Another Superior 2.0 test

I used a Waves L2. People complain about this limiter chopping off snare peaks. The trick is tailoring the signal that you feed to the limiter. I always limit my drum sub mix so the snare and kick peaks are not slamming the master limiter. Get the drums loud in the sub mix first with a clipper or limiter, and then feed that into the L2 and you'll find that the snare stays 100% intact. The highest gain reduction I'll get is -4dbs only on the strongest peaks.


I tried to do what you describe but it made no difference, still can't raise the snare's volume enough without it being squashed. Just to make sure... what you say is to send all drums to a group channel and use a limiter on it and then use a limiter separately on the whole mix including the "limited" grouped drums....right?
Is there maybe anywhere a more detailed tutorial that describes how to do this thing?
 
That's right, but I also clip the snare on its own track too. I know that its probably not the correct way of doing things, but I like how I get the snare to really crack using this method. On this song, I EQed, compressed for attack and clipped the snare top mic and fed it into the drum group. From there my first plugin is GClip that only clips of the snare transients. The kick is low enough that it doesn't get touched. That goes into a compressor with a 4:1 ratio, 10ms attack and auto release with 3dbs of attenuation. Lastly, the drum group gets an L1 limiter that gets about 1 to 2 dbs of reduction on both kick and snare hits. It glues the drums together a little more with the L1 although its subtle. I forgot to mention that all tracks including all the ambient room mics go to the drum group except the OH mic which just goes to the master fader. I hate the pumping on the cymbals from the drum group.
 
That's right, but I also clip the snare on its own track too. I know that its probably not the correct way of doing things, but I like how I get the snare to really crack using this method. On this song, I EQed, compressed for attack and clipped the snare top mic and fed it into the drum group. From there my first plugin is GClip that only clips of the snare transients. The kick is low enough that it doesn't get touched. That goes into a compressor with a 4:1 ratio, 10ms attack and auto release with 3dbs of attenuation. Lastly, the drum group gets an L1 limiter that gets about 1 to 2 dbs of reduction on both kick and snare hits. It glues the drums together a little more with the L1 although its subtle. I forgot to mention that all tracks including all the ambient room mics go to the drum group except the OH mic which just goes to the master fader. I hate the pumping on the cymbals from the drum group.

Thanks for helping me with this... I'll experiment a little more with this to see if I can manage to get the snare how I want it. The way I do it is much easier and I get great results (I think) but the downside is I have to export the whole mix, without the snare, compressed and mix it with the snare in a separate project. It would be more convenient to be able to to the whole mixing/mastering process in the same project.

Here's the track again with the TSS VST tubescreamers on the guitars to tighten them up.


http://www.esnips.com/doc/aefab8ea-ffba-42b8-b68b-dbaf37644e9a/Superior-2.0-test-3
The guitars are infinitely better IMO...much tighter and heavier.
 
I prefer the no tubescreamer guitars (less harsh and a fuller sound to my ears) and the sneap kick. Slate's kicks are really hard to get working in the mix IMHO. They can go from flat and lost to overpowering and muddy/bassy in a heartbeat if you don't know how to really work them (which I obviously don't).

All three versions are quite good though... the differences are pretty minor. Nice work.
 
I tried to do what you describe but it made no difference, still can't raise the snare's volume enough without it being squashed. Just to make sure... what you say is to send all drums to a group channel and use a limiter on it and then use a limiter separately on the whole mix including the "limited" grouped drums....right?
Is there maybe anywhere a more detailed tutorial that describes how to do this thing?

If you use a clipper on the snare track, or as Splatt said on the drums bus you'll shave the peaks so the limiter won't see coming a huge peak to "kill"
Anyway there's not so much to make a tutorial just put a clipper on the drums bus and you're ready to go! L2 won't kill the transients
 
If you use a clipper on the snare track, or as Splatt said on the drums bus you'll shave the peaks so the limiter won't see coming a huge peak to "kill"
Anyway there's not so much to make a tutorial just put a clipper on the drums bus and you're ready to go! L2 won't kill the transients

Yeah, I "get it" in theory... but I still can't make it work for me, I hear almost no difference. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
Well...now that I think about it I'm not sure I even get it in theory.... why is it any different cutting the snare's peaks with a limiter in the snare track than cutting the peaks in the master limiter... you still kill the snare's attack.
 
i think everything posted sounds great. For my kicks to work best for faster material, all you need to do as Splatt did, is low shelf out the sublows. I just mixed a metal record using kick5 mixed with Blackkick and submixed them to a track and did -5db starting at 100Hz. It rips.
 
Splat can you send me these tracks? I'd like to mess with them. I think your mix sounds great but I feel like in each mix the low end punch of the kick gets a bit lost. What are you using to bring the overall mix volume up?
 
Splat can you send me these tracks? I'd like to mess with them. I think your mix sounds great but I feel like in each mix the low end punch of the kick gets a bit lost. What are you using to bring the overall mix volume up?

Yes sir! I'll PM you.
 
Splat can you send me these tracks? I'd like to mess with them. I think your mix sounds great but I feel like in each mix the low end punch of the kick gets a bit lost. What are you using to bring the overall mix volume up?

I'm using the Waves L2. I don't think that's the culprit though. The kick was still a bit blurry in the mix in the unmastered version.
 
Splat can you send me these tracks? I'd like to mess with them. I think your mix sounds great but I feel like in each mix the low end punch of the kick gets a bit lost. What are you using to bring the overall mix volume up?

I tried messing with the low end a bit and I think this one has a hell of a lot more punch. This has your kick 10Z3 replacing the kick 100% now. I think there was some phase issues when I had the Superior kick blended with it, causing some of the lack of clarity. I also added a bit of the traditional Snare 7Z2 that I used on most my songs to add some meat to the snare. Lastly, I used Voxengo's Elephant for the limiter instead of the L2.
http://www.esnips.com/doc/cb31e3a6-3ba0-4948-898e-d32095d60049/Superior-2.0-test-5
 
Guitars are perfect now, sounds really good. I'm still not digging the kick though. To me it sounds too thin (but it is present). I still dig the test you did with the sneap kick in terms of fullness (although I'd listen to your stuff if you were using a cardboard box as a kick).

Ain't it a bitch to make music and ask people their opinions?????