Bus compression question

[jeam25]

Hi!

When i compressing the drums im doing it trough
an aux track.
Example:
I bus all the drums track individually to an auxiliary track and then in put a stereo comp
on this aux.track and compress all the drums.

Is this rigth ? Or i have to compress all chanels
individually?

Thanks!

[Carl Fuehrer]

SOunds good, you can also compress each channel a little too if you have the processing power. Sometimes I add a little of one comp to each drum channel then buss them and stereo comp the buss. Try it and see which way you like.

[saw]

I rather process every channel seperatly. Bus compression sounds to obvious to me, you can here the cymbals pump. I usually compress the kick (1:4) and a bit on the snare (1:3), sometimes also a little bit on toms and hihats. On the drumbus I put a compressor with just a hint of compression (1 or 2 dB gain reduction) on the loudest parts.

If you're after a agressive drumsound, heavy buscompression (1:4 - limiting) is great, it all depends on the sound you're after

[La Flange]

Might want to put the kick, toms, and snare through an aux to save CPU, but I wouldn't put the overheads through the same compressor or you can end up with drum shots pushing cymbals out, and they tend to have different demands for compressor settings anyway.

A long attack (65ms) and short release (10ms) make drums bigger, but usually makes cymbals cut too hard and brings out room noise at high frequencies, generally undesireable. It would be much better with a multiband compressor like Waves C4, but then it takes more CPU than two Digirack comps anyway.