Original Message 1/2                 Date: 23-Oct-99  @  12:00 AM   -   Compression question

beller

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I want some punchy drums. Should I compress my drum track before the mixdown, OR, should I run the finished stereo mix thru the compressor? I like the really hot mixes my rock'n'roll friends make me mix for them...figure it'd work on my stuff too. But like, if I limit just the drum track to 0db, is that too loud? It's a hard question to explain...Just answer me this- when you guys compress your drums, do you try to push them as hot as possible? Or do you leave a little headroom for the rest of the mix?
Thanks,
Mr.Wet
PS- I must be totally deaf but I can't hear any difference when I fiddle around w/ Sonic Foundry's 4-band dynamics...I mean I can get compression but messing with the bands doesn't seem to do much to the overall sound.

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Message 2/2                 Date: 23-Oct-99  @  07:37 PM   -   RE: Compression question

k

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well how hard you drive it depends on what style and whether it's analog tape or not... with tape, drive it to fuck and ALWAYS listen to the off-tape return, ferget what the meters say in that case, use your ears, cos tape saturation/overload sound great for rockdrums...

with digital this aint possible - you cannot clip the signal, so leave lotsa headroom..... you can add punch to drums by setting a medium comp-ration to begin, a slow attack to allow the intitial transient to bust thru, then a fast decay to shut down the rest of the drum hit decay so it doesnt overload,,,, this add's alot of punch, then mess witth the ratio etc to taste.... if you ahve a choice like with an alesis 3060, don't use soft-knee or RMS for that... use peak if you can although it'll still work with the other types even soft-kneee to an extent... as with digital youve got to allow lotsa headroom i'd add comp' after recording to leave your options open, unless it's live drums played, in which case use compression when you record as normal as well as gates... in the FX-RACK section ther is some basic starter compression ratio's you can try for different types of sounds....

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