Ableton Forum

I've browsed tons of topics just to see a 101 explaination of those things.

->How do you bus a kick drum (using Live's send channels)?And is it suitable for House or Minimal.
->How do you compress a sampled kick (ex Vengeance Essential House Kicks)?
->Mono (via Utility Plugin) or stereo?
->How do you compress the kick (atack,release,Treshhold etc.)?

I'm just looking for a brief answer to those questions esspecially for Electronic Music Drum programming and mastering...?

Kaloyan*

www.myspace.com/kaloyangavrilov

compression settings for dance music

4 to 8:1 compression ratio.
-40db threshold
attack is dependent on program material, but usually in the area of 20-70ms.
release time is also variable. short (20-40ms) for pumping/cracking kicks, slow it down to smooth out the kick sound, longer release for more boom.

lately i've been doing my kicks in both mono AND stereo. and combining them. makes for a fat kick. what i do is a mono kick and then make two more audio tracks as busses (post fx, NOT post mixer). pan them both left and right and delay them using the track delay by a few ms. (1-14ms) use a phase analyzer to see your results. you're looking to create a perfect or oval circle. something that just covers more stereo spectrum. avoid squares.

Superchibisan -40db threshold? WTF? Are you sure you mean -40db? thats a very low threshold. Coupled with your suggested ratio of 4:1 which will reduce every 1 db over the threshold by 4db. Your talking nearly 160db of reduction here? This is going to destroy any kick drum or anything else to be fair.

Compressions Really over used and sounds gash if not used properly.

Where are you sampling your kicks from kgavrilov? If your taking from sample packs or nicking one out of someone elses tune. These will already have been compressed so there's no point in doing it again. The only time I'll ever use a comp on a kick is if I am building my own kick drum from 2 or 3 unprocessed ones. A bit of compression sometimes help bind them together and gives a little bit of a snap.

Kicks in Dance music need to be in mono! Use the Utility plug and get them dead centred. Infact, everything below about 300hz should be centred.

He's obviously trying to say there are no set rules

This I agree but I'm pretty sure that will sound more like a muffled fart than a thumping kick? I'll give it a try later???

I think the best tip is using your ears instead of carry on repeating sound frequencies...

well, it doesn't. sound like a muffled fart)

depends on the kick, but i do 2 to 5 usually for my kicks (8 if its a wimpy sample)

and the stereo effect works great. it actually creates "space" in the bass region... its very neat....

I tried the -40db thing last night and agreed it didn't sound like a fart but did sounds incredibly compressed to the point where it had completely lost its whoomf and didn't resemble a cick anymore. Basically theres no set rules though. If you get a nice sound out of it then use it!

I always keep my kicks in mono just because I've always read thats what you should do. Apparently to cut stuff to vinyl everything has to be mono below about 300hz because of cutting grooves in the record or something. Also most club systems are mono so any music that is to be played in the club, you might as well keep them in mono is my thought. For instance you mentioned you'll centre one kick and then layer another wide. This may end up causing a phasing sort of sound when summed to mono on a club system.

I'd be interested to hear how this sounds though

Maybe there's something i don't understand, but how can one say what threshold is normally used...without knowing how loud the sound is to begin with?

i do believe any high end club system will be stereo.

if you want space in your bass, use my technique. if you want punch and clarity, which to me, sounds great, stick with mono. a combination of both is optimal

Just a few notes:

Indeed keep the meat of the kick mono instead of trying to spread the whole thing to stereo. If you'd specifically like the kick to sound like it has a wide stereo field, layer a more hi-freq sound with wide stereo presence on top of it, or separate a high component from the kick with a parallel signal chain which has a firm highpass on it, and widen that instead of the whole kick.

Drfish wrote:Superchibisan -40db threshold? WTF? Are you sure you mean -40db?

It's all relative to the signal strength you're feeding into the compressor. As we're dealing with 32 bit signals here, there's so much bit depth you can very well have your mix components so quiet that a threshold that low makes sense. Always adjust compressor parameters according to the signal strength.

Drfish wrote:Coupled with your suggested ratio of 4:1 which will reduce every 1 db over the threshold by 4db. Your talking nearly 160db of reduction here?

That's not quite how a compressor works. The ratio on a compressor means the ratio of the compressor output in relation to the input signal which goes above the threshold level. If you have a ratio of 4:1, it means for every db going above the threshold only 1/4 of that amount gets through.

To illustrate: if the threshold is at -20 db, the ratio is at 4:1 and you feed the compressor a signal of -16 db (4 db above the threshold), the fully compressed signal after the attack will be at -19 db (1 db above the threshold).

nokatus knows his stuff

Nice one dude. Good explanations

I've played some pretty Hi End clubs but I'd say 99% of them have all been mono!

fat kick = good sound design, NOT compression

oh... well the one really nice club i've been to has stereo.

and wtf is wrong with the high end clubs you play? mono is soooooooooo boring.