problem in mix...advice needed..

[festal]

Hello guys, nice forum with great tips and tricks..got lots on my mind asking right now but gonna narrow it down.
1.when i built my drum loop(house music mostly) and when the snare hits together with my kick a lot of headroom(in my opinion)goes way.lets say i want to add to my track a snare and a clap(lets say like trentemoellers remix do what u do), i see that if lets say i draw my kick and my master peaks lets say at -12 when i add my snare my master can go up to -8.and when i put my bass goes to -6 - 5 or sthin like that and when i add my other instruments the headroom is mostly gone.and lets say i pull down the kick and some instr. so that more headroom is available, then when i try and make a quick limiting to my track(L2) i discover that the kick is preety low in volume compared to other tracks.what am i doing wrong?are the kicks of the ''professional'' tracks sound that loud due to the mastering process?is there a special treatment between kick and snare?in some tracks it just seems to my ear that when the snare and kick hit together there is a balanced blend meaning that the kick just gives the bass tone and the snare-clap give the definition and the smack..eq?compression?
2.similar to the above..what can i do when a certain element in the mix eats up a lot of headroom(f.e an hi-tom arpeggiator)?

Dont know if i am asking too much but these are some things that annoy me for a long time and i would really really appreciate any help or advice..Thank you guys in advance..Bill

[Superchibisan]

if something eats headroom, compress it and put it at a lower peak volume.

the issue of headroom disappearing when you have more sounds is not an "issue" persay, but a fact of sound.

what you should do, to control peaks, is compress. bus your drums down to ONE audio track, and add a compressor to that channel. compress to a good sound and now you have dynamics managment! (you can also compress each element of the drums individually.

and pro tracks, post mastering, are usually being limited to all hell. (sometimes 3-8db of peaks are being sheared off!)

i don't recommend so much compression on an overall track... takes the life out of it. but what can i do? i can't control their productions...

but compression is the KEY to dance music. i compress nearly everything... my drums have been getting some different treatment as of late... with less compression and more colouration... does wonders to the sound quality....

[diskowipe]

take the L2 off your master, your kick is obviously triggering the limiter so its being squashed and losing all power. If you still want master bus compression, get a multiband limiter like waves L3-LL, this way the volume of the kick will not affect the other frequency ranges as far as compression goes

[festal]

Thanks a lot guys...Superchibisan the bus compression ure sayin can include every single bit of the "drum loop"?meaning apart from the kick and snare can i bus send the hihats congas bleeps and bloops that i want to add to my loop?and another thing i tried to bus compress the kick and snare and had a little question about the threshold..i assume that the settings of the threshold attack and release depend on the style of music that u want to make..i ve bussed my kick channel and my snare(house music genre) chanel into and audio channel as u said and and experimented with the settings and i came to decision of the threshold about -19db 4-5 attack and 50 or sthin release which as a result sounded good to my ears..how the settings seem to u having in mind that i used a 909 kick and snare?am i exaggerating somewhere?and also do the sample packs like vengeance and etc need compression?
Discowipe the l3-ll limiter is the l3 multimaximizer or is it a different version?
Thnx for the help!Bill.

[Superchibisan]

yeah, include everything!

or just do your kick and your snare!

whatever sounds cool

i'd probably open up that attack on the compressor... its nice to have some snap... 15-30ms of attack is great... adjust release to taste... short release times create distortion of sorts, which can sound good on drums and create more snap!