Drum Bus Plugins and Processing
- Thread starter Klinical
- Start date
How much do you guys process your drums? If so what plugins do you use?
Would be good to see how other people approach it!
I use Thrillseeker LA, its awesome and free!!! there is a good youtube video to teach you how to use it, very easy and very effective
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2008
- Location
- Exeter
I usually have a bus or send for parallel compression and leave the rest fairly unprocessed.
Klinical
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2016
This a compressor?I use Thrillseeker LA, its awesome and free!!! there is a good youtube video to teach you how to use it, very easy and very effective
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2010
- Location
- Northampton
EQ, compression, transient/ envelope shaping, saturation are the go to for me, but I ain't no DJ Sly yet.. 
Ihamitsu
Random Nolifer
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2016
- Location
- Czech republic, Opava
It really depends, but usially FericTDS to "glue" it together. compressor for same reason, reverb for same reason...
Basicaly I have drums sounding as I want them separately and then I use drum bus to sound them more as whole...
Basicaly I have drums sounding as I want them separately and then I use drum bus to sound them more as whole...
- Joined
- May 16, 2009
- Location
- Ghent, Belgium
I use compression & limiting on seperate drums, then group them and use glue compression & reeverb (just a tiny tiny bit) and sometimes a slight amount of a preset on camelphat..
This really all depends on the track tho, sometimes i even don't use compression and a huge amount of reeverb..
This really all depends on the track tho, sometimes i even don't use compression and a huge amount of reeverb..
Hurlant Chamber
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2015
- Location
- North West
I keep the break separate from the main drum bus and I've been using Ableton's Glue compressor on the bus then EQ & drive on individual drum tracks.
Chris K
Member
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2016
Multiband compression (generally pretty light), transient shaper sometimes (Flux Bittersweet), and sometimes a bit of distortion before all that. I do the drum reverb as a send and bus it back into the drum bus usually as well. Every track is a little different though.
On individual hits
Varies quite significantly from track to track, but, in no particular order,
- Usually some bits of volume shaping/gating to tighten things up on individual elements as needed
- Overdrive/distortion, usually parallel processed in if i do use it at all
- EQ/compression, as needed. Usually roll my snares off somewhere between 8khz-12khz to avoid that brutal high end hit.. this really depends on the sample chosen/sound created though, sometimes its not necessary.
- Sometimes i'll sidechain breaks so they dip when kick/snares hit to get some pumping action going on. very fast attack and release times if i do this, but slowing down release can give you cool pumping effects on occasion.
on the bus
- BusDriver compressor can help bring things to life sometimes, has a decent tube drive feature. Sometimes it downright sucks though, depends on whats going through it.
- Some very light limiting compression to address peaking so I can get some more volume out of em. Too much and it destroys the drum's tone real quick.
- Usually reverb mixed in at 5-10%, sometimes significantly more if i'm going for weird spacey drum things. Reverb always has the low end cut from it, at least below 100hz, sometimes higher.
usually i leave my main drum bus pretty clean tbh, i like to do most of my processing on a per-hit-type basis (all snares together, all kicks together, bongos, hats, cymbal hits, etc) then send them to a master drum bus afterwards
Varies quite significantly from track to track, but, in no particular order,
- Usually some bits of volume shaping/gating to tighten things up on individual elements as needed
- Overdrive/distortion, usually parallel processed in if i do use it at all
- EQ/compression, as needed. Usually roll my snares off somewhere between 8khz-12khz to avoid that brutal high end hit.. this really depends on the sample chosen/sound created though, sometimes its not necessary.
- Sometimes i'll sidechain breaks so they dip when kick/snares hit to get some pumping action going on. very fast attack and release times if i do this, but slowing down release can give you cool pumping effects on occasion.
on the bus
- BusDriver compressor can help bring things to life sometimes, has a decent tube drive feature. Sometimes it downright sucks though, depends on whats going through it.
- Some very light limiting compression to address peaking so I can get some more volume out of em. Too much and it destroys the drum's tone real quick.
- Usually reverb mixed in at 5-10%, sometimes significantly more if i'm going for weird spacey drum things. Reverb always has the low end cut from it, at least below 100hz, sometimes higher.
usually i leave my main drum bus pretty clean tbh, i like to do most of my processing on a per-hit-type basis (all snares together, all kicks together, bongos, hats, cymbal hits, etc) then send them to a master drum bus afterwards
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2015
- Location
- Frederick, MD, USA
i process mine the same way as shown in Fanu's gate tutorial these days anyhow...
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