Compressing the Snare
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Posted on Feb 05, 2004 02:12 am
St. Dave
Member Since: Dec 23, 2002
Hello, all; I have once again found the need to call upon you to help solve my mixing dilemmas. This one should probably be easy:
A year ago I recorded a friend's band in my garage. I'm re-mixing the stuff now because the band (which is now defunct) wants to release it. Anyway, my problem is with the drums, and the snare drum specifically. I used three mics: kick, snare, and overhead. Their drummer is really weird, and the tracks suffer because of how he hits the snare drum: basically, there is a huge difference in dynamics. Sometimes, the snare is barely perceptible in the mixed drums. Other times, it's overwhelming. I should use a compressor to even out the levels a bit, but what settings would you suggest?
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Feb 05, 2004 02:45 pm Well, first of all I'd suggest he practice hitting the snare drum hard every time :) I've been learning to be consistant while recording, and it makes all the difference (Don't hit the cymbals so hard, hit everything else really hard, play straightforward). Compression can help, but the hits will most likely still sound different from each other. For snare drum compression I recommend a high ratio from 4:1 - 8:1. set the attack to about 7 ms --You want to keep the initail crack in there. Set the release a little longer so that it compresses the rest of the hit and then lets go before the next one comes along. Set the threshold to your liking-- just experiment a bit. Hope that helps.
drayburnEmerson's Transparent EyeballMember
Since: Jan 19, 2004
Feb 05, 2004 03:52 pm Did you use any compression when you recorded the drums? Sometimes if the signal is really compressed to disk certain things will squash out or jump depending on which mikes are picking up what- i guess what i mean is, is the problem strictly in the snare mic, or is it in the overheads too? I've run across this before.
juesContributor
Since: Dec 30, 2002
Feb 05, 2004 04:13 pm yea, the snares defficiancies are gonna be picked up in the over head mics as well - hate to say this, but there's no "quick fix" to this one :(
Feb 06, 2004 01:43 pm I went through the songs (it was really bad on only two of them) and pretty much brought the levels up manually in the waveform. The snare's still quieter on some parts, but it's not so noticeable that you think, "Hey, where's the snare?"
