Mixing into the Drum Bus - signal chain and choices

Pretty much the only thing that stays consistent is a clipping plugin, either JST Clip or Venn Audio Free Clip.

Usually some type of compressor, too — most often the Kiive or IK Distressor, Waves SSL, or IK 670.

There are two common choices to raise the RMS and sit the drum kit with things such as high gain guitars or slammed vocals. The main thing is unlike slapping a colored mix bus compressor on and riding the faders and eqing into it so you need to set it very early on, a drum bus compressor is usually set a little later in the mixing of the drums and you adjust them into it. Or you could just straight up do it right away to say limit a snare to not modulate the other drum tracks and hear the modulation and then hear it go away. Or get the pump with the kick or snare beat that you want and mix into it. Today's mostly itb teeny bopper and pop rap mixes are usually terrible about effective peak control though.

1) A stereo compressor with a sigmoid function curve on the attack portion of the smoothing filter to keep the hits while being able to sit the drum bus back in the stereo image, where it would be on stage, with a moderately fast attack and release slow enough to not pump

2) Do the same thing but instead of keeping the hits, convert them into distortion with soft clippers or distort them and pump up the body. If the transients aren't processed and raised up with the body, if you are using a two bus compressor, or limiter, they will pump the rest of the mix in unwanted ways if limited (even with fast attack and release, it's still on the whole mix) and sometimes can't even be clipped off because the resulting oscillations might raise the volume even more so and it's distorting ugh

D comp and ibis for hardware. Sometimes fatso, sometimes a vca (either obsidian or smart). When my 10dcf pair is back from the shop, that can be a nice flavor too.

For software, I like uad and lindell 2500, kiive rubber band and adc, Sam’s vu compressor sometimes, and for eq I usually stick with Kirchhoff but sometimes do color with fuse or a pultec of some sort.

Lately I’ve been having fun with the black box plugin too.

I get basic tones and balances before adding this stuff. Chain is picked according to need, but the d comp seems to be winning most of my compression shootouts of late, and the ibis is a mainstay for when I need eq. 

I use my AML ez1073's, as hardware insert, soft clipping to get a hair of distortion and control the worst peaks. Then into a buss compressor, usually waves API 2500, sometimes a 33609 plugin. Then I follow it with Tokyo Dawn Nova EQ, usually cutting a little 500hz, or cutting some mud between 200-400hz.

Depending on the sound the track wants, I have usually shells and maybe rooms routed to an ADR Compex (HW) in parallel or the CLA-76 in blue mode (it still does a thing!). That is more for level/vibe. The clean and wet busses feed a drum out that usually has an API 2500 (HW) mostly for the box tone, but occasionally grabbing kick and snare peaks that jump out. Also, if needed, I will have Distressors on kick and snare parallel to help with them punching through a dense mix. Occasionally, I will have a distortion parallel for the toms if there are reallllllly gained out guitars or there is too much attack and not enough tone coming through.

My preferred way is to have the bus processing chain ready, but inactive. I focus on the individual tracks: first balances, then saturation on kick and snare, then corrective EQs. When it all sounds OK-ish, then I'll bring in the bus processing, bit by bit, modifying to suit the track. Then, I'll go back and adjust the individual tracks (if needed), and again when the mix is near completion (if needed), and again when the 2-bus compression goes on (if needed).

Basically...it's best to let your ears tell you what to do next.

On the Drm Bus? Always a silver bullet - followed by either a D Comp or SSL Bus Comp (usually the Serpent - with grind engaged). On rare occasions, a pultec.

It all starts with having your drums in tune, and the right tuning at that, then using the right heads, Watching out for cross-modulation with tunings between drums being too close and causing weird sympathetic vibrations that bring out the worst being dealt with first.

The Where do you go? Assuming you know how to balance close mics with room mics and overheads and front of kit mics, and creat a decent balance, most of your work is done on a channel level to have each track contribution meaningful. EQing kicks and toms to have an impact without being tubby or thin? Natch. Balance achieved, each mic with small amounts of compression and/or limiting so that your balance doesn't get destroyed in an exuberant performance . . . mix to a drum bus with an overall limited on it. What to use? The standard API2500 is a good place to start. If compression starts getting heavier than you want, don't raise the threshold decrease the channel levels.

I do this and a hundred other things and clean up each track when not in use and then the drum buss rides into the mains along with all the other elements, grouped accordingly and limited so that the instruments control dynamics naturally and never fight . . . just push each other a little out of the way from time to time.

And a million other things.

Currently my drum bus is pretty simple: ReaEQ (simple stock digital parametric EQ); Console 1 Channel Strip - often either the API or the Neve channels - that has filters (which I'll often use to hpf the compression detection circuit) EQ, Compression, and saturation; and a clipper (probably Stillwell's Event Horizon or JST Clip). If I need to soften transients rather than clip them I'll use something like the D16 Frontier limiter instead of the clipper.

I also run two parallel drum buses; not because I always use both but because I always use one or the other and sometimes use both. One is set up for slow attack/med-fast release to really exaggerate transients. One is set to be fast attack and fast release to really destroy transients and exaggerate the tone/sustain/body of the drums.

If I get my sounds right at source and use the right amount of channel processing then the drum bus gets very little - possibly a bit of overall compression but that’s more likely just on the OH.

Sometimes I’ll run the drums into my Phoenix hardware vari mu really smash it and then fold a touch of that back in as a parallel.

But as I have a great stereo bus hardware chain I don’t care for too much dedicated drum bus (or any bus) processing.

Of course this is all genre specific.

Pseudo Crotch Mic Technique
One thing I always do when tracking drums is using an LDC in hyper cardioid (a blue kiwi for the past year and a half) aimed across the top of the kick drum at the snare, and it captures the snare, kick vent and toms from a different hear-point.

I run it into an old OG Warm Tonebeast and crush/distort the hell out of it.

Build a drum mix without it, and then gradually bring it into the mix - it just adds dimension to the sound.

I also like jmoose's ideas about mixing where the drums are the make or break component.