Drum Bus:

Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor (Brainworx)

– TLDR Notes:

Gives the drum kit some cohesion and movement.

Typically just using ‘discrete mode’ for the compression, compressing max 1 dB.

One of the advantages of this compressor is its function as a color box.

Select one of three saturation colors for the drum bus:

– Steel = The darkest most low-end focused saturation.
– Iron = Balanced saturation.
– Nickel = More high end saturation.

Use 2xOS.

– Review:

What to do if you want the sound of Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor heard on countless records by the likes of Muse, Coldplay, Radiohead and John Mayer but you’re hesitant due to the nearly eight grand price tag?

Brainworx to the rescue. With this emulation you get the dual compressor magic, letting you apply ‘optical’ and ‘discrete’ mode either on their own or simultaneously.

“Optical” gives you a smooth, polite leveling of the audio signal while “Discrete” provides more aggressive VCA feed-forward energy.

On a drum bus I like using just the discrete mode, as in that situation I’m looking for something that adds energetic movement rather than leveling.

I don’t use it as a parallel compressor, so usually just compressing around 1 dB on the drum bus.

Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor comes with 3 different output transformer modes, or saturation modes if you will; ‘Nickel’, ‘Iron’ and ‘Steel’.

‘Nickel’ is the brightest and can be really good for adding a little top end excitement on say a master, ‘Iron’ is the solid middle ground and ‘Steel’ is the darkest color giving you a bigger low end. They can all work depending on what you feed the compressor and what your intention is.
Any plugin that adds harmonic distortion is likely to benefit from oversampling, and while it might have some built-in oversampling under the hood I like running the plugin at 2xOS, which you can do in your DAW and if not then in Metaplugin.

To avoid execessive pumping it comes with a convenient sidechain filter switch, which prevents the compressor circuit from reacting to anything below 90 Hz, basically the lows of the kick on the drum bus.
In other words, the lows are not being rolled off, they are simply not triggering the compressor.

Some engineers love this compressor just for the color options, but I think it delivers some tasty compression as well, a really good alternative when the old “Smash the drum bus in parallel” thing is less than appropriate on the material.

At first the plugin may look a little confusing, but once you get used to it the layout becomes logical.

Another nice touch is that you can choose between dual mono or regular stereo so in addition to the coloring options and the two compressors either off, on their own or together gives you a nice amount of control over the sound.

Brainworx also did a red version, the ”Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor Class A”.
That one is indeed a classy choice on the master, but for drum bus I prefer the sounds of this cyan version.

Sand 3 Comp (Acustica) 

– TLDR Notes:

Very nice analog tone and punch from this compressor with these settings as starting point.

– Review:

Acustica Audio is known and renowned for EQs and preamps, and justifiably so.
But that perception means that Acustica compressors tend to be overlooked. If you know where to look, there are some gems in the world of Acustica compressors, and Sand3 Comp is one of them.

When Sand 3 came out, it seemed to mark the first time critical ears in the audio community took notice of the quality of the compressor, some going so far as to say that the compressor makes the entire Sand suite worth it for that alone.

I love SSL on drums, and for a source as full bodied as the entire drum bus I need something that can deliver the punch without robbing the low end, unfortunately a tendency many in-the-box modelled compressors suffer from.

That’s why I love this compressor. It sounds snappy, full and alive.

I often like to play with the Acustica’s shape modulation feature ‘SHMOD’ (Red knob top right) to fine tune the amount of attack required, and let the drum bus hit the compressor just enough to get the right movement going. Once the sweet spot is found the SSL sound works great in a pop and rock mix.

They managed to get auto-release right with this one, so for me it’s usually a choice between auto-release or the two fastest release times, 0.1 and 0.3.

BX Console SSL 9000 J (Plugin Alliance)

– TLDR Notes:

Lowcut filter, good compressor and effective tone shaping options.
Has a has 72 different, modeled channels.
‘V Gain’ is amount of analog hiss.
Easy and quick results on drum bus.

– Review:

Channel strips can be very handy on a drum buses, because they often call for tone shaping, low cut filtering, compression and a little saturation.

The EQ portion of the 9000 J is musical and effective, the compressor is terrific and very SSL. In fact, out of the three SSL consoles by Brainworx I think this is the one that nails the compressor behavior. The previous compressor emulations were more on the conservative side, a sound that made them versatile for mixing duties in general, but the 9000 J nails the unique SSL smack.

So when you want a very light on recourses, quick to dial in SSL channel strip that doesn’t stumble in any area that can be used all over the mix session and with a bigger low end than the E and G, this is it.

Violet (Free with N4) (Acustica)

– TLDR Notes:

Slightly warm yet still present Thermionic Culture “The Phoenix” tube compressor. Good results on drum bus and master bus.

Found in N4 Finder: Compressor (Com)> Violet (Vio)

– Review:

This emulation of Thermionic Culture’s “The Phoenix” tube mastering compressor tends to be overlooked, perhaps because it isn’t available as a stand-alone plugin, but comes with Acustica’s N4 along side many other libraries, thus it didn’t receive its own marketing push.

But it deserves to be tried on drum bus and even the master bus.
Chances are you will be pleasantly surprised by the way Violet handles complex program material. It sounds so good in my book that it beats many commercial alternatives for tasty, warm compression that retains details and weight well.

I usually go with its fastest release setting for drum bus and a pretty open attack.

Here’s where things get a little controversial:
Oversampling Nebula libraries like this one technically gives a different result than intended from the original sample process, but if it sounds good it IS good, and I actually like the slightly more open sound of this in OSX2 in the DAW when working in 44.1.

The library is free for owners of the full N4 (or higher) from Acustica Audio.

Black Box HG-2 (Brainworx)

– TLDR Notes:

Really nice for adding more perceived loudness at the same peak level as well as tone shaping.

Pentode is the brighter coloration, triode is the darker one.

The overall coloration can also be set. This is done by clicking “Cal.” at the top, where it has 3 options; Dark, Norm and Bright.

At least a small amount of air is always recommended.
In this example the Air Amount dial is set to 10%.

OS not needed as it’s already very well optimized in that area.

– Review:

The hardware version was a magical box famously used for years on every mix by Dave Pensado, so Brainworx faced quite the challenge trying to recreate that magical box IN the box.

In my opinion, they ended up emulating the hardware so well that once you know a little simple trick, you don’t need the hardware, this emulation nails it. More about the trick later.

First, we’re talking tubes and transformers. It’s the kind of plugin you use when you want your drums or your master to be ‘closer to the listener’, without having to deal with louder peaks.
With the “Saturation” control you get parallel saturation, and it comes in “Low”, “Flat” and “High” variants. This determines which frequencies are contained in the saturation.
“Flat” means that the saturation circuit is fed the full spectrum, “Low” means only the lows and mids are received by the saturation circuit, and with the “High”-setting only the mids and highs are received by the saturation circuit.

This frequency dependent division makes Black Box HG-2 a good choice on things such as bass guitar and drum bus, where you may want the lows to remain clean and full, but still want saturation and distortion higher up the spectrum.

With the “Pentode” tube you get pleasant even order harmonics, and the “Triode” tube gives you a grittier “ovendriven tape” style saturation with its third order harmonics.

Saturation and distortion is a vital part of modern mixing, and those elements go hand in hand with compression on a drum bus.

Black Box HG-2 provides nice control over the saturation with excellent sound quality. It doesn’t sound exactly like the hardware at its default setting. It’s in the ballpark, but the hardware sounds more open. The secret to getting it to sound so close that you won’t miss the hardware is to use the “air” knob in the plugin. Once some “Air” is dialed in, you realize what a great job they did with Black Box HG-2 even up against the hardware.

The plugin is also available in a mid-side version called Black Box Analog Design HG-2MS, that one comes with even more saturation and color options for those who want to get very tweaky on master bus for instance, but I like the relatively straight forward layout of the powerful HG-2 on the drum bus.

Parallel Aggressor (Baby Audio)

– TLDR Notes:

This is for parallel compression. Can be inserted directly on the drum bus.
If placed on it’s own track (receiving from the drum bus) turn “Dry Lvl” all the way down.

“Spank” is compression, “Heat” is saturation/overdrive.

These parameters are particularly well tailored for the purpose of drum bus parallel compression, so the intended result can be achieved very quickly with this.

– Review:

It’s handy to have a plugin that gives you optimal sounding parallel compression and saturation in one.

The GUI is typical of “Baby Audio”, clean, modern and easy on the eyes. It doesn’t try to look like an old beat up piece of analog gear because it isn’t that. It’s all about functionality and quick results.

Once you know that “Heat” is drive/saturation and “Spank” is compression, the plugin is pretty much self-explanatory.

You get the original source (Dry), a saturated duplicate (Heat) and a Compressed duplicate (Spank), and it’s your job to mix those until your drum bus wags its tail.

For each of those 3 elements you get a solo button in case you want to hear what they are doing individually.

The saturation is fairly aggressive, and a little usually goes a long way.

The great thing about Parallel Aggressor (Baby Audio) is that its compression action simply works on drums. If you have a mid tempo or up tempo track and wish to add some more energy to the drum kit, this one aces it just about every time on the drum bus. It gives you ‘that sound’, without having to worry about setting up attack, release, ratio, knee etc., making Parallel Aggressor a great time saver.