Drum overhead compression From the course: Real Recording School Weekly Start my 1-month free trial ... pretty typical settings for percussion in my mixes. But I am wondering about how I would set attack and release settings in a drum bus just to lower the dynamic range, WITHOUT destroying the transients with a fast attack time? Tom drum compression recipes. I will usually use no more than 6dB of gain reduction on my tom tracks if I feel they need some compression. By Emerson Maningo on March 22, 2010 . Mix the drum mix and parallel compression mix together to taste. It is common for sound techs to put compression on almost every drum mic, but this is not necessary unless you have an inexperienced, uncontrolled drummer. Tags: Audio mixing EQ tips, Kick drum recording and mixing techniques. Even in this case, you will probably only need light compression on the kick drum and possibly the snare. As far as drums go, toms do not need a lot of compression to sound good in a mix (but do reference this article covering New York compression for drums). Explanation of the above EQ settings: As you have observed, the bass guitar is reduced in the sub-bass frequency range by cutting using a low shelf filter starting at 150Hz. The kick drum big three: boom, smack, click. All you need in your home studio is a four band eq to start shaping the kick drum sound of your dreams! These are three key elements that can be used to describe the sound of a kick drum. As far as compression settings go, the trick is to preserve the transient attack of the kick drum with a fast but not too fast attack time (9ms in this instance) and then a quick release (11ms) so the compressor is ready to respond to the next kick drum hit. Compression can be a tricky one to get your head around, and even if you've got your head around the threshold and ratio settings without the attack and release times being set correctly it will always be difficult to get the desired effect. Start by trying a few of these eq and compressor settings and tweak them in to suit your specific starting drum sound and desired results. A drum mix is also a great place to consider parallel compression, to blend the compressed kit in with the drum mix. The ratio I use is a relatively mild 2.5:1 and I adjust the threshold until I hear the kick sound I’m searching for. It kinda seems to me that if you … attack/release compressions settings for drum compression. I prefer to use much less of the parallel compression mix than the main drum mix to retain a natural feel, with the parallel fader brought up just enough to get the tightness I need. You don’t want to compress the drums too hard at this stage — just gently squeeze the drum mix together by setting a higher threshold and lower ratio to reduce the dynamics by only a dB or two at the peaks. Kick Drum EQ Settings and Compression. Categories: Recording and Mixing Drums. I have gotten the hang of compressing individual drums to alter their transients and make them punchy with a slow attack. Whether you follow my route or want heaps of compressed drums in there, do keep it tucked under the main drum mix at least a little.