Getting that extra oomph from your drums

[noahrbc]

Does anyone have a favorite plugin or trick that gives your drums that little extra presence/pop? Just that final polish to make them hit hard.

[billinder33]

A few things you can do:

1) use a tanh waveshaper like Inflator, MWaveShaper, etc. to give the body of the drum more volume.
2) saturate/distort the drum
3) Layer the drum with one or more complementary drum sounds (note: this does not work on the body and tails of phase-sensitive kicks like 808s)
4) Use Cableguy's Snapback to add some pre-punch and additional transient (you can also use layering to do this, but Snapback is much easier)

[oobesan]

Increase the punch with a combination of a transient shaper and compressor.

[TIMT]

Opto comp to shrink the crest factor a bit, but not to impact the envelopes in an obvious way, then a decent short and tight reverb for contrast, Inflator or something Inflator like, utility plugins to make sure the main energy of the transients broad spread, low end body and all that is travelling up the centre of the image not just panned e.g MSED, Dualism

[Nug Wrangler]

NI Supercharger

[jamcat]

Tell the drummer to hit harder.

[digitalboytn]

Get a fatter drummer...

[Benedict]

I have made this sort of video soooo many times, but why not once again? I know ppl want to get 20-30 years of experience in 2-mins or less, complete with 80s Action Movie witty repartee but it is a huge subject that people often approach donky about so it gets harder for them (and ruins their songs).

[Touch The Universe]

Fit drums in the mix, but there doesn't seem to be a mix to be fit in? it's only drums, no synths, pads, leads, bass etc?

[Benedict]

Clearly, you did not watch the video, let alone listen to what I say. But yeah, for clarity of the core issue, I focused and left out the other things. Coz where I have put in the other things, the video is an hour long and ppl really ack like dat 2 much 4 dem.

A well-prepared Rhythm Bus will slot into a mix waaay better than where we started. If you can't feel natural balance, nothing will help you.

BTW, a "Thanks" never goes astray.

[kernaudioio]

TIMT's point about crest factor is underrated. a lot of "drums that don't hit" are actually hitting hard in peak terms but losing body in the RMS. soft saturation before limiting does a lot of work here, not for grit, just to gently lift the body relative to the transient so it survives more of the brickwall at the end of the chain.

[Touch The Universe]

Clearly, you did not watch the video, let alone listen to what I say. But yeah, for clarity of the core issue, I focused and left out the other things. Coz where I have put in the other things, the video is an hour long and ppl really ack like dat 2 much 4 dem.

A well-prepared Rhythm Bus will slot into a mix waaay better than where we started. If you can't feel natural balance, nothing will help you.

BTW, a "Thanks" never goes astray.

Good speaker, watched only a bit

[Dirk Diggler]

Put a distressor/clone on your drum buss. Makes them really sit in the mix, yet stand out and doesn't kill the snare/kick transients so much.

[Touch The Universe]

I've heard to just cut other stuff wherever the frequencies of the drums are even by 3 db is better than boosting

[trmupstage]

The Softube Chandler Limiter has a preset I tweaked that I use. It sort of comes off at a trasient designer kind of thing but it's much fatter and rounder sounding. I buss all shells to it as an aux. Seriously the best thing I've found for making drums pop.
Note: I'm not using samples. This is for real drums tracked. I imagine it would work on samples though too.