Advice for recording live drums w/Digi001

[Rober50]

I've got some gents in to my studio that want to use live drums on a recording. Up until now, I've simply broken out several channels from a V-drum kit that my drummer uses for rehearsal. Do I run compression on the toms, snare, and kick going IN to the digi001? I'm having a problem dealing with the extreme dynamics involved. Any advice is appreciated!

My system:

Athlon 3.2
ASUS A8N VM Motherboard
3X 180 Sata HDS
Windows XP Pro SP1
1.5 GB RAM
Presonus Digimax LT w/lightpipe
Digi001

[Naagzh]

You could compress on the way in, but I'd only recommend that you do so if you have some nice outboard compressors AND the experience to dial in settings that you won't hate later. Track dry and compress later with plugins.

If you experience peaking, then simply turn down the gain on your preamps. It's really not that necessary to have hotter-than-hell signals ALL the time, especially when working with a 24-bit DAW.

With live drums, the bleed from all the mics turns compression into a tricky thing because as you compress, you raise the volume of the bleed. Sure, this can be somewhat controlled with gating and editing, but if these are done too severly the drums won't sound natural.

Nothing like parallel compression to fatten and flatten your drum sound. Route all drum tracks to two separate stereo aux tracks for two drum submixes. Label the first aux track NormalDrums and raise the fader. Label the other DrumsComp or something and insert your favorite compressor on it (watch out for plugin delay). Get that compressor to pump and breathe in time with the beat, and sneak it in underneath the other raw, unaffected stereo submix. This way, the dynamics will still be there, but the sound will fatten up nicely.