Loud and punchy drums ?

[Tom-D]

Hi

Im struggling with making the drums loud and punchy in the mix.I have all the guitars, bass and such routed to a limiter.So I can make it as loud as I want with no clipping.But Im left with drums, and I dont know what to do to make them work on par with the rest of the music.Limiting is out of the question, because they are non existant afterwards.I have HP filters on most of the drums, they sound really good for me.But again, what to do to preserve this punch and crank up the db's ?
There are a lot cool videos on youtube that show EQ, compressor settings.But what Im interested the most i post processing, the final step.That is:making it loud and preserving the sound.

 

[Josh M.]

I have all the guitars, bass and such routed to a limiter.So I can make it as loud as I want with no clipping.But Im left with drums, and I dont know what to do to make them work on par with the rest of the music.

I would not try and send the guitars and bass to a limiter. Getting loudness is a part of mastering, not mixing. So before you even have the whole mix completed (the drums sounding how you want them), you're trying to make the rest louder. If it doesn't sound loud enough while mixing, turn your monitors/headphones up and leave the rest until later. Once you've done this (and removed the limiter) you're drums will probably sit in the mix a lot easier.

If you want your drums to sound punchier, I would suggest looking into the parallel compression technique (search for it).

 

[darthjujuu]

I would not try and send the guitars and bass to a limiter. Getting loudness is a part of mastering, not mixing. So before you even have the whole mix completed (the drums sounding how you want them), you're trying to make the rest louder. If it doesn't sound loud enough while mixing, turn your monitors/headphones up and leave the rest until later. Once you've done this (and removed the limiter) you're drums will probably sit in the mix a lot easier.

If you want your drums to sound punchier, I would suggest looking into the parallel compression technique (search for it).

+1

track and mix super quiet, master fader shouldn't be pokin past -3 or -4 db, and the other pro's in here will probably even say much quieter than that.

 

[RedDog]

With your instruments on a limiter, they'll probably bet peaking at or around the drums. A little motown secret I like is to bring the instruments down a bit to preserve the transient hits of the drums.

 

[Sacha]

Try some parallel compression on the shells

 

[Sloan]

OMG PLEASE BLEND THESE TWO THREADS TOGETHER IM FREAKIN OUT HERE

 

[superdgs]

try eq the drum bus to get loudness and then compress and then saturate a little, i use psp mixsaturator it put some power on the drums