When one is using a whole lot of breaks with a whole lot of messing around with autopans, pitch rolls and other madness how exactly should one approach things like compression and similar treatment? Are there general guidelines for taming the peaks, because I often notice that the meter jumps all over the place and Im worried that this is going to cause problems. Should I perhaps look into using a mix bus compressor or something?
any help in this area would be very appreciated!
lets begin from the bottom:
30 hz (eq) cut on master
50 hz cut on every instrument channel that has bass freqs.
group the bass - lows / mids / highs [bass parts]
group the perc
group the main drums
hi cuts at 12 khz for lead and melody parts if needed.
main drum compression: ratio ~ 4:01 / threshold ~ -10.5db / attack 26.2 ms / release 115 ms / gain|makeup 9.0db
perc gets a transient shaper [maybe that one at kvr dc 2012 or
shape it with volume commands in renoise (e.g. 80 followed by 10 in the vol. col.)
watch out for the 500 - 800 hz range (get the different instruments/drum parts seperated)
mix it to master = -3db - ~ -1db
[keep in mind: use as much space as you can dont compress to much/often,
just use the silence between the hits to get best drops and real fast drills
btw: google audio anti- phase if you want to read about the problem of (heavy) panning [cant find a good EDU link to it now]
gl
edit: forgot the “gain” setting
Thanks allot.
Just to clarify a few things, you are saying that on the main breaks I should have a compressor set so that I am seeing it register at - 10 db of gain reduction? Those settings you mentioned are basically to let a bit of the transient through but to pretty much tame the jumps in volume right?
Also, in terms of transient shaper on the percs, is this to just shape them like you would with an amplitude envelope to taste basically?
Woah, woah - don’t have any compressors on your drum track if you’re doing stuff like that, it’ll sound terrible! Compress/eq your breaks first, then load them into renoise to slice up and rearrange.
I’d also consider adding a limiter on your drums with the threshold set where your drums are normally peaking, in order to take care of any sudden spikes in volume from retriggers, since that’s a problem I have sometimes