Forums - Mixing & FX
Subject: sub grouping drum compression
Viewing all 21 messages - View by pages of 10: 1 2 3
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
Message 11/21 28-Apr-05 @ 02:23 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 12/21 28-Apr-05 @ 03:18 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
greg
Message 13/21 28-Apr-05 @ 04:10 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
and how do you mean - you get 'phasing' - how? - in what way?
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 14/21 28-Apr-05 @ 04:33 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
you know when you send a signal through an aux to en effect unit but dont send a completely wet signal back you get a kind of phasing/comb filtered sound when mixed with the original(i say phase cos i guess phases are cancelling- giving a slightly flanged/brittle sound)? well i hope so as its that sound im getting....the beat becomes thinner and certain freqs seems to be sucked up.....
sounds a bit like when you layer two sounds over each other or when you use very short delay times.....
i was thinking perhaps the dbx had some sort of circuit in there that enduces a delay causing the compressed sound to clash rather than mix with the original and that the only way to realign was to copy the dry and delay that by the same amount and then not use the original dry signal in the tune at all...BUT if the dbx is no different to any other analogue compressor in that respect i must be doing something at another stage to cause this issue- for the record it happens when i send signals via aux and dont have a 100% wet feeding back- so could be me......oh and the comps are fed lines as my subgroups have no inserts and im subbing the mixed drums and then feeding the sub via the comp back to a pair of mono channels (which are not going to the sub)
have you succcesfully done this in the hardware domain? f so what comp and what mixer were you able to achieve this with?
greg
Message 15/21 28-Apr-05 @ 06:49 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
ayup... you're getting analog phasing from somewhere.
"i was thinking perhaps the dbx had some sort of circuit in there that enduces a delay "
nope... not deliberately at least. it is however possible that compression induces a phase shift.
otr maybe like the others said, you just have a delay anyway bexcause of passing it to there and back. not sure if i ever tried combining dry and processed signal like that in analog domain so i'm not sure about that. only use inserts for compressing usually...
Message 16/21 29-Apr-05 @ 02:40 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
Message 17/21 29-Apr-05 @ 09:28 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
(got by so far) would just like to have truied it out- will wait until i upgrade my mixer to one with inserts on the subs.
cheers
greg
Message 18/21 30-Apr-05 @ 09:57 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
___________________________________
I had an idea for a script once. It's basically Jaws except when the guys in the boat are going after Jaws, they look around and there's an even bigger Jaws. The guys have to team up with Jaws to get Bigger Jaws.... I call it... Big Jaws!!!
Message 19/21 01-May-05 @ 05:41 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
The method you're using should work fairly well as long as you're returning a completely "wet" signal on return (and I don't know of many analog compressors that have a "wet:dry" knob)
Anyways, keep on experimenting with different routings.... be creative.... it should work!
Message 20/21 03-May-05 @ 11:04 AM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
psy that is a much better way of doing it, the sub way makes sense but onlyt if you have an insert on it...
cheers
greg
Message 21/21 03-May-05 @ 01:30 PM - RE: sub grouping drum compression
greg
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