f****** red light man
Tue, 07/02/2012 - 18:11
my drums are too quiet in the mix and i dont know how to make them louder without that damn red light popping on
what should i do
Tue, 07/02/2012 - 19:02
#2
have you tried making everything else more quite? (not trying to crack wise 
)
Tue, 07/02/2012 - 20:10
#3
I've turned everything else down and made them sound as good as i can without doing anything aside from recording my dry signal from pod farm and in my opinion their all cool not excessively noisy but could defiantly use more than the naked tone itself.
its just the drums can barely be heard in the mix compared and when i hit the volume up everybody knows what happens so that leaves me here.
i will look up parallel compression tonight and hopefully joey will be right as he always is
thanks for the help guys
Tue, 07/02/2012 - 21:10
#4
With Superior Drummer 2 i notice quite a bit of clipping with the snare instrument only (in the drum mix) - i agree with Joey regarding parallel compression, but i mainly focus on compressing the snare, kick, then overall group Drum Buss..
With my kick, snare and group buss:
Send them all to separate FX tracks, loaded with compression. For me, each FX track is compressed differently, as they are all different drum instruments..Then its' simply a matter of "squashing" the FX track signal with some heavy compression (to taste, and effect), and blending with the original tracks' level. Parallel processing has been one of my favorite drum treatment techniques - this has made a HUGE different to how the drums "sit" in my mixes, and their attack.
To be honest, with my mixes, i still register a small amount of clipping with my snare instrument - but as all my instruments are mixed fairly low within the session, i take this as a given in my sessions. But the real test for me is the mastering stage (even just test mastering to boost the overall level and some EQ).
I can only really comment from experience, but i think personally a little bit of clipping with a snare instrument is okay - it is a fairly aggressive instrument sound and type, after all. But my general rule for this is: use your ears, in as many ways as you can. Having a drum track clip occasionally into the red is not necessarily definitive of a bad mix! In fact, ofttimes experimenting with these things brings great, interesting results. Also, registered clipping doesn't immediately mean your mix is distorting as a whole..
Experiment and use your ears as the main guide for overall volume levels - using the clip meter as a general guide \m/
Tue, 07/02/2012 - 22:42
#5
are you talking about the buses inside of the superior mixer or do you load all of those into your daw
Wed, 08/02/2012 - 01:53
#6
you know Kim your snares may be getting more presence in your mix's from the 2k digital distortion that clipping causes and since a snare has a harsh sound as well the distortion created just may be adding to it. I may have to fight my self and try this. Mind you I don't know what DAW you use and not all DAW's dBfs meters are equal. I think reaper gives an additional 3 dB before it clips where as logic seems to distort the moment a sound is made.
Wed, 08/02/2012 - 05:44
#7
@ Jessebgrind - I'm talking about the drum group buss in my DAW (Cubase). I process the drums a little and group them inside the SD2 mixer by instrument, then they are routed to a group buss in cubase and parallel effected (compression, EQ, then stereo imaging).
In Cubase, my individual instrument tracks (routed from SD2 as kicks, snares, toms, hats, OH, Room, Comp) are effected as needed - normally just some EQ and reverb. My kick and snare are also sent to FX tracks, each, which is mixed parallel to the tracks to give some definition
@Joeyshoelace - I know what you mean, but i've been trying pretty hard to avoid that - it's only my snare that's peaking occasionally on my master meter..The mix and instruments are generally all mixed down around -15db lower then original (for instance, my SD2 output is set at -12db). But i honestly do process it pretty heavily with comp to avoid constant clipping - which may have the opposite effect..
Plus, my monitors are crap (we're talking logitech PC speakers!!)...So in all truth, you may be totally right - but in this case, it can work. Hopefully just goes to show further that there really are no set rules to engineering sound
Wed, 08/02/2012 - 10:02
#8
Put a limiter in your master channel. Just a neutral limiter to cut those occasional peaks.
Thu, 09/02/2012 - 11:58
#9
Are you using midi tracks for your drums?
If so have you played around with the velocity hits?
Thu, 09/02/2012 - 17:55
#10
should always edit velocity hit's. keeping everything at 120 sounds odd and if you program the hits to be dead on beat it just increases that odd sound. your drums will go from being drums to being a machine gun.
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parallel compress the drum bus or the drums them selfs, I'm a bit lazy thus do the first one a lot.