I hear a lot of people say it's not the best idea to strap a compressor across the mix bus for the drums. but if you were going to do such a thing, what compressor would you use?
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Can't argue with either of Chris's suggestions [both are serious
Can't argue with either of Chris's suggestions [both are serious favorites in this application!! picking between them would be on a 'song by song' basis in my world]... but I generally do that kind of drum bus compression as a "parallel compression" event.
I take a balance of the drums, send it out on a stereo bus, compress the living snot out of that bus [usually with a medium attack and a quick to medium release to let the front of the drums explode a bit better] then add the return of that compressor back on two faders with the original [uncompressed] drums.
Sometimes I'll do kick and snare individually so as not to splatter the cymabls, or I'll do the kit minus the overheads in the 1st parallel bus and the overheads as a second and separate parrallel bus.
Best of luck with it.
I agree totally with the notion of moving the kickand snare out
I agree totally with the notion of moving the kickand snare out from the cymbals in order to compress across a bus...especially with an X/Y'd stereo overhead set-up...I usually will send these out to their own bus to play with the room mics and be able to sweeten it with whatever and still not lose the crack and crunch I want in the basic trap kit.
I put compressors across the drum bus all the time... The big
I put compressors across the drum bus all the time...
The big thing is not overcompressing the MIX bus (or really overcompressing anything at all) as it may severely limit the mastering phase.
In other words, don't compress for the sake of volume. Compress tracks (or the mix) because the mix asks for it.