Taming drum peaks? (¯\(°_o)/¯ content)
- Thread starter narcossintese
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Pedro Teixeira
Member
I did mess a lot with the clip and softness, Im not saying it's godawful, if it works for you than awesome, but I found it a bit harsh and dont even feel the need to use it
amarshism
Member
BLUElightCory
Member
I think you're going about this the wrong way.
First off, you need to stop mixing with your eyes and rely more on your ears. Don't worry so much about what the mix LOOKS like, just what it sounds like.
It's an exercise in futility to try to eliminate the peaks in a dry rock-drum loop, because drums (especially punchy rock drums like the ones in your loop) are predominantly transient. If you were to somehow kill the transients you'd be maiming the drum sound - the drums are SUPPOSED to poke through the mix a bit in a drum-heavy rock/metal mix.
Once the rest of the elements of the mix are added, the peaks won't seem so drastic - in one loop you added bass, but the drums are so much louder than the bass in that loop that their transients are still going to dominate the resulting waveform. If the drums are the loudest thing in the mix, they're going to stick out in the mix's waveform - beyond several stages of compression, a very fast limiter with a high ratio or a clipper (all of which will affect the original drum sound to some degree) there's not much that can be done to change that.
As far as saturation goes, even though it's adding a degree of compression, it's most likely very gentle compression (low ratio/gain reduction) so it's probably not going to do much to reduce the peaks in the drums unless you hit it REALLY hard (which will most likely noticeably distort your drum loop).
Just some food for thought...
First off, you need to stop mixing with your eyes and rely more on your ears. Don't worry so much about what the mix LOOKS like, just what it sounds like.
It's an exercise in futility to try to eliminate the peaks in a dry rock-drum loop, because drums (especially punchy rock drums like the ones in your loop) are predominantly transient. If you were to somehow kill the transients you'd be maiming the drum sound - the drums are SUPPOSED to poke through the mix a bit in a drum-heavy rock/metal mix.
Once the rest of the elements of the mix are added, the peaks won't seem so drastic - in one loop you added bass, but the drums are so much louder than the bass in that loop that their transients are still going to dominate the resulting waveform. If the drums are the loudest thing in the mix, they're going to stick out in the mix's waveform - beyond several stages of compression, a very fast limiter with a high ratio or a clipper (all of which will affect the original drum sound to some degree) there's not much that can be done to change that.
As far as saturation goes, even though it's adding a degree of compression, it's most likely very gentle compression (low ratio/gain reduction) so it's probably not going to do much to reduce the peaks in the drums unless you hit it REALLY hard (which will most likely noticeably distort your drum loop).
Just some food for thought...
Morgan C
MAX LOUD PRESETS¯\(°_o)/¯
I don't think 'mix-fxbypass.mp3' sounds too bad, perhaps a little too distorted. But if you brought in guitars and vocals I seriously doubt the drums would be peaking over the mix still.
I use GClip all the time, I find it really faithful to what I'm trying to do (unlike other things which can brighten/darken the material). The trick is getting your source material right. I've always felt Joey's older mixes lacked a lot of punch, and he's usually hailed as the 'god' of Slate drums. I usually have an issue getting Slate drums punchy by themselves too - they're fine until you start getting them loud. Try augmenting it with some other samples, or have a look at the 'Paramore distortion' thread I made a couple weeks ago.
I use GClip all the time, I find it really faithful to what I'm trying to do (unlike other things which can brighten/darken the material). The trick is getting your source material right. I've always felt Joey's older mixes lacked a lot of punch, and he's usually hailed as the 'god' of Slate drums. I usually have an issue getting Slate drums punchy by themselves too - they're fine until you start getting them loud. Try augmenting it with some other samples, or have a look at the 'Paramore distortion' thread I made a couple weeks ago.
shredder10
Replace that #@#|@#â!!
I really respect people who preserve the drums the way they sound best, don´t use clippers, don´t do destructive saturation/compression, mix stuff around -20 RMS and just tell the world to "turn the volume knob up", but unfortunately this isn´t an option to me.
I do mix by the sound, but I can´t stop wondering how is that, to get to the desired ("requested" would be a better term) RMS, I´m relying so much on the master bus inserts.
Take this simple mix for example. The perceived loudness is ok, but my master bus compressor is reducing between 2 and 4 db and my maximizer is reducing between 5 and 7 db on snare peaks for that. It´s like 10db of gain reduction by compression and limiiting on the master bus. I doubt that most people have to go this extreme to reach the same target RMS.
It may be that the samples I´m using are in fact too peaky, but I wonder if everyone who uses slate´s samples are having to deal with this ammount of excess on the master bus.
I do mix by the sound, but I can´t stop wondering how is that, to get to the desired ("requested" would be a better term) RMS, I´m relying so much on the master bus inserts.
Take this simple mix for example. The perceived loudness is ok, but my master bus compressor is reducing between 2 and 4 db and my maximizer is reducing between 5 and 7 db on snare peaks for that. It´s like 10db of gain reduction by compression and limiiting on the master bus. I doubt that most people have to go this extreme to reach the same target RMS.
It may be that the samples I´m using are in fact too peaky, but I wonder if everyone who uses slate´s samples are having to deal with this ammount of excess on the master bus.
pikachu69
mixomatic 2000
I agree with BLUElightcory, as I mentioned in a previous post, I think you really need to consider the level of the rest of your mix against the drums.
I had this problem for the longest time until I realized this. If you are shaving off nearly 10Db off your drums, then the rest of your mix is probably 6 - 8db to quite. If you can figure out how to increase the rest of your mix you won't have to butcher your snare sound to get a good RMS on your master buss and everything will sound bigger and clearer.
Cheers.
I had this problem for the longest time until I realized this. If you are shaving off nearly 10Db off your drums, then the rest of your mix is probably 6 - 8db to quite. If you can figure out how to increase the rest of your mix you won't have to butcher your snare sound to get a good RMS on your master buss and everything will sound bigger and clearer.
Cheers.
FloridaRolf
W.A.T.
I occasionally only clip the snare and my masters get loud enough.
Why would someone want to kill all dynamics / transients before they get buried even more when mastered?
Why would someone want to kill all dynamics / transients before they get buried even more when mastered?
To not have to deal with 10 to 15 db of gain reduction during mastering. Mastering was supposed to be subtle.
yeah...
taming transients is kinda a joke... as far as compressors go.
this is a good exercise - take just the sound of the stick hitting the snare, and use it on a aux track for your snare with drumagog (or whatever you use)
to ensure you have just the sound of the stick or the "TRANSIENT," use a gate with 0ms attack and 20ms release. export just ONE hit - with your indicators directly ON the snare hit and only lasting the duration of 30ms no shorter no longer. NO other processing, just a damn gate.
use this in your instance of drumagog, blend to 100%. when you turn it up what happens? the snare hits a lit f***** harder doesnt it?
SOOOOOO,
why do you try to kill that? if you want slamming tracks, keep transients. if theres just waaaaaaay to much of a stick or whatever you think, just use a limiter to shave off a couple decibels.
i hardly ever use compression on snares. EVER. i instead even out unevenness in volumes when editing drums - or - i use samples.
the trick about is not really a trick, its just a way for you to Hear what the sound of the stick can do for you and to helping you keep a "realistic" drum sound
NOW - COMPRESSORS
lol.... such a easy way to mix people....
the compression we all love is what the final steps in mixing and MASTERING do.
i dont not use a compressor to tame peaks, i use it to make my tracks fuc*** SLAM by making them breath as a GROUP.
i use one compressor on my master drum bus, using a SLOW attack time, enough to let ALLLLLL the transients trhough..... following? try 30ms
ratio to taste but for now - 10:1
now, i set my treshold until i get some GR. then i lower it more so i can hear more and more and more and more. by the time you have alot of gr going on, play with your release setting. use a quicker release time such as 100 - 300 ms... the goal with this, FOR ME, is let my drums hit really hard, with all the transients, and then compress them a little. by the time the release is wearing off, ive got an pumping drum compressor making my tracks come to life. return he threshold to a more normal level as well as ratio, until you can barely notice the effect, if your drums dont slam enough, lower the threshold 1 decibel at a time, taking a listen each time.
once you can master this, THEN try to perfect individual drums sounds... but until then youre just making things so much harder as this its 75% of your heaviness.
i use the same technique on my master bus compressor. where i use usually have 3 plugins - a compressor, a limiter, and a dither device.
after i get a little pumping in my master bus compressor, i want to lesson the effect just enough to get a slight duck in volume.
from here the only thing i need to worry about is getting my mix loud to standard mix volumes, AND taming my peaks..
this is where the limiter comes in, slam it down until you get clipping, watch out for that distortion. GLUE.
listen to this song, hear the STICK in the snare? ooooooh yeah. slammin.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdaOeAxy0GU&feature=related[/ame]
cheers.
