Kick Drum and Snare, How much Compression?

Posted on Sep 24, 2009 11:09 pm
WhiteNite013
Member Since: Aug 29, 2009

When compressing kick and snare, to you use the same ratio for both? Or Tweak them both separately? I do different genre's... so ,hip hop, what would you do? rock? rap? classical? etc..

[ Back to Top ]

crux
Typo Szar
Member
Since: Jul 04, 2002

Sep 25, 2009 03:40 am

I use parallel compression so i buss all my drums to same fx track, so yes i dont tweak seperately its an all inclusive type thing. I think its ok if ur doing general compression like i am, just to maybe beef up or something and control some attack. but ofcourse if each drum has a vastly different need then ull have to different treatments, but again a single setup is possible.

i know alot of rock music uses parallel compression whcih would again be quite all inclusive, coz usually their just trying to bring up the meat of the drums. rap and hip hop maybe seperate since i think if ur not using digital drums the old school hip hop and rap i hear like to get a nice natural sound on the drums. classical music... the less processing the better

Noize2u
Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002

Sep 25, 2009 02:55 pm

To be very honest there is no magic setting or starting point. You can reference some things others have done with it. But each drum track is completely different from the next. And will require a little bit different bit of compression.

If you go to our tips section you will find little bits of different articles that pertain to how to use effects and so on.

Here is a quick article on compression you can start with.
www.homerecordingconnecti...ory&id=1470

Quincysan
http://www.unitedmusicians.info
Contributor
Since: Nov 11, 2007

Sep 26, 2009 09:16 pm

Quick add on question:

I'm recording drums for a local band next weekend and I want to run the kick/snare through a compressor. This joker uses an enormous kit, so I'll likely end up using all 8 inputs on my interface (which I am very excited to do).

It's my understanding that the best way to accomplish this is set up 8 mono tracks and set levels so they peak around -6ish, nothing too hot. When the 8 tracks are recorded and panned appropriately, I will "send" (via outputs 3/4, not a send like I use for reverb aux in's) the kick and snare to my dbx160a and bring the output back in on a stereo track (let's call the stereo track "Steve"). I will also bus the other mono, panned, tracks to Steve. Steve will have a send to a reverb auxiliary input.

This is my first time recording multi-tracked drums. Any other suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Noize2u
Czar of Midi
Administrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002

Sep 26, 2009 10:52 pm

IF your gonna send it out the mixer to the dbx then just go straight from the output of the dbx to the interface. No extra noise being injected into the chain that way.