Hey guys, I have a couple of compression questions.  

When you record, do you compress before tape, or after, ie. mixdown?

Can you share your settings?  Slow/fast attack, slow/fast release, ratios.

I'm micing my drums with 2 SM 57 overheads, 1 SM 57 on Snare, and one Beta 91 on kik.

I'm having a hard time with this, I can't get my drums to come up in the mix so it sounds like I'm playing with some volume.

There is a great article in DRUM! magazine right now (the issue with The Killers drummer, something... Vanucci) that has engineers discussing some of these very topics. I highly advise you get a copy. You can also go to -

http://www.recording.org

..a great site to search through to get ideas what the pros are doing.


BTW: There are MANY different approaches to these subjects. Just some general stuff to practice using.

Jim

Cool signature sweetrock  

Historically I have compressed before tape but have gotten the best results using as little comp. as possible.

If your levels are spiking or aren't as consistent as you like you can try fast attack, slow release, no more than 3 maybe 5:1 comp.  I like a little compression on mix down- see if it compliments the drum mix.  

I would also move the 57's you have as overheads to the toms and invest in some condensers for overheads.

A good mic preamp will make the spikes in the signal sound sweet and warm before distortion while cheapo pre amps sound grainy and plain bad when they distort (which they do very easily).

Dynamics are a good thing in recording I think. But it depends on what you are going for!

I prefer multiband compression in the mastering phase.  A little at mix down might be ok too.  If you need it to track as well- that's a lot of compression!  It's hard on the ears to listen to.

Ok have fun!

more "punch"-- slower attack, faster release, high ratio, low threshold.  basically you squash everything after the transient.

more "body"-- fast attack/release, play w/ threshold + ratio.  at high ratios, this becomes limiting.

i hardly ever compress on individual tracks to control dynamics; i work for tone and presence at that level.  In general, i like drums being processed as a kit w/ compression, more than individually.  I'll usually mult my drums out to 3 stereo channels; 1 being just a nice-sounding drum mix, 2 being for body-- really limited w/ eq afterwards, and 3 being for punch-- slow attack compression, w/ eq before to filter out the lows that will pointlessly trigger it.

each compressor, or kind of compressor, will affect your sound differently; some will thin things out, some will enhance certain frequenices, some are good at fast and not slow and vice-versa.  you can use compression to create reverb, or gating, or any number of things.  you can use multiband compression on the whole kit to really squash your low-end and make it HUGE, without furrying up the rest of the kit.

experiment and enjoy.