Drums weak and too quiet

[ZebulaJams]

Hello,

I’ve been using EZDrummer 2 for about 2 1/2 years now and it’s finally starting to bug me: the drums in my mixes have zero punch, presence and feeling. You can hear them, sure. But, for me at least, I believe that you need to be able to *feel* the music as well.

I’m utilizing Mixcraft Pro 7 as well. I’ve tried different forms of compression, adjusting individual buses (snare, kick, etc.) and mastering techniques. If I don’t reduce the volume of the drum track by -10db, it will clip like no tomorrow. And even after reducing that volume, I have to reduce individual voicings of the drums as well because they’re clipping. The end result is a weak and amateur sounding drum track.

Is it really a case of me just having to spend hundreds of dollars on a mastering engineer?

For the record, I’m not looking to blow my speakers out with volume. I just want a little more power from my mixes and the weakest part is the drums.

Any advice?

If you’re wanting to hear an example: https://youtu.be/D2ulCAGrO7Y

Topic

[Juicy]

Im sure theirs a heap of low end around 20 to 80 hz on those lead guitar parts that not really audible but taking up some headroom also don’t waste time on a mastering engineer yet but get your mixes better in the first place, its not too far off but your kinda suffering from “gtr mix” dude at the moment.
Plz buy a good brick wall limiter for the drums and you should be where you wanna be. I have quite a few but the best value and cleanest i found (and won’t mix without )
was Wave Arts > Final Plug. Strap that on your drum buss and breathe a huge relief. You can get them to sit perfectly at – 0.1 all day if you want them too.
I then use it again on the Master bus and we are mastered to go.
Trust me thats what will bring them right up in the zone you want.

[onewayout_1]

Very good Advice! Cut those guitars @ 80 hz and below and you willl hear much more the thickness and presence of the drums!!

[ZebulaJams]

I actually cut all of my guitars from ~100-below. I’ll check out that limiter (or something of the sort) and report back.

[Juicy]

@ZebulaJams said:
I actually cut all of my guitars from ~100-below. I’ll check out that limiter (or something of the sort) and report back.  

Glad to hear, so then needs normal eq after cut/filtering, some lead Gtrs (also Rhythm) can need some scooping up to 200 or more and can still be phat. You got 3 gtrs going at least right ?
Any how sounds like you have an idea of what your doing if you get that super accurate limiter you won’t need to sit the drums down -10 which should give you what you want.
Makes a big difference which one you get as some really muck up the low end and sound dull or mushy i had a generous budget at the time and got that cheaper one and one Oxford limiter too but the Final plug just a big clean result and Low cpu and price was the winner of a shootout of about 10 i tried at the time .ymmv.

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