Techno drum/perc. bus and compression help

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I feel like THE place where I have the hardest of times is when it comes down to compressing and increasing level of the song. I can have a good sounding song but theres times when the project seems to take a dive at the very end when trying to increase the level. After referencing several techno/electro/house tracks, I went to the part where only the bass drum and HH is hitting and they manage to get it to around -12Lufs with peaks at -1.

Heres some questions, feel free to add other tips or suggestions as well.

1. How are they managing to squeeze out so many db and still make it sound powerful, clean, and not all squashed? Everytime an attempt is made to limit the drum kit the bass drum loses it’s power as it gets squashed.

2. How many db of limiting on bass drum is generally safe?

3. Do you guys keep the bass drum on it’s own seperate channel? I’ve been leaving it on the drum kit with all the other instruments.

After referencing some professional songs, it seems that if the drum kit is on point, everything else comes together; including getting the proper loudness without sending the master compressor and limiting all over the place.

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IMO, with techno, you need to unlearn the term "drum kit"

Start thinking in terms like Low, Mid, High.

What works for me is having a bass bus that the kick and sub bass will be routed to. The only plugin that i will have on my kick channel is an EQ. It won't need any compression, because i always use a sampler that lets me tailor the kicks envelope to what i need.

So the Low bus will be kick and bass combined, and run through some distortion or saturation devices (currently using SDDR and sometimes Melda waveshaper). Sometimes i will boost the bass of the kick/sub signal before it hits the saturator.

For the Mid bus, i send claps, lead synths, vocals and fx.
If i'm using heavy sidechain pumping, i'll sometimes have a secondary Mid channel with minimal sidechaining, so i can let the clap and some other sounds through.

For the High bus, it's obviously for the hats, cymbals, and often even the clap will go here instead of the mid.

Each bus will have different plugins doing different things, but all these busses will merge together on the master bus, where they will go through some multiband compression, 30hz HP, and then a limiter or two.

In my experience, the best way of getting loud masters consistently, is to always use a stealth sidechain effect on the Mid Bus.
This means an LFO tool that quickly ducks the mids out of the way when the kick hits. And i mean quickly. It has to be so fast, you can't hear any ducking, but it's enough that it prevents the mids stealing headroom from the kick.
This is why i'll often have two Mid busses. Because some lead sounds are not suitable for ducking, so i'll give those sounds their own bus with faster and shallower than usual ducking, but still just enough to give the kick some headroom.

I should also mention that i don't use ducking on the High bus, so the high bus will help to mask the mid ducking even further

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_al_ wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:47 am IMO, with techno, you need to unlearn the term "drum kit"

Start thinking in terms like Low, Mid, High.

What works for me is having a bass bus that the kick and sub bass will be routed to. The only plugin that i will have on my kick channel is an EQ. It won't need any compression, because i always use a sampler that lets me tailor the kicks envelope to what i need.

So the Low bus will be kick and bass combined, and run through some distortion or saturation devices (currently using SDDR and sometimes Melda waveshaper). Sometimes i will boost the bass of the kick/sub signal before it hits the saturator.

For the Mid bus, i send claps, lead synths, vocals and fx.
If i'm using heavy sidechain pumping, i'll sometimes have a secondary Mid channel with minimal sidechaining, so i can let the clap and some other sounds through.

For the High bus, it's obviously for the hats, cymbals, and often even the clap will go here instead of the mid.

Each bus will have different plugins doing different things, but all these busses will merge together on the master bus, where they will go through some multiband compression, 30hz HP, and then a limiter or two.

In my experience, the best way of getting loud masters consistently, is to always use a stealth sidechain effect on the Mid Bus.
This means an LFO tool that quickly ducks the mids out of the way when the kick hits. And i mean quickly. It has to be so fast, you can't hear any ducking, but it's enough that it prevents the mids stealing headroom from the kick.
This is why i'll often have two Mid busses. Because some lead sounds are not suitable for ducking, so i'll give those sounds their own bus with faster and shallower than usual ducking, but still just enough to give the kick some headroom.

I should also mention that i don't use ducking on the High bus, so the high bus will help to mask the mid ducking even further
Wow. Very good insight. I knew something was off, in my chain overall. Always felt like the kick was somehow being held back. Might be becuase as you pointed out, I need to do away with the drumkit mentality. For instance, clap would limit the BD on drum kit channel, then again on master, and so on.

Im using bitwig and have a stock “dynamics” plugin. It sidechains instruments to trigger the ducking, so I can use BD to trigger it. Has attack that goes down to 0ms, release, ratio, and threshold. Is that pretty much same as the LFO from Xfer or would you recommend picking up LFO tool?

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I use an LFO tool because i can get a tighter shape that i am always more confident with.
You got choice of Melda, Cableguys or Xfer (I use FL LovePhilter).

Pattern 1: no ducking
Pattern 2: ducking

Automate between 1 and 2 for when the kick is playing

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Why do you think you need to compress so much? If you suck all the dynamics out of the music then it will sound flat.

First of all, get the levels right - once you have a rough mix, then you can work on improving it. That doesn't mean compressing the crap out of everything, as you can do a lot to the sound and perceived volume with some EQ-ing.

Secondly, you don't have to compress the entire signal - you can compress the signal in parallel with an uncompressed signal, and that will give you a less squashed sound.

Lastly, if you try to get your mix as loud as you can, you'll screw it up. Guaranteed.

If you really do need to have it louder, do that when you master the stereo mixdown, don't try to mix it that way.
Sweet child in time...

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Deep Purple wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:27 pm Why do you think you need to compress so much? If you suck all the dynamics out of the music then it will sound flat.

First of all, get the levels right - once you have a rough mix, then you can work on improving it. That doesn't mean compressing the crap out of everything, as you can do a lot to the sound and perceived volume with some EQ-ing.

Secondly, you don't have to compress the entire signal - you can compress the signal in parallel with an uncompressed signal, and that will give you a less squashed sound.

Lastly, if you try to get your mix as loud as you can, you'll screw it up. Guaranteed.

If you really do need to have it louder, do that when you master the stereo mixdown, don't try to mix it that way.
Just trying to get some loudness in, and increase the energy. Despite -14 LUFS being the general output of a lot of streaming sites, that kind of loudness, with peaks at -1db, doesnt bring the energy to some styles of techno. My last album was at -14 but trying to get it down to maybe 12-13LUFS, which isnt all that crazy for electronic music. It’s more of a sound/vibe Im going for. Lots of electronic music is a even louder, and still sounds good and dynamic.

I’ve read a couple techno producers saying parralel on master isnt the best of choices with techno, but IDK for sure tbh. Think it was over at subsekt where I read it. “Commit to it or dont.”

As far as mix levels, theyre pretty close to some reference tracks, but I still couldnt get the loudness out. Gonna give the tips from thia thread a try as soon as possible.

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That's some cool tips _al_, I have to give those a try.

I don't make 'that kind of techno' but I have some luck with setting up dirt-channels: return channels with extremely heavy compression and saturation. I also use a lot of virtual analog plug-ins to saturate and fatten everything up from the start.

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_al_ wrote: Fri Mar 08, 2019 10:47 am IMO, with techno, you need to unlearn the term "drum kit"

Start thinking in terms like Low, Mid, High.

What works for me is having a bass bus that the kick and sub bass will be routed to. The only plugin that i will have on my kick channel is an EQ. It won't need any compression, because i always use a sampler that lets me tailor the kicks envelope to what i need.

So the Low bus will be kick and bass combined, and run through some distortion or saturation devices (currently using SDDR and sometimes Melda waveshaper). Sometimes i will boost the bass of the kick/sub signal before it hits the saturator.

For the Mid bus, i send claps, lead synths, vocals and fx.
If i'm using heavy sidechain pumping, i'll sometimes have a secondary Mid channel with minimal sidechaining, so i can let the clap and some other sounds through.

For the High bus, it's obviously for the hats, cymbals, and often even the clap will go here instead of the mid.

Each bus will have different plugins doing different things, but all these busses will merge together on the master bus, where they will go through some multiband compression, 30hz HP, and then a limiter or two.

In my experience, the best way of getting loud masters consistently, is to always use a stealth sidechain effect on the Mid Bus.
This means an LFO tool that quickly ducks the mids out of the way when the kick hits. And i mean quickly. It has to be so fast, you can't hear any ducking, but it's enough that it prevents the mids stealing headroom from the kick.
This is why i'll often have two Mid busses. Because some lead sounds are not suitable for ducking, so i'll give those sounds their own bus with faster and shallower than usual ducking, but still just enough to give the kick some headroom.

I should also mention that i don't use ducking on the High bus, so the high bus will help to mask the mid ducking even further
Elegant approach. I do something similar, but not quite as structured as what you've explained. Gonna give that a try on the next track. :tu:

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