FXpansion BFD Premium Acoustic Drum Module Mixing with BFD - Manual (Page 22)

Mixing with BFD www.fxpansion.com
4:3. EQ and compressor routing
There is no hard rule about the order in which you should place an EQ and compressor
on a channel. However, bear in mind that an EQ placed before the compressor will have
an effect on the way the compressor reacts to the signal. Single-band compressors are
not usually ‘intelligent’: they simply respond to energy in the sound, regardless of where it
occurs in the frequency spectrum.
As a general rule, most of the energy in music is towards the low end of the frequency
range. If you set up your compressor and then start increasing the bass with an EQ
placed before it in the signal path, the compressor’s response will change - it will start to
compress the signal a lot more!
One approach is to use an EQ before a compressor to filter out lower frequencies for
things like snares and percussion, in which the mid and high frequencies are usually
perhaps the most important. This will allow the compressor to react better to the
transients.
If you have access to a sidechain compressor, there are other options open to you.
Send the drum mix to an aux channel and route the aux to the sidechain input of the
compressor. Then, place an EQ in the signal path just in front of the sidechain input, and
filter out some of the low-end of the signal. This EQ will not be heard on the actual signal
- the sidechain simply tells the compressor when to compress the signal - therefore you
avoid the problem of excessive bass in the actual signal interfering with the compressor
response. Sidechain compressors offer a huge range of creative possibilities.
An EQ placed after a compressor will obviously not affect the compressor’s response. It
may be useful to insert an EQ after a compressor to compensate for any reduced high
frequencies, a situation which can occur as a result of very heavy compression.
4:4. Compression
When using compression, you can use the same techniques with BFD as you would
with a real multi-tracked drum recording. However, because of the relative lack of volume
intensity caused by real-world bleed and kit resonances on a conventional drumkit
recording, you may have to drive the compressor slightly harder to achieve the same
effects.
Always remember that a compressor is for adjusting the dynamics of individual elements:
there are no hard and fast rules that will cover every situation. It is a very source-
dependent effect, and how you should use it depends upon the context of each song!
• Attack
Set a long enough attack time on the compressor, to allow the leading edge of the sound
through. If you set too short an attack time, your drums will lack punch. You only really
want to compress the body (sustain portion) of the sound, leaving the impact of the
attack transients to cut through the mix - 50 ms or so is a good starting point. However, if