I’ve most of the time drum channel clipping then send to a drumbus (send 1) then compress.
i wondered how much headroom to you have on each channel ? should i keep each channel not clipping before sending them to the compressor ?
i’ve noticed a distorded sound but perhaps i’m loosing some bass so that’s why i ask !
The default track headroom is -6dB. You can set it from 0dB to -12dB in the Song Settings panel.
You should generally try to avoid clipping (ie. going over 0dB) on your tracks whenever possible. If you have shitty input, then you will probably get shitty output.
If you are really driving your drum tracks like hell into the red, you might be able to recover some of this with a compressor/limiter on the final signal, but you really cannot guarantee it, and you should not rely on it. It’s probably much better to keep your individual levels below 0dB (or slightly above if you absolutely have to drive them hard) before sending them to a compressor. The compressor itself will work best when it actually has some dynamic range to work with in the first place. If all your input is clipping and distorted, then the compressor will not be able to do its job properly.
i use the fabfilter compressor and i put around - 12 db in the input but the sound doesn’t feel distorded (or not in a bad way this industrial music after all).
anyway i’ll keep this advice for the next track
thank you