' of this sound?
"Do I need to smooth the dynamics of this track?"
"Is my track loud enough?"
something to keep in mind when asking "does this compressor improve the sound?" is the fact that louder almost always sounds better. Almost all compression, when makeup gain is applied, increases the apparent volume of your material. You need to A/B with an apparent-level-matched version of the uncompressed signal to truly determine if you're making it sound better through compression, or just louder.
Often times, it simply sounds better uncompressed, so why do it?
Message 7/21 23-Jan-05 @ 02:31 AM Edit: 23-Jan-05 | 02:37 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
to take of that crap crack ofg a fresh open off beat hat your gonna want the gnarliest compressor u can find and haev fastest attack possible with long release and take the snap out it, using it almost as a n eq to take the bite away. You may haev to try a few diff compressors till u find a good aggressive fast one (there is one that everyone and there dog uses ) Sure it may sound rocking un-comped in your home studio but try it across a huge sound system in a heaving club and youll haev people covering there ears in pain, same goes with crashes - even more so now with cds getting spun, whereas vinyl kinda softens it up a bit and makes it more bareable and lets u away with it a bit- cds/digital is a definate no no.
Do what u like with the other stuff, groupwise, but try usinga diff setting for the crashes, and open hats
hope this helps!
Blu
Message 8/21 27-Apr-05 @ 02:56 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
how i can get round or calculate the delay i get when comping a subgroup so when i mix the supercompressed version back in they are not phasing?
i could take a copy of the original beat, delay it and then use that to mix in but dont know how i could calculate the amount of offset i need....i know i know- i should get a pc, get logic and use that but i dont have the cash...
greg
Message 9/21 27-Apr-05 @ 05:43 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
if its from a h/w unit, i think you cant know the delay w/out recording both versions in parallel and comparing them.
Message 10/21 28-Apr-05 @ 09:27 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
so with a pure analogue compressors there is no delay?
greg
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