Compression

[jhrv]

How much do you guys compress the kick, snare and OH's?

 

[derfbonker]

It all depends on what it needs. With kick and snare attack and release times are more important.

 

[PostMortem1666]

as a starting point make sure the release time is set to where the compressor turns off before the next beat.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I compress the kick at a higher ratio than the snare. Set the threshold to just where the snare really cracks then let the ratio down to somewhere around the 3:1 ratio.

 

[Skinny Viking]

I usually sample replace the kicks with clean hit from the drummer's kit, haven't really liked blending kick samples so far ... anyway, I try to play around with the dynamics settings in SoundReplacer to find a 1/2 way point between the dynamics of the original track and full blown "dynamics removed". Its worked pretty good for me so far and this way I don't even bother using a compressor on the kicks unless I'm trying for that sound (which personally I don't really like). As for snare, I usually compress the original snare track just enough to level the dynamics a bit more but as not to make any bleed rush up between hits. Fast enough setting to catch the bulk of the sound of each hit but slow enough to let most of the initial transient through. Release time varies on the feel & tempo and ratio is usually pretty tame 4:1 nothing special, minor adjustments to this depending on my mood. Reason for this is because I usually also run a 2nd snare track which is full clean hits and tend to set that just slightly over the original in the mix. That is also the snare track I'll put through some reverb, not the original track.

Just my thoughts

Cheers!