Use of Limiter to ironically make things bigger and louder.

[Sweetman]

Hey, So this is a fun technique I've been fooling around with for a little bit now.

almost always for this same sort of effect, and almost always on Drums. (usually everything but cymbals)

In order to get the biggest hugest sound I could out of some toms and snare and shit, I'll add a decent amount of reverb, and take the volume up a few db, and then ill apply a heavy limiter, so it squashes most of the transient, and what's left is a wide open, humongous sounding reverb trail, and it lets the drums be huge, and also let free to breathe.

I haven't looked TOO hard for other info on this, but im wondering if this is a technique anybody else has fooled around with, or if this is common practice.

This is a sound, and technique that I've fallen in love with, so I'll be using it indefinitely in the future.

This track "This house is not my home" is my most recent example.
Disregard most of the track, esp the mix and esp esp the maximizer i threw on top to make it loud enough to listen to while on a bike ride....
but check out the drums in the beginning.

Feedback? GO

 

[inertia]

I don't know about your specific way of doing it but the result sounds similar to parallel compression.....you set the ratio really high and the threshold low and smash the fuck out of the drums and then mix in a bit of the original signal.

 

[Deathprayer82]

when distortion starts, that mix is pumping
i like that clean ambience sounds!

 

[TBlackfeet]

I used to do this a lot for my snares, sounds pretty cool for a really drawn out sound, so long as any ring on the snare is taken care of.
Another thing I'd do is boost the body of the snare a lot (at least 6dB) before the limiter, then cut the same area after, it gives this awesome dynamic to the mid/high end of it it's almost like a big pumping reverb in a way.