hello people wroteSo, can anyone suggest a good/ simple workflow in Studio One for preserving the overall nice drum sound...but significantly bringing down the kick and snare transients so that the mixbus compression can do a more thorough job of gelling the bulk of the song into a nice cohesive unit?

For me - my EZD/SD3 drum preset is broken out into multi-channel (in the VST and S1 console) and I simply place a selection of "go-to" compression (like Universal Audio 1176) and EQ on the kick and snare channels and then bus the whole thing out to one of a few different bus comps I like.

Have never really had a bad drum sound by doing this and certainly have never had to "tame" any runaway transients.

If you are not using a template or simply relying on a stereo buss comp on the Main Out to handle all your transients in the entire mix - that will be a huge challenge in almost all situations - unless it a very simple, very sparse track.

Cheers

VP

Have you tried a clip plug-in? Best on individual tracks if you expand EZ Drummer’s outputs but can work on the stereo out.
Clipping may impart some harmonic distortion (dependent on over sampling settings), it’s often not noticeable and can be an enhancement but will provide transient control whilst maintaining levels.

Try putting an aggressive low cut filter on every channel, cutting off all the low end you don't absolutely need from that channel, e.g. because bass or kick are occupying those low frequencies already.

When mixing you're adding signals together, so you may be stacking peaks too. The chances of that are particularly high for the lower frequencies which produce wider peaks. Add to that the way samples are often started in at exactly the same time, making the initial peaks stack the same way every time. So tiny shifts or inverting a few channels may help too. Depends a bit on your production methods and the material you're working with.

I would use a transient shaper on the really spiky sounds and set to just soften the leading edge transients only a touch, to still keep the sound reasonably punchy etc. (Note* a tape simulator plugin would also work nicely in this position)

Then, by the time you send all the drum sounds to a drum bus and put a nice compressor on that, working not too hard but just evening things out a little you should have a fairly punchy drum sound that is higher in rms level. The attack setting is important here. Too fast and you will destroy all the drum transients. eg 10 ms or slower.

A little saturation on the drum bus can go a long way or even a tape simulator here too

Ok thank you.

I do multi out the tracks from ezDrummer. I even convert to audio once all midi is set. Attached picture is a full stereo mix of a song I'm doing. As you can see, it's all about the spikes!

I'll try your suggestions. Thanks

Nothing worked. Song mixdown sported a relatively narrow body complete with large snare spikes. Kind of looked like a comb. Or an echidna. Possibly a 1980's spike hairdo.

hello people wroteNothing worked. Song mixdown sported a relatively narrow body complete with large snare spikes. Kind of looked like a comb. Or an echidna. Possibly a 1980's spike hairdo.

Would like to know exactly what you tried (what plugins - if any - on what channels, with what settings) before making assumptions that this is a bad thing.

At first glance here - it looks to me like there is no compression on that snare - if that is what is causing the massive spikes.

VP

Also, what else is in that mix? You can't expect a drums heavy mix to be without peaks and spikes. And it would help to give us the loudness information of that track (LUFS, dB TP, dB RMS) because the picture tells only part of the story.

SwitchBack wroteAlso, what else is in that mix? You can't expect a drums heavy mix to be without peaks and spikes. And it would help to give us the loudness information of that track (LUFS, dB TP, dB RMS) because the picture tells only part of the story.

I can tell you what I had on the snare:

1. eq rolling off some lows @ around 65hz, rolling off highs @ around 16k and a subtle boost around 300hz and a subtle dip around 7.4khz

2. Softube Tape applying light distortion and smoothing mixed at about 40%

3. Compressor reducing the snare by 10 to 12db. Which I would have thought was well enough. (but read on below to find out why I'm literally chasing my tail trying to deal with individual snare/ kick channels) With the compressor engaged the snare never peaks above -12db in the channel meter. With the compressor disengaged it peaks way up at -7db

This snare fed into the drum bus where more compression was added. Loudness info attached.

It seems to me from studying the drum tracks...remember I converted the ezdrummer stuff to audio...so in ezdrummer the mix sounds great of course...that's what ezdrummer does. Inside the internal ezdrummer mixer I leave it as is because it sounds good.

However when I convert to audio and I end up, in this case, with kick, snare Top, snare Bottom, OH's, mono OH's...I find an amazing thing...I can grab the fader on the kick channel and turn it all the way down and it has virtually no bearing on the sound of the kick in the drum bus. Likewise, I can turn the snare channels all the way down and there is virtually no noticeable difference in the volume or tone of the snare in the drum bus.

Where ALL the action seems to be is in the overheads. The kick and snare are SO prominent in the overheads that the individual kick and snare channels are all but redundant. Now, I'm not sure if this is normal in real drum mixing, I've never mixed real drums in my life. But in ezDrummer this seems to be par for the course. MOST of the sound is in the overheads. If you mix down to audio, the kick and snare channels especially are basically a waste of time.

So to apply plugins on the snare channel or the kick channel, thinking that I'm doing something to address their volume or peakiness is a fool's game when ALL the snare and ALL the kick are essentially in the OH's. NOW if you want to tame those very peaky snares...you'll have to attempt to do that in the OH channel...which means diving in and finding the right way to tame a snare drum...without stepping on the cymbals and hats etc.

See, what's going on here is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I just don't get it. I need to be able to create rock solid drums as the foundation for anything that comes. As it stands now, I'm taking a huge shotgun, aiming at my foot and pulling the trigger, completely destroying the rest of the mixing process.

I always wondered how and why all the rubbish I record never sounds cohesive and I think this ezdrummer drum nightmare might be a big part of it.

Well yeah, the two philosophies of drums recording:
1. A drum kit is one instrument, to be recorded (in stereo) as a whole with as few mics as you can get away with, or
2. Put a mic on every piece of the kit, or better two if you can spare them.

1. used to be the studio way to go where 2. was the way to go on noisy stages. Nowadays studios tend to go 2. too for whatever reason musical or otherwise. But the spill is massive and noise gates are a must on nearly everything. I still prefer 1. as long as the room is good. Less issues to deal with.

Anyway, from the screenshot I take that what you have is a K20 recording more or less, which isn't bad for just drums

Setting the level of the OHeads is critical and sounds like you have got way too much of them in your drum mix.

There are different approaches to overheads. One is let them have a full range sound and provide most of the drum sound and let the individual mikes add to that but only subtly. The other is start with the Oheads off and create the whole drum sound with the individual mics and then add in the filtered OHeads to the drum mix. By filtered I mean HP pass below quite a high frequency so as to really only let the cymbals in. And then the OHead level is actually just there mainly for cymbal crashes and ride etc..And very low at that.

Jemusic wroteSetting the level of the OHeads is critical and sounds like you have got way too much of them in your drum mix.

There are different approaches to overheads. One is let them have a full range sound and provide most of the drum sound and let the individual mikes add to that but only subtly. The other is start with the Oheads off and create the whole drum sound with the individual mics and then add in the filtered OHeads to the drum mix. By filtered I mean HP pass below quite a high frequency so as to really only let the cymbals in. And then the OHead level is actually just there mainly for cymbal crashes and ride etc..And very low at that.

See this is extraordinary to me. This is more or less what my bug brain logic has worked out too after ripping my brain apart doing mix after mix after mix trying to impart tone shaping and peak control to individual snare and or kick channels...which, in the case of ezDrummer, is NEVER going to do ANYTHING to impart ANY tone shaping or peak control on snare/ kick channels...because 99% of the snare and kick is in the overheads.

This has boggled my brain. Utterly. As a novice, you mixdown ezDrummer to audio and believe you have a standard group of drum tracks. In actual fact you have the RESULTS of an ALREADY mixed drum kit. Not a drum kit ready for mixing. It's almost like...well it is like you have to un-mix it and then re-mix it. If you just leave it as it is you end up with large snare/ kick spikes.

I think most or some of the ezDrummer presets have bleed control. Maybe I should be trying to use as vanilla internal ezDrummer mix as possible turning off as much bleed as I can.

When you mic a drum kit with say full range overheads and say a kick, a pretty decent sound can result, especially if it is a nice sounding kit. It should be easy to control the spikes and get quite a strong rms component with medium sized spikes for the transients. The individual mics will be closer and hence more detailed and this means faster transients. You can still soften these with the right plugins now especially. A transient shaper is a helpful tool. It can take a thin very snappy sound and make it fatter and slightly wider too and also less spikey. I like the Waves Smack Attack for example. (often on sale for $29)

They can also work in reverse. Take a sound that should be snappy but for some reason is a little sloppy or slow and snap it up quite a bit.

The drum plugin does not need to do any processing really. You just want nice clean drum sounds. From there you process after.

There are also things you can do like put these kits into some nice drum rooms and spaces via reverbs, (outside reverb plugin, not the drum vst reverb. These can be not that great. Unless its got some really great room options of course) and then use the right compressor over the drum bus. Some notable drum bus compressors for me over the years are API2500, Klanghelm DC8C3 and Tokyo Dawn Labs Kotelnikov GE can really tame drums well. The SSL bus compressor can be good too. Lately I have been into the Shadow Hills Mastering compressor. Pricey but amazing

Limiters can help. Like PSP Xenon over a drum bus not working too hard but just adding in more rms component and pulling the transient spikes down. Something like Xenon can do it well and somehow still keep everything sounding loud but punchy.

About drum VI's, the actual samples are important too. Really spikey transients often result in a thinner sound, often means the snare was hit way too hard to start with. When you play a (Sonor) wood snare with a wood tip, softer, for example, you get this fat, wide but still punchy and crisp sound, but the actual leading spikey edge is much lower.

Jemusic wroteWhen you mic a drum kit with say full range overheads and say a kick, a pretty decent sound can result, especially if it is a nice sounding kit. It should be easy to control the spikes and get quite a strong rms component with medium sized spikes for the transients. The individual mics will be closer and hence more detailed and this means faster transients. You can still soften these with the right plugins now especially. A transient shaper is a helpful tool. It can take a thin very snappy sound and make it fatter and slightly wider too and also less spikey. I like the Waves Smack Attack for example. (often on sale for $29)

They can also work in reverse. Take a sound that should be snappy but for some reason is a little sloppy or slow and snap it up quite a bit.

The drum plugin does not need to do any processing really. You just want nice clean drum sounds. From there you process after.

There are also things you can do like put these kits into some nice drum rooms and spaces via reverbs, (outside reverb plugin, not the drum vst reverb. These can be not that great. Unless its got some really great room options of course) and then use the right compressor over the drum bus. Some notable drum bus compressors for me over the years are API2500, Klanghelm DC8C3 and Tokyo Dawn Labs Kotelnikov GE can really tame drums well. The SSL bus compressor can be good too. Lately I have been into the Shadow Hills Mastering compressor. Pricey but amazing

Limiters can help. Like PSP Xenon over a drum bus not working too hard but just adding in more rms component and pulling the transient spikes down. Something like Xenon can do it well and somehow still keep everything sounding loud but punchy.

About drum VI's, the actual samples are important too. Really spikey transients often result in a thinner sound, often means the snare was hit way too hard to start with. When you play a (Sonor) wood snare with a wood tip, softer, for example, you get this fat, wide but still punchy and crisp sound, but the actual leading spikey edge is much lower.

Yes, I'm with you. I had no idea about any of this 5 seconds ago. But ripping my hair out using plugins on snare tracks that literally had no impact on the snare sound in the drum bus led me, eventually (I'm a little slow), to looking at the overheads in this particular situation. And to realise that the OH's contained 99% of the snare and kick sound was a real doozy. Literally...the snare was peaking outrageously because it was all in the OH channel...which I did not touch in my DAW. I was utterly on the wrong page chasing a mirage by concentrating on the snare channel.

Now things make more sense. There's options in EZD to use "original mix", which I believe is a more raw mix of the drums. You can also disable bleed in many/ most situations. Perhaps the "original mix" option disables much of the bleed (the snare being 99% in the OH channel is what I'm getting at) by default.

Anyway, this is a minor revolution in mixing for me. Maybe I can finally make a start at creating a solid drum foundation from which to base the rest of my mix. Thanks for your logical explanations.

Many experienced drum mixers (but not all) put a compressor on the OH channel. It's just another way to both impact the weight of the kit and reign in stray transients. I would actually try to pull the snares and bass out of the OH mix as an experiment (not entirely, but somewhat) so you can begin to influence the direct snare and kick tracks more effectively.

roland1 wroteMany experienced drum mixers (but not all) put a compressor on the OH channel. It's just another way to both impact the weight of the kit and reign in stray transients. I would actually try to pull the snares and bass out of the OH mix as an experiment (not entirely, but somewhat) so you can begin to influence the direct snare and kick tracks more effectively.

Right on. Yep, I've just been trying that. Not sure how successfully.

Thanks

Yeah, your basic choices are:
1. Start your mix with the OH tracks and only add from the other tracks what you think is missing (or could have a little more in level or sound) in that mix.
2. Build your mix from the close mics (kick in/out, snare top/bottom), tom 1, ...) and treat the OH tracks as metal mics only, which means that you have to gate and low-cut everything else out of them.

SwitchBack wroteYeah, your basic choices are:
1. Start your mix with the OH tracks and only add from the other tracks what you think is missing (or could have a little more in level or sound) in that mix.
2. Build your mix from the close mics (kick in/out, snare top/bottom), tom 1, ...) and treat the OH tracks as metal mics only, which means that you have to gate and low-cut everything else out of them.

Yes, I understand. Nice and clear. Thanks.

Can anyone tell me how to do this...I don't want to use the splitter tool. I'd like to do it with buses and sends. Here's what I want to do:

I have a kick on one channel and the snare on another channel. Both of these channels go to the drum bus. I want to send the kick to a new channel and the snare to a new channel. On the new channels I want to heavily compress the kick and the snare. Then I want to be able to use the faders on those 4 channels to balance the uncompressed kick and snare with the heavily compressed kick and snare and then have those levels finally go to the drum bus. In other words it's parallel compression.

I don't want to use the splitter tool. I would like to do it all on visible channels.

How do I do that in SO?

Thanks