Everything really, I'd love to know the whole process. I guess most in particular what you do for your drum processing,
Well for sampled drums as well as real drums it's of course always important to use the best sounding drums you can.
In this case the Steven Slate Drums Blackbird expansion was a perfect fit for a few reasons.
I always start with balancing the samples out in the drum sampler.
Then I add vcc and vtm to the single drum tracks.
Usually I route all the Snare mics/tracks to one track (bottom and top mics), all kick mics to one track, all toms to one track (this doesn't always work), all cymbals and OH mics to one track, all room mics to one track etc and send those to one bus, the drum bus.
I then start with processing on the drum bus, usually some slight eq. Sometimes a mid cut if the while mix sounds too boxy. Sometimes a presence or high boost or a low boost if it needs some more mass.
I tend to only use the Slate Digital eq's.
I then also add some slight parallel compression with the FG-76, so with the mix knob very low.
This adds some life and I always recommend trying parallel compression to the drum bus.
There are a few ways to go about this and there are many tutorials about this. Some call this New York compression.
I then also add FG-Grey which is basically an SSL bus comp from Slate.
This one has the mix knob set to 100%.
I only go for about 1 db's of gain reduction but it glues the drums together quite nicely.
I especially like what this does to the kick.
Keep in mind that at this stage I also have some processing going on on the master fader, also vcc, vtm, vbc, revival and some lift.
This also shapes the sound a little.
Now when I get the drums as good as I can with just the busses I go to the single tracks to do more eq.
For the shells I usually cut some mids to reduce boxyness, boost some upper mids/highs for presence and attack and usually some lows as well.
This obviously depends on the source.
Sampled drums often don't need a lot of compression as well as eq because they tend to be pre-processed.
Still, a lot of samples take processing very well.
With real drums there is usually more processing required.
For a while now I've also started adding a little bit of reverb to the Snare and Toms in general.
Hope this helps a little.
Let me know if you want to know more
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