Why is my drum bus compressor sucking all the low end out of my kick drum???

thedjnifty

thedjnifty

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As the title reads basically... when I try and apply a bus compressor on my drum bus it seems to take all the low end out of my kick drum.

Anyone have any experience with this and know how I can avoid it?

I've got a nice deep juicy kick on the go but when I try and glue my break together with a bit of bus compression the kick just thins out massively!

Any help would be much appreciated!

Peace!
 
Just wana check that you're not mistaking the fact that headroom taken up by the sub of the kick, i.e the peak, isn't just being compressed to sound quieter?
 
What are your attack and envelope settings? Remember the low frequency waveforms are longer and need a more time to develop so to speak.
 
Russla-DJ said:
Just wana check that you're not mistaking the fact that headroom taken up by the sub of the kick, i.e the peak, isn't just being compressed to sound quieter?
Click to expand...

I don't think so man, definitely losing some real bottom end, I've matched up the make-up gain on the compressor and can definitely hear a lot of lower freq info coming back in when I bypass the compressor.

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sam the dnb man said:
What are your attack and envelope settings? Remember the low frequency waveforms are longer and need a more time to develop so to speak.
Click to expand...

Well I've noticed that the more I increased the attack the more bottom end I get back, but that's at pretty long attack times and might just be because the compressor's barely reacting to the kick in this case...

But yeah I see what you're saying on the low waveforms, it just seems a bit of a weird one... I need to bus compress my break for some glue but I've got a really nice deep kick that I don't want to be thinned out, maybe I just need to make the best of what I can and compromise...

Unless anyone else has any other experience / ideas / insight?
 
It depends on what kind of kick it is, but my guess is that the release it taking out the sub tail. Take the release all the way down, and if it still takes out the low end, try a different compressor, like an FET.
 
Can you post your settings nifty? I personally think your ratio is too high from what you've said.
 
D-Jhepz said:
am i wrong in saying you shouldnt compress the kick?? i dont, no processing my kicks wats so every except for eq
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you can compress anything, as long as you know what your doing. You're limited in what you can do when your doing kicks, but its still useful. i personally use it for shaping and character.

Also, i know you know what your doing, but youre really missing out if all you do is eq your kicks. I use saturation and multiband compression often, it makes a huuuge difference.
 
D-Jhepz said:
am i wrong in saying you shouldnt compress the kick?? i dont, no processing my kicks wats so every except for eq
Click to expand...

So wrong :P

Its subjective to the track but by todays standards i'm 100% sure every does, heavy or light.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I thinkkk after a bit of messing around that you were right Russla and the main issue I'm having is just that the kick is the loudest part of my break so it's being compressed the most in this case.

I originally thought it was mostly just sub end freqs I was losing in the compression but after another listen today I think it's just the overall level that's being compressed down.

All I'm gonna do is suitably compress the break and then maybe bring up the level of the kick on it's individual track if I feel like it's lost too much.

Nice one guys!
 
Fair shout, I always run my drums thru Pro-L now to see what part is peaking louder than others. Ive found that my snares are ALWAYS way too loud using this method. That might help as visual aid before getting to the compression stage.
 
Russla-DJ said:
Fair shout, I always run my drums thru Pro-L now to see what part is peaking louder than others. Ive found that my snares are ALWAYS way too loud using this method. That might help as visual aid before getting to the compression stage.
Click to expand...

Yeah I mean at the moment my snare is quite a bit louder than my kick... but then it sounds right so I'm happy to trust my ears!

Going back on what I said previously, I did actually lose quite a bit of low end on the kick through compression, I boosted up the kick afterwards and none of that low end came back so I definitely lost something... I then thought about trying to eq it back with a low shelf but it just didn't really sound right so I left it...

Still not really sure what it could be, must be something to do with deep sound science I guess!
 
Russla-DJ said:
So even on a spectrum analyiser it actually loses low end?
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Yeah I mean the peak is also lower but I can see below that that it's losing a bit of chunk from 100hz down.

As I say it's definitely more than just level as when I then went back and boosted up the level of the kick I wasn't getting back any of that low end I'd lost... is a weird one!
 
If your compressor has a sidechain (not that kind) use it. Not talking about the pumping type of sidechain but the type that is a hpf. It would prevent the lows from triggering the compressor.
 
Mania said:
you can compress anything, as long as you know what your doing. You're limited in what you can do when your doing kicks, but its still useful. i personally use it for shaping and character.

Also, i know you know what your doing, but youre really missing out if all you do is eq your kicks. I use saturation and multiband compression often, it makes a huuuge difference.
Click to expand...


How do you saturate things?
 
LikesItHardware said:
If your compressor has a sidechain (not that kind) use it. Not talking about the pumping type of sidechain but the type that is a hpf. It would prevent the lows from triggering the compressor.
Click to expand...

That's a really good shout actually man, I've got Pro-C which I'm pretty sure will do the job, might give me the result I'm looking for!

Will report back with results tomorrow!
 
You can bus all your tops (hats, rides, perc etc) to one bus and compress that quite heavily for that thicker sound and then feed the kick and snare (already processed to taste) into a master drum bus with just light or parallel compression.

Or just using parallel compression on the drum bus might solve some of your problem.
 
Mania said:
you can compress anything, as long as you know what your doing. You're limited in what you can do when your doing kicks, but its still useful. i personally use it for shaping and character.

Also, i know you know what your doing, but youre really missing out if all you do is eq your kicks. I use saturation and multiband compression often, it makes a huuuge difference.
Click to expand...

a good kick can do a longgggg way, one thing i do do though is layer the kick with the same kick, however i adjust the adsr so its just a click adds presence to the kick in the higher end.... also dont you worry son there is many a parallel processing agwan in the mix :korf:
 
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