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When you're layering sounds, for example snares, do you treat each snare differently when mixing the track, or do you treat them all together? So do you EQ them etc separately, or do you just send all the snares to the same mixer channel?

it depends on the sound you want and the type of snares etc


when layering snares compression also is a big factor in its final sound

if you add a good amount of compression the snares will blend into one and have a punchy sound but will lose dynamics

try a combination of layering snares and give each snare a slight pan leaving one in the middle, and mess around with compression

hope that helps a little

Sometimes, yes..

Sometimes, no.


Like dude above me said, depends on the sounds I am layering. I tend to assign each sound/sample to a mixer channel out of habit though.

i normally eq each separately, but it depends.

to be honest i think you should be doing some research yourself by messing around, listening to other tunes and doing what you think sounds best.

five minutes spent messing in your daw is better than five minutes spent on a forum

i never use compression on snares, distortion makes it blend for me.

but yea i usally eq each snare when layering them then treat it as one snare

you could do both.
you could have each part of your snare sound on different channels, eq them seperately, change the envelopes seperately,
then subgroup them to one fader that you can add a little eq/reverb/compression to 'glue' it together.

I put all my snare in the same layer and then add some wobble to it and some envelopes so that it pans randomly throughout the beat.

i always have each layer on a separate channel, so you can tweak EQ and timing etc separately (then usually buss them together). i hardly ever compress the snare sound itself, tho i sometimes compress the reverb return if i've got reverb on it...

I almost always send my snares (usually at least 3) out to a group channel, then add fx or whatever

makes them sound less like 3 snares and more like a precision "snap" or "pop"

Always seperate.
In additional to eqing seperately I'll tend to verb only those snares which I intuitively feel will have a nice texture in the space.

eq the snares seperately, but if you want to treat the final 'snare' as one, send it to a group for further processing/control.
Applying a small ammount compression to the group would cohere the sound, but you still have flexibility of individully eqing each snare to bring out the most enjoyable/desired frequencies of each sound while getting rid of the unneeded freqs for a cleaner finish. I would suggest verb on the group in this case rather than each snare individually as the dynamics at the mains are different than on the instrument track.

Only rule I use with snares is that if I'm adding reverb I add it to all the snares on one unit (each redrum/sampler to one mixer).

Otherwise, different techniques for different tunes.