How can I get a more punchy sound?

That might be the most vague question anyone's ever asked on a music recording forum. Seriously. :p

My first suggestion would be the following:
- Find a good compressor to smash the shit out of your drum bus with. Rough Rider has some good presets for that kind of thing, or any of the Variety of Sound compressors. Hell, even TesslaSE does a decent job. Note, however, that you want to do this before your drum reverb, or separate from it. Compressing with the reverb in there just gives you WAY more reverb. If you're having trouble compressing the drum bus without making it pump, try compressing the individual drum tracks and then using the bus compression on a gentler setting.
- Once the drums are nice and squashed, turn down your guitars a few db. IMO the guitars (maybe the bass too) are too loud in comparison to the drums, which makes it much harder to glue the mix together and get any tightness or punch.
 
guitars and bass sound good, your drums are mixed too quietly and your snare could use a fatter sample.
 
Yeah well I mean I don't know what my problems are but I know they are there. That is why I asked general questions.
I will try these tips though. Thank you for the replies. I have a lot of variety of sound plugins so I will try some of the compressors.


Also for the Snare could I use any plugin to make it fatter?

I have a lot of free plugins downloaded I just suck at all this stuff lol.
Will try the compression on the drums though.
 
ReaComp has one or two great snare presets. Another trick for fattening things up is parallel compression - set the compressor to smash your snare harder than you normally would, and then blend that in under the dry signal. ReaComp's Wet and Dry faders work really nicely for this.
 
I'm working with laptop speakers right now, so all I can really suggest is that the guitars are still too loud compared to the drums. It's better than before, but (at least on here) the drums sound too nice and clear, whereas the guitar tone sounds like it should have heavier, more modern metal drums going with it. Dropping the guitar volume and maybe toning down the drum reverb a bit would probably do wonders.

Overall it sounds pretty good, it might just be a taste thing on my end.
 
How many DB should I drop the guitar do you think?

For reverb I just have some snare reverb and tom reverb. A little reverb to the cymbals also.

I find it sounds a lot better so far so I am going to listen to you guys. This forum seems to know their stuff :p
 
sounds better but the drums still sound slightly smaller than the guitars. guitars down just a hair. try adjusting 1db at a time and really listening. do some research into parallel comp. even something like sending the drum buss to another track for added volume might do the trick. just adjust to taste.
 
I'll keep working on it and post some more tomorrow. It is a lot easier when you have people giving their opinions. So thanks everybody who has helped so far.
 
Ok here is the last one before I go to bed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1n852r91e8h60u1/Breed-007 new mix again.wav

Sorry if you have to download that. Is there any good site where I can upload mixes? I am going to keep doing this until I get the right mix. You guys seem pretty helpful. The guitar is probably still too loud but I feel like the drums are really nice in this mix.
Opinions on the drums and guitar now?

Besides that how does the overall song sound? I am just another bedroom musician trying to get a nice sound. Any thoughts or opinions.

And sorry for the spam but this is the only site I have found where people actually comment and have good experience. Thanks for all the help.
 
Good luck with the path you've chosen on getting more familiar with mixing your own stuff. I remember when i first did that decision, these days i kinda wish i just went on with playing guitar, now it's constant feel of "not getting right there"
But for you at this point i'd really really suggest https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=007593470310830667409:4qw46y8lnza thats a sneap custom search for this forum. Just start from the scratch like "snare eq" "snare comp" and stuff, you'll work your way out!
Good luck :)
 
didnt see it mentioned anywhere here, but this kind of thread belongs in the practice room subforum. welcome to the forum though - there is a ton of useful info here.
 
Definitely turn your guitars down, they sound good but they're way too loud. I'd send your snare to a compressor bus, and someone above mentioned it already, if you are using Reaper, it's compressor plugin can get boss results. I'd add a good amount of reverb to the snare, I've noticed for me it's helped fatten my snare sound a lot. I like the music a lot though!
 
Still on my laptop speakers, but anyway: It sounds better than before, but I'd say it's still not enough. Your kick is really starting to stand out now, so you might want to turn it down a bit so the drums can come up. I'd also drop the cymbal reverb a tad, and maybe consider adding just a touch of reverb to the guitars so they sound like they're in the same space as the drum kit - when I say a touch, I'm talking enough that you can hear it tail off when the guitars stop playing, but not enough to be noticeable the rest of the time.

You're definitely at the point where there aren't any real problems with the mix, it's mostly just taste.
 
I recommend you try the free, "Xfer OTT" plugin. It can really add some punch and loudness to anything!

http://www.xferrecords.com/freeware/
ott-xfer-records.jpg