Comments on: Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

By: Ian G Morris

Ian G Morris — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:27:16 +0000

Hi! Nice site!

I often wonder why the received wisdom is to use very short attack times with parallel compression?

When parallel compressing drums I love a long attack time. This allows the snap of the kick and snare to pass through, giving both punch and fatness when combined with the unprocessed track. Of course, your peak levels are going to be a little higher so you need to watch for that.

Similarly on vocals, a long attack accentuates the crispness of hard consonants like “T”, “C”, etc.

With both drums and vocals the release time needs to be set according to the song. I tend to go for short release times, especially on drums, so that the room sound is brought up quickly after the drum hit. To me there’s nothing nicer than a well-recorded kit in a good room through an 1176 with long attack and short release! Punch heaven! Pretty sure that was the Led Zep 4 sound!

By: kevin

kevin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:24:14 +0000

Thank you so much for this article. I’m using Ozone 4 and taking a class. The class instructed us to use Ozone’s global setting (in the multiband dynamics section) and adjust the mix level. It works but I found it very confusing as compared to what you described and not with as much control. Thanks!!!

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:16:23 +0000

love the audio samples! and now the dilemma remains; to include the overheads, or not to include the overheads?

By: randyE

randyE — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:26:32 +0000

fantastic! someone mentioned the words “parallel compression” in a conversation today so i googled it and got this page/site. FUCKING AWESOME! i’ll be here more than at the porn sites, now.

thanks, culligan man!

By: Third Take » Sonar Busing Praxis

Third Take » Sonar Busing Praxis — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:28:41 +0000

[...] Parallel Compression is a technique that is used to get a “fatter” drum sound, while preserving the natural attack of the drums. You do this by mixing the raw kick and snare tracks with heavily compressed copies of those tracks. (See this article at Hometracked). While you could simply clone the tracks and insert compressors on the copies, there is a much more elegant solution using busses. [...]

By: des

des — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:55:18 +0000

Hey Andy, thanks, and sorry I missed your comment before. I added a note to the article because your point is an important one!

Cheers.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:09:39 +0000

Great technique. I use it all the time, but be careful; the compressor plug-in can induce latency, which can shift the phase of the overall drum sound.

If your DAW has plug-in delay compensation, then you needn’t worry, but if it doesn’t (like in Pro-Tools M-Powered/LE *grumblegrumblegrumble*), you have to compensate either by using the time-adjuster plug in on the uncompressed drum bus, or by bouncing the uncompressed drum bus to an audio track, and shifting it backwards a couple of samples after the fact.

By: Third Take » Parallel Compression

Third Take » Parallel Compression — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:42:26 +0000

[...] I found a great article on parallel compression at a blog called Hometracked. It looks like a great blog and I plan on keeping up with it. [...]

By: des

des — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:35:16 +0000

Thanks Dave.

> I was wondering why you sent the tracks to the CompII bus post-fader.
Heh, carelessness :)

I usually set it up the way you described, for the reasons you listed. I just rushed things putting this example together, and overlooked the routing.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:29:36 +0000

Great article. I was wondering why you sent the tracks to the CompII bus post-fader. With that setup, any changes to the track fader affect the amount of compression the track gets in the CompII bus. If you send them pre-fader, you can use the track fader to mix the drums in the drum bus without affecting the amount of compression on the kick/snare.