Guide to Basic Snare Compression
From WikiRecording
A Guide to Basic Snare Compression
Limiting the dynamic range of a drum kit may or may not be something you want to do to the drum tracks, but there are some other cool things a compressor can do to make the drums really happening.
If you think about how a snare drum sounds, it has a beginning loud sound followed by a usually short decay.
For a simple setup, make sure that the:
- Soft button is out
- Auto button is out,
- Ratio is set to 4:1
- Attack is at its fastest setting
- Release is at a medium setting
- Adjust the threshold until you see about -1 dB on the gain reduction meters.
At this point, the snare's volume is simply lowered by 1 dB. Now slowly raise the Attack time by turning the attack knob clockwise. You should notice that the beginning transient of you snare sound is starting to jump out of the speakers and slap you in the face. This is more accentuated when using digital reverberation on the snare.
Adding a Gate
Now you can adjust the Gate on the snare to stop those other drums from 'bleeding' through the snare mic: Turn the gate release knob to about the middle position, turn the gate attack knob to fully counter-clockwise, set the gate range to -60dB, adjust the gate threshold slowly clockwise until you begin to hear those other drums disappearing. Too high of a threshold setting might disrupt the snares natural sound, too low will let those other drums open the gate. You need to adjust the gate's threshold and release to suit The drumming taste.
This simple application applies to any percussive instrument of course. Experiment!
