A tip for processing real snare drums

[demirichris]

Usually I am the dude on here looking for tips and asking questions, but I think I may have found an interesting way to process real snare drums that I haven't seen on here yet.

Take this just as advice or something to try if you have the same problem as I was, as I am by no means a pro...but anyhow on to the point:

Have you ever been processing a real snare drum track, getting your eq and compression just right so that every thing sounds choice - except for every once and awhile there is an awful "spitting" type sound on the hardest hits of the drum? Well, I was reading up on the emperical labs distressor that everyone loves on drums and noticed that it processes with a desser after compression to help with this problem. I can't afford one of those at the moment...so I used my normal eq and compession chain on my snare drum track and then threw a desser plugin after that set with a threshold low enough to just get those really annoying spitting sounds from the hardest hits. Instantly I noticed a huge difference in the smoothness and evenness of my snare sound. After the desser, you can eq and compress again if you would like.

Anyone else ever do this?

 

[MetalSound]

i sometimes use a deesser on bass drums and cymbals.
not a revolutionary new trick i guess....

 

[Charles J]

Usually I am the dude on here looking for tips and asking questions, but I think I may have found an interesting way to process real snare drums that I haven't seen on here yet.

Take this just as advice or something to try if you have the same problem as I was, as I am by no means a pro...but anyhow on to the point:

Have you ever been processing a real snare drum track, getting your eq and compression just right so that every thing sounds choice - except for every once and awhile there is an awful "spitting" type sound on the hardest hits of the drum? Well, I was reading up on the emperical labs distressor that everyone loves on drums and noticed that it processes with a desser after compression to help with this problem. I can't afford one of those at the moment...so I used my normal eq and compession chain on my snare drum track and then threw a desser plugin after that set with a threshold low enough to just get those really annoying spitting sounds from the hardest hits. Instantly I noticed a huge difference in the smoothness and evenness of my snare sound. After the desser, you can eq and compress again if you would like.

Anyone else ever do this?

Cheers for the tip, bro! Never thought of that... I'm not a huge user of de-essers... can't find one that i like that works without noticeable 'effect'.

Anyone care to share what they think the best de-esser is?

I've used R-Desser on OH's before and such, but that's about it...

 

[chrisrivalry]

around what Q did you set the de-esser to?

 

[demirichris]

I imagine it would be pretty different depending on what kind/size snare. Just solo out the desser and find that spot that sounds bad, should be pretty obvious, at least it was in my case.

 

[waltz mastering]

Cheers for the tip, bro! Never thought of that... I'm not a huge user of de-essers... can't find one that i like that works without noticeable 'effect'.

Anyone care to share what they think the best de-esser is?

Spitfish is pretty decent and free:
http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=5

 

[BLUElightCory]

Usually I am the dude on here looking for tips and asking questions, but I think I may have found an interesting way to process real snare drums that I haven't seen on here yet.

Take this just as advice or something to try if you have the same problem as I was, as I am by no means a pro...but anyhow on to the point:

Have you ever been processing a real snare drum track, getting your eq and compression just right so that every thing sounds choice - except for every once and awhile there is an awful "spitting" type sound on the hardest hits of the drum? Well, I was reading up on the emperical labs distressor that everyone loves on drums and noticed that it processes with a desser after compression to help with this problem. I can't afford one of those at the moment...so I used my normal eq and compession chain on my snare drum track and then threw a desser plugin after that set with a threshold low enough to just get those really annoying spitting sounds from the hardest hits. Instantly I noticed a huge difference in the smoothness and evenness of my snare sound. After the desser, you can eq and compress again if you would like.

Anyone else ever do this?

Just FYI, the Distressor does not have any de-essing going on in its signal processing.

It does have filtered detection modes (similar to what you might see on some de-essers) but as far as I know there isn't any frequency-specific compression going on - the entire full-bandwidth signal is attenuated (as opposed to only mid/high frequencies being attenuated as on a de-esser).

But if what you're doing sounds good, definitely keep doing it!

 

[demirichris]

Yeah, I figured it wasn't quite deessing that the disstressor was doing, although I have seen it described as such. I am using a quite a wide band on my deesser so it's not super frequency specific. Any how it has helped quite a bit with that annoying spit sound I was getting.

 

[Ermz]

I find that spitting sound is more likely to happen with ITB compression, where the attacks are left more pure and harsh. The reason it doesn't happen with the Distressor I imagine is because it owns every compression plug-in by being a great design, as well as a hardware unit.

I normally use limiting to attenuate those sounds after the drum compressor, mostly because the reason it seems to happen is that really strong attacks are getting through un-rounded, untouched (on slow attack settings). Either this, de-essing, or multi-band comp should serve a similar purpose I guess.

Anyway thanks for the tip.

@CJ: I use the RDesser these days on everything from guitars to vox. Haven't really found anything that's impressed me enough to move on.

 

[soundsunderground]

while on the topic of snare drums and distressor...

The distressor is capable of doing some really cool clipping, similar to a digital clipper, but much more pleasant on the ears IMO. This is something very few analog boxes can do.