How to make Metal Drums survive through Mastering

[speed_monkey_123]

Hey guys,
Currently trying to master a Death Metal/groove metal mix that i have made, and was trying to get the Drum sounds close to the sounds from DevilDriver's album Pray for villains. But when i pass it through the Multi-band Limiters, it starts pumping the crap out of the tracks when i try to get the level close to that of devilDriver's and the Kick/Snare get heavily compressed.

Any ideas.

Here is my track. and if any further critisizms, please feel free to comment.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5657215/Karukara Mastered 7.4.10.mp3

 

[BuriedInSmoke]

enveloper perhaps

 

[kaamosprod]

Use Gclip on your snare and kick. send snare and kick in a bus and use parallel compression on it.

 

[speed_monkey_123]

I have tried parallel compression already, but no luck.
will give Gclip a try

I think i might also try out Stem mastering and see how it goes.

 

[kaamosprod]

I truly recommend you to put Gclip on the snare and on the kick.

it's dedicated to that... it allow you to boost the mastering without burying the drums.

 

[Ermz]

clipclipclipclipclip!

 

[dcb]

clip your snare and kickdrum BEFORE mastering!!!
no pumping, but be aware of too much clipping - makes the transients sound like ass...

 

[LeSedna]

yep, Clip the highest transients of your drums that you don't need. Then, the limiter won't start limiting as early as before (early = at a really low level of increasing volume) and therefore you will be able to push the drums more without killing the mix.

 

[ahjteam]

Here is my track. and if any further critisizms, please feel free to comment.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5657215/Karukara Mastered 7.4.10.mp3

The biggest problem is in the mix, especially the low end needs more clarity.

 

[AdamWathan]

Just clip the whole mix until it starts sounding terrible, then raise the threshold a tiny bit. It'll be loud and will sound fine as long the mix was decent. Better yet just use Ozone in between "clipping" and "very fast" mode. Makes me sound like a n00b but the reality is it sounds great and works way too well too write off as a n00b tool.

I honestly don't prep anything in my mix for loudness maximization independently. I just mix it until I like it, then clip the whole mix and I don't have a problem getting commercial levels. I used to really struggle with it, but the trick is just to get better at mixing. Getting things loud gets a lot easier when the mix is well balanced and under control.

 

[burn4ever]

Hey fellas,
about the mentioned "clipping" just for a beginner like me.
If you mean clip the snare and kick you´ll mean to drive them high gain in the single channel and put them down in the summ-bus to level with the other instruments?

 

[John_C]

Hey fellas,
about the mentioned "clipping" just for a beginner like me.
If you mean clip the snare and kick you´ll mean to drive them high gain in the single channel and put them down in the summ-bus to level with the other instruments?

get gclip to do your clipping. Try and keep all your meters down out of the red, even though they won't actually be clipping, it's just good practice and most plugins are designed to work at normal input levels.

 

[BLUElightCory]

Mix INTO a compressor, this way you can make sure the transients in your mix are properly dialed in, but the overall mix levels won't be dominated by the kick/snare - which means that when you limit it, your mix will retain most of its original balance.

 

[chrisrivalry]

I'm actually curious about this, since I've only used gclip on the master, do you guys clip the individual drums or the drum bus?

 

[burn4ever]

Mix INTO a compressor, this way you can make sure the transients in your mix are properly dialed in, but the overall mix levels won't be dominated by the kick/snare - which means that when you limit it, your mix will retain most of its original balance.

Makes sense to me ;-)

But to capture the peaks of the busses of kick and snare, didn´t I lose with that kind of short attack the transients and the prefered attack of the drums?

Maybe It´s better to find the space frequency for kick and snare without clipping??

But...are there any cliping plugins for MAC??