Within music mixing, drum compression can be a daunting topic. We want our drums to be both punchy and 'glued'; dynamic, and yet solid. Many of these aims seem to run counter to each other. How can compression add 'punch'? The trick is to use compressors in different ways for all of these different jobs. Here are 4 tips to help you get the most out of your compressors.
Balance
Compression helps balance the levels of individual drum hits in a music production. It reduces the volume differences between each hit, giving you a more stable and reliable sound.
To achieve level balancing, you can start by adjusting the attack and release settings of your compressor. Ideally, you want an attack time that is as fast as possible so that it captures the initial transient of each hit. However, be careful not to overdo it as it can alter the drum's attack timbre. So, it's crucial to listen to the attack portion of the processed drum signal as you adjust the attack time and select a timbre that you like.
On the other hand, the release time should be as long as possible, allowing the compressor to reset its gain-reduction mostly after the sustain tail has ended. But, if you set the release time too long, it weakens the compressor's level-correction effect. So, you'll need to find a sweet spot that works for your tempo and complexity. For instance, a fast 16th-note tambourine requires a shorter release time than a slow rock ballad's back-beat snare.
In addition, you must fine-tune the ratio and threshold controls based on what you hear. The ratio determines how much the compressor will reduce the volume of the louder hits, while the threshold sets the point at which the compressor kicks in. You'll want to adjust these controls until you see some activity on the gain-reduction meter for all but the softest hits. And remember, adjusting the attack and release times may affect the amount of gain reduction, so you may need to revisit the ratio and threshold controls.
By following these tips, you can achieve a well-balanced sound in your drum mix. And, of course, don't be afraid to experiment and trust your ears!
2. A/B-ing your compressor
To make sure your compression settings are actually improving your sound and not just making it louder, it’s crucial to use your compressor’s make-up gain control to match the subjective loudness of the compressed signal with that of the bypassed signal. Your ears may be biased towards louder sounds, so it’s important to match the loudness of specific elements of the two signals, such as the softest hits in a level-balancing scenario, to accurately evaluate the processing decision. However, the nature of compressors dynamically altering the loudness of the processed signal makes this loudness-matching process a bit more complicated. Matching the loudest hits in the compressed signal against the loudest hits in the bypassed signal would likely result in most of the hits in the compressed signal sounding louder, leading to a potentially misleading evaluation. Instead, matching the softest hits of the two signals ensures that the compressed sound will generally be quieter than the unprocessed sound, preventing the loudness bias from influencing your judgement. Some plug-in compressors offer an ‘auto make-up gain’ feature that automatically loudness-matches the processed and unprocessed signals, but it may not be effective for drum processing applications. This is because the function aims to match overall loudness, rather than the loudness of specific elements of the signal like transients or sustain tails. So, manually matching the loudness of specific elements is still the most effective way to stress-test your compression settings. Keep in mind that it’s better to err on the side of under-processing than over-processing, as project-studio mixes often suffer from too much processing. 3. Rebalancing Sub-Mixes
When compressing a single-instrument recording, the task can be challenging. But it gets even tougher when dealing with audio that contains multiple instruments, like drum loops, sampled breaks, live-kit overheads, drum room mics, and rhythm-section submixes. Compression of one element in a multi-instrument drum track can be particularly difficult. For example, if you want to compress the kick in a drum loop with kick, snare, and shaker, and assuming the kick is louder than anything else, you could adjust the compressor's threshold. However, if that doesn't work, you could EQ the signal feeding the compressor's level-detection circuit. For instance, you could cut away all the high end from the side-chain signal to avoid compressing the snare and only focus on the kick. Side-chain EQ is useful and included in many compressors, and if your compressor lacks this facility, you can achieve similar results using equal and opposite EQ curves pre- and post-compression. There are limits to what side-chain EQ can handle, though. In such cases, it might be helpful to program a MIDI drum loop specifically to trigger the compressor's gain reduction reliably. When dealing with live drums, it's usually easier to adjust the faders and EQ settings of individual mic channels rather than processing the mixed drum-kit signal heavily.
4. Adding Punch
Lengthening the attack time instead of shortening the release time reduces the compressor's ability to catch drum transients. It only reduces the gain of each hit's sustain tail. You can use the Make-up Gain control to restore the sustain tails to their previous level and effectively boost the transients. The compressor's threshold and ratio determine the amount of transient increase, while the exact attack-time setting refines the sound character of the transient. However, adjusting the attack-time may also impact the amount of gain reduction, so both controls often need to be adjusted together.
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