Drum submix compression

[tommyd]

I'm just looking for what some of the others here put into their drum submix out to a compressor.

I'm going for as much as a Bonham sound(I know, what a shocker....I know, you need John Bonham) as I can get.

Do most of you put your drum room mics into this submix? Everything but the room mics??? Just overheads? Also, so you return it in stereo? I'm talking about parallel compression here.

I record with two overhead condensers(mixerman's setup), D112, SM57 on the snare(which never gets mixed in anyway), and two room mics.

Would love to hear others' opinions.

 

[Reggie]

I've been sending the whole mess through a G*S*S*L (like an SSL Xlogic stereo compressor) with great results. Helps me keep things in proper phase by keeping everything together (haven't moved to SX3 yet :x ) and sounds good anyway. I know a lot of people like to wacky stuff with room mikes like squash them heavily and sidechain gate them.

 

[Chappy]

Well, what works for me is to double the Aux for Drums and Bass (I don't do bass all the time, just depends)... The first Aux is usually pretty dry (maybe a little comp), and the secong aux is smacked pretty hard then i add pretty drastic EQ.... like 8-10 dB of 8K, and about the same amount in the area of 80-100 hz... i usually do shelving but roll off 30 and lower. blend to taste....

If you're going for a Bonham sound, then i might try to really smack the room mics, if you didn't mic the room, then you can 'fake' it with some verb and heavy comp. That worked really well for me recently after I did a session without room mics. I'm working in PT and with Waves Platinum, and i think ResVerb.... that allowed me to EQ pre-verb and after (btw, i didn't put the verb on a seperate aux, just plugged straight in to the drum bus)... after tweaking for a while I ended up with a pretty big smooth rock sound.... heck, even got a few compliments from it.

 

[tommyd]

Thanks guys

I did mic the room. I've tried a couple of different combinations(i.e. compressing the entire submix w/out the overheads...compressing just the overheads...etc.) There are just so many possible combinations.

My biggest problem right now is that I'm getting to much cymbals in the entire mix. I don't think the drummer is hitting them that hard, so I think I've just got to put up some more Roxul panels to tame some reflections. I'm handicapped with a small room, but I have got it sounding decent before. Just wish I could duplicate it!

Just wanting to see what kind of combinations others have used as far as what they put into their 'too be squashed' submix.