Drum Sound Processing
Drum Sound Processing
An article by Socky42
Some of you asked for a quick run through of my drum sound in my Doom remix so I thought I’d make this guide on how I process my drums. I use Superior Drummer with the Metal Foundry add-on but it really doesn’t matter what you use as long as they’re good sounds. E.g. EZDrummer 1/2, Steven Slate Drums, the default Avatar Superior Drummer etc.
The most important parts of my drum sound that make the biggest difference are the overheads, room mic and the reverbs that I talk about near the end.
I can do a guide using just the Avatar kit if enough people want it, since that's what most people here use anyway.
Sound samples:
- Before
- After (with Kick Drum]
First up we have the shaping EQ, this is pretty extreme but I couldn’t really find a particular sample that fit my needs so I just found one that was close enough and did some broad EQ boosts.
Then I use Fabfilter Pro-Q 2 for some surgical EQ, cutting out some undesirable frequencies. Obviously you can use any EQ plugin, I just like Pro-Q because you can solo the individual bands. This stage really depends on your arrangement/mix, e.g. do you want a clicky kick or not?
Then I use Waves RBass to fatten up the sound a bit and add some tight low-end, this isn’t a necessary step since not everyone will own it but it’s on sale now for $39.
Finally the compressor - in Logic Pro, the default compressor comes with some analog emulation and in this case I’m using the ‘Classic VCA’ setting; but any compressor should be fine. Ratio is at 4 with around 5db of compression.
