Getting fat drums without eating your headroom!

[Benji]

If you highpass the basses when the kicks and snares hit you get the nice clean thump without having to fight the bass with sidechain compression. I really struggle to get the drums to sound clear enough in the mix when I sidechain and doing this was a game changer in my mixdowns. Manually putting in all the automations is a little tedious but it might help you out.

[smalltock]

^ Careful with that, though. Sometimes, when you highpass percussive sounds, namely snares, the result will needlessly eat much more headroom than the sound you started with. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but it's obnoxious. I can usually get around it with linear phase filtration/equilization.

[wub]

Sidechain the EQ on the other elements so they duck a specific frequency range to allow the drums to come through when they hit.

[ChadDub]

Sidechain the EQ on the other elements so they duck a specific frequency range to allow the drums to come through when they hit.

That's what I'm sayin.

[m8son666]

what do you suggest then genius

I don't suggest a single 'trick' because I know there's hundreds of other things that
affect this and it's depending on the mix in question. You learn about all these things in an audio engineering course for example.

I'm no genius, but that's very flattering

Yeah so I disagree, I'd say it is a mix down question.

Yeah it is a mixdown question, all the things you sarcastically suggested could help a mix. I don't see what your saying about learning these things in an audio engineering course surely the techniques learnt would still depend heavily on the mix in question.

Noone's saying there's a single 'trick' the guy is just asking for tips.

[AxeD]

It just seems stupid to me that people ask about getting better mixes and it's always the same
people who suggest some 'tip', that they just read in another thread.
All the basic sound theory and balancing is skipped and people think a new multi-band compressor
is going to fix their lacking mixes.

I'm not saying asking for advice and trying to help someone are bad things. It's just that I think you can't give advice on a mix that you never heard.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack OP's thread for this never-ending discussion.
Could you upload the mix so we can have a listen?

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

Its about compression and layering. and not over eqing. on drums make sure your attack is set quite high (25-35) ms on average to allow the transients through and stop the drums from sounding all flabby. another way to thicken up stuff it parallel compression. running a heavily compressed version on one bus and a non compressed version on another and mixing a bit of the heavily compressed one on top. also parralell distortion can help in some circumstances which is the same. just a bus with distortion on turned up a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_compression

[Hashkey]

Loud And Punchy Drums Are achieved using The correct attack and release times on parallel compression comp.
Plus Be careful equing with very severe slopes on HPF.
It Can cause your sound to be very very thin.

This are my 2 cent.

[rareclub]

Fabfilter Pro-L

http://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-l ... er-plug-in

Get that, put it on your drum bus. Start squashing.

In fact, put it on every channel in your mix. Or any mediocre limiter that isn't your DAW's stock limiter. This will allow you to get the levels of everything higher without triggering your master limiter as much.

Choosing fat drum samples from the get go is also a huge part of the equation.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

So your saying limit every channel. Thats so stupid. Srsly only limit stuff that needs it, infact i never limit anything, just some compression on certain parts. then light bus compression on for example all my mid ranges. or my percussion bus or something just to gel them together.

[Hashkey]

So your saying limit every channel. Thats so stupid. Srsly only limit stuff that needs it, infact i never limit anything, just some compression on certain parts. then light bus compression on for example all my mid ranges. or my percussion bus or something just to gel them together.

^ Exactly! Putting a limiter on every Bus it's just plain Stupid.
The bass will trigger the compressor ruining your high end. This is a really bad advice.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

well i just though limiting every channels going to remove most of the dynamics which will sound shit. flat and bland sounding music imo

[Hashkey]

^Agreed 100%
I was referring to limiting my bad not compressing

[rareclub]

Interesting theories guys; those things have never been an issues for us

[travis_baker]

make sure the elements you want to stand out have there own space... that's it. no compression nor side chain.

[Samuel_L_Damnson]

yeeeeeeex. you dont need to compress everything to make it sound goooood. Its mostly to do with making sure you pick the right smaples and eq things (if they need) so that they have thier own space.
I usually only do very light compression if i do any at all.

[Milaflore]

The source sample is definitely the most important thing, the less processing you have to do the better.
there are always multiple ways to get fat drums, compression, transient shaping, saturation/distortion, eq, parallel compression and also the actual volume in relation to the other elements of the track. these are my bus plugin chains, pretty simple really.

Snare bus: EQ, Bitcrusher, compressor, transient shaper (used to add attack and also limit the vol)
Kick bus: EQ, Compressor, Transient Shaper (Same as snare)

I do effect the kicks and snares individually but this usually just eq, very subtle saturation and transient shaping.

I always route my snare, kick and hi hats to a separate bus where I parallel compress them. Parallel compression is really awesome when done right, it adds that little extra punch which can really make a difference.

Hope this helps mate.

[press]

^ Careful with that, though. Sometimes, when you highpass percussive sounds, namely snares, the result will needlessly eat much more headroom than the sound you started with. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but it's obnoxious. I can usually get around it with linear phase filtration/equilization.

Are you talking about and using the Logic EQ? Unless you have a high q or res on your eq/filter, cutting sounds should not eat more headroom.

[rareclub]

It's due to phase shift. Throw a 24 or 48dB/oct highpass (eq or filter, doesn't matter) with neutral resonance on a kick or a snare, or any really loud thing, and you'll see.

[press]

fair enough, for anyone interested (logic users) you may want to know about this, it has been covered here before so maybe not breaking news or anything but....

http://darkartmasters.tumblr.com/post/4 ... gainst-you