Beefing up Drum Tracks??????

[Jim333]

I Use BFD for my Drum tracks, i have mixed the individual tracks to my taste, eq, compression ect... But i still feel it's miising the overall punchiness i'm after as a whole!! Any ideas/Plugins ect on how to achieve this thunderous sound i'm after as a whole kit!! I play supreme heavy metal that i why i'm afetr this sound.

Cheers all!!!!!

[FatFreddy]

Have you tried Camel Audio's CamelPhat? It does punchy, and also crunchy, grungy, and messy. Try the demo.

[NAD]

Compress, limit, distort, repeat....

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

You can also try a transient shaper as well. I mean if the drums already sound the way you want them, but are just lacking punch, I would guess that you're looking to just bring out the attack transients some more. The other thing I would consider is looking at the attack times on your compressors to make sure they're not too fast and squashing the transients.

[Jim333]

CamelPhat seems quite good, though not sure if it's really going where i want it too.. Maybe i need more time to play with it yet though!! Transiest shapers?? Would TransX by waves be a good move as i dont really know much about those??? Thanx for the replys!!!

[FatFreddy]

If you are trying to keep your drums realistic with CamelPhat then be careful not to get carried away. Use a little tube distortion, don't overdo the eq or compressor, and also remember it has a mix level, you don't need it up full.

[inverseroom]

PSP MixSaturator is on my sends at all times...

[akisd28]

Try sending your drums to an aux buss, compress it to f*ck and mix it in with the original to beef it up. You could also try to saturate the main drum bus - Voxengo AnalogFlux TapeBus works wonders for that. PSP MixSaturator should also work fine for that, as well as CamelPhat; even CamelPhat free or their latest freebie (CamelFuzz? can't remember) could do the trick nicely either on the main drum buss (subtly) or the aux one (not subtly).

[rpc9943]

tls_saturator - crank it all the way up

auto beef
RONC

[Jim333]

akisd28... Would sending all my individual drum tracks to an aux buss be the same as sending them to a group channel within cubase sx??

[stash98]

its the same thing. I like Voxengo Tape on the snare at the end of the chain ...makes a big difference.

definitely use parallel compression..group the kick and snare toms and then set the send to 100% and prefader. in the FX bux, put in your compressor, and squash it hard..try a fast attack and medium release. then lower the voume of the FX bus...then bring it back up until it blends in with the drum bus.

Also, I like to put antares tube in all my drum tracks..not a lot, but a fair amount of distortion using the blue tube.

[akisd28]

akisd28... Would sending all my individual drum tracks to an aux buss be the same as sending them to a group channel within cubase sx??

What I usually do in Nuendo (same as SX in that regard) is this:

- Route all drum tracks to a main drum buss and apply there any processing they may need as a group

- Create a group track and insert the compressor I want to use; then use a send output from the main drum group to send it to the compressor group (pre-fader). I compress this buss to taste and mix it in with the original. Usually, after I find the desired blend, I link the tracks, so that I can adjust the overall volume in the mix more easily.

If you have Energy XT, you can do all that within the same track in Cubase (use it as an insert and do the parallel compression in there).

[Jim333]

Hey thanks for all the help, i'm going to try the things you and stash have mentioned, looks like i'm in for another late one in the studio tonight!!! Ahhh Heaven!! Cheers!