12-24-2025, 08:52 PM
I'm mixing a rock track where the drums sound good individually but lack punch and cohesion as a group, and I know I need to use bus compression on them. I'm using a plugin emulation of a classic compressor, but I'm unsure about the best approach for attack and release settings to enhance the groove without squashing the life out of the transients. For engineers who work on similar material, what are your go-to starting points for ratio and timing when compressing a drum bus, and how do you typically blend in parallel compression to add weight without losing definition?