quote:

Originally posted by tecnolover There is no reason for doing that. None. If you are running out of headroom in the mix to think you have to compress the kick like that, then you are mixing TOO LOUD! Lower the levels on all your tracks. You should always start mixing by setting the kicks level first and then everything else in relation to it. That way the kick gets all the headroom it needs in the beginning. Right. Compressing the kicks attack transient along with the rest of the waveform only makes it less "punchy". It needs large dynamic range to be punchy. Reduce the transients peak with compression and it loses that dynamic range. Many noobs make this mistake of setting the compressors attack time too fast and it totally dulls the beat. ~tecno

What do you mean no reason lol, you can do anything you want! its just a trick to get your kick sounding louder without eating up more headroom

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I have read in many tutorials to use a very fast attack or no attack at all. I have never got anything sounding good when using settings like this on kick drums. My main use (and most others) in using a compressor on electronic drums is to bring out the attack, not remove it. If i want to do that i will use a limiter like used in the thomas penton samples.

Some kicks, if you look at the waveform, will have a larger spike at the beginning aka the attack transient, than other kicks.
If you compress this transient down and you dont notice any loss of punch etc (i.e. if your kick doesnt really any worse to your ears) then you will be able to raise the overall volume of your kick and without eating into the headroom you already have

Try a raw 909 kick thru a compressor, i use UAD Pbus comp, attack 0.1ms, release 100ms, ratio 2:1 - gives u a different sounding kick (a nicer 1 to my ears )

dunno if im explaining this correctly, i think i saw an article on SOS regarding electronic music and transient samples describing how compression can make stuff louder, ill try and find the link

anyway reason i posted was that the topic was overall mix volume. If you want your track to sound loud then i think stuff like this can help you out

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Of course, i agree.

Depending how you layer kicks etc, you may end up with a kick with a VERY sharp transient. In this case like you say, just use your ears. I would still much rather use a limiter for this purpose though.

Creative compression is a sound design tool. I use compression almost exclusively for designing transients. The empirical labs distressor is what i use and it can completely change the vibe of drums etc.

My original argument was many people think they must compress their kick drums with a very fast attack ( i have seen this in many amateur tutorials, even on here). When its the complete opposite that adds the punch.

quote:

Originally posted by evo8 Some kicks, if you look at the waveform, will have a larger spike at the beginning aka the attack transient, than other kicks. If you compress this transient down and you dont notice any loss of punch etc (i.e. if your kick doesnt really any worse to your ears) then you will be able to raise the overall volume of your kick and without eating into the headroom you already have

This is fine IF you don't notice any loss of punch. However, in my experience, 99 times out of 100, if you pull the kick's attack transient down, the kick will be left with greatly reduced punch.

This is a creative choice though - a number of modern trance songs feature kicks with a softer front end. As long as it sounds good in context, it's fine.

I can't imagine we'll see Sean Tyas compressing his kicks with a fast attack setting anytime soon though... (obviously there are heaps of other producers who use hard sounding kicks, it's not just Sean...)