Ableton Forum

so i have a good sounding kick drum, punchy and weighty, trouble is its in the red, want to keep the feel but keep it in the green,
put the limiter on it and it just lost all its power and punch,

advice please ?

Turn everything down and turn your monitors or headphones up.

Yes, either choose the sensible approach or the other one.

That comeback doesn't work at all.

I use the limiter on the Master Track -
Next, I make sure the kick drum has its own channel -
Then, using the EQ8, I emphasize the traits of the kick drum I like
and then use a compressor to set the threshold to a point where the GR 'Gain Reduction' has begun to 'reduce'..
Finally, I use the output volume on the compressor as the volume for the kick drum channel.

I've taught myself so if there is a better way then so be it. This works for me.

What part is in the red, the drum track or the master?

You can let the tracks run into the red a bit, just not the master. Have you tried adding a subtle compressor with a slow attack to allow the punch through but limit the rest of the energy instead of just squashing it all with a limiter?

You can try and keep the limiter on the master, lower the kick a touch and then use a compressor on the kick\drums and play with the attack and compressor curve to get a better result.

It's already suggested and it is the best way but turning down ALL tracks the same amount to reduce the overall drive will offer more headroom to mix. If you have the kick driving you into the red you don't have any more headroom to adjust other sounds.

Try using the EQ8 on your Kick drum to boost/overcompensate for the frequencies that the limiter is hitting too hard. Or maybe take the limiter off of the master track and create a separate buss track specifically for the limiter that receives all of the audio except for the kick and tune the kick seperately.

Leejohnson222 wrote:so i have a good sounding kick drum, punchy and weighty, trouble is its in the red, want to keep the feel but keep it in the green,
put the limiter on it and it just lost all its power and punch,

advice please ?

This is very common. U can pretty much do two things:

1. Stay in the red and live with it.

2. Turn down the master fader and figure out why it lost its punch. Usually the case is the clipping was actually giving you the punch. This is usually a sign that your kick or whatever was distorting could benefit from some saturation, distortion, compression, or even hard limiting. Usually once you deal with this and re maximize your levels, your mix will even sound better once re tweaked.

Youre squashing it bro

Turn down the level of the track.

I would recommend using a saturator to give the kick a warm place in the mix and then get rid of unwanted frequencies with and EQ. After that, using the compressor should be very minimal, set the attack a little bit over 50% and bring the threshold down so that only 3 DB of gain reduction is occurring (don't use auto makeup gain but use the fader to put the gain to unity gain, 0 DB) next, push the kick with the limiter until about 2 DB is going over the threshold. After that the kick should be pushing through pretty well but you should mix around the kick if you're gonna make it the driving bass of the song, don't make it fight with other Bass instruments and be sure to get rid of sub bass of other tracks in order to give the master some head room. if that doesn't work then you probably need to change the kick to fit in the song. Good Luck

give yourself some headroom, variety is the spice of life