I generally send the track to a reverb buss which helps bring out the snare, but that throws mud on the kick and sometimes makes the cymbals too loud. Sometimes I can put an 1176 comp on the track and adjust to taste. I can usually live with it on most RT Drum tracks, but having come from using midi drums like EZ Drummer and such where I can get complete control over each drum or cymbal, working with just a stereo track I find is often unsatisfying.

What tricks do you guys use to maximize your RT Drum tracks for your DAW mixes?

Rick

Logic Pro 9 reverb has a eq so you can cut it out of the bass drum and the cymbals. I don't buss it, but some do. Not sure about your reverb.

Locate the actual audio file for the RD you are using. They are all located within your BiaB file structure. At the end of the file are samples of each sound in the kit for that RT. If you can live with the tedium you can cut out the snare sound and place it in a new track in your DAW and then copy it it to appear under each snare hit in your RD track. Now you can put effects on just the snare track.

If you are really bored you could additionally volume shape the snare out of your RD track.

I used to do the above. Now days I simply use a Neutron full kit preset called "added snap" that works wonders on the snare with no hassle.

FWIW

Bud

Thanks Bud. I just upgraded to the Izotope Prod Bundle 2 after reading some of your comments here about Neutron. Looking forward to checking out the added snap preset for my RD track.

Rick

Rick,

Use equalization and duplicate tracks to highlight and bring to the forefront the essential sounds (typically bass drum, snare drum and cymbals).

Duplicate the stereo drum track three times then mute the original drum track. In your mind you want to dedicate each track to highlight a different sound by using equalization to remove much of the unwanted frequencies from each dedicated track. For example on the dedicated snare drum track use high and low shelf filters to remove most of the low and high frequencies while keeping the middle frequencies. Then insert a EQ, find the frequency you want to highlight and amplify it.

+++ HERE +++ is a Recording Revolution video that demonstrates this technique. He's using a laptop and headphones in a coffee shop to demonstrate the technique.

This works well in a DAW that offers high track count and grouping such as RealBand. Not so well in Band-in-a-Box with limited track count.

Great idea Jim! Now I'm having a "why didn't I think of that" moment! I use Sonar so, no track count.

I have and some use Drumagog, but I don't want to "replace" the drums sounds, usually. Biab quite often does not end the song right, so I'll take a snare note, clip and paste it to it's own track and replace it with a crash.

Thanks Jim.

I remember that RR video Jim. Was very informative for me. Cool trick/hack.

All good suggestions here. Another way is parallel compression. Waves (cheap prices at the mo) have a couple of easy-to-use parallel compressors. Manny Marroquin Tone Shaper allows you to mix the dry and wet sounds in the one plugin with EQ shaping too. Saves having to create multiple tracks.

Selective saturation can help too eg saturating lows or highs to bring them out.