I have this problem with a few beats where I listen to them on another system to judge the mix and I notice the drums are just a littttle too loud. They sound good for the most part its just a little too loud. I however did notice in another beat that along with this, the snare was sort of clipping/distorting here and there...I could simply turn them down but I like where they are sitting in the track. Help a mixing amateur out
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How to make Drums POP/Stand Out Without Clipping/Peaking
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Kalle Enkelmann
New member
Quick fixes for this issue would be:
Compress/Limit the drum bus. In your case, what you need is actually brick wall limiter on the snare drum to shave off those peaks that are clipping. Just put it through a brick wall limiter with the threshold set to -0.1dB and that fixes the clipping problem. But this is a quick fix, wouldnt recommend this as best practice.
You have to understand the difference between "loudness" (how loud it seems) and "volume". Loudness can be achieved by EQing (turning up the mid-Hi frequencies), compression (you may also want to investigate parallel compression) and saturation/distortion.
If you make a part louder, you can actually lower the volume and it will still be clearly heard in the mix.
Compress/Limit the drum bus. In your case, what you need is actually brick wall limiter on the snare drum to shave off those peaks that are clipping. Just put it through a brick wall limiter with the threshold set to -0.1dB and that fixes the clipping problem. But this is a quick fix, wouldnt recommend this as best practice.
You have to understand the difference between "loudness" (how loud it seems) and "volume". Loudness can be achieved by EQing (turning up the mid-Hi frequencies), compression (you may also want to investigate parallel compression) and saturation/distortion.
If you make a part louder, you can actually lower the volume and it will still be clearly heard in the mix.
JakeMeeble
New member
Commonly when I run into these problems, besides compression or using a limiter. I'll just turn everything but the drums down then resit them in the mix. You won't be clipping anymore and you can just turn the volume of your interface up. When you get to the exporting to master phase anyways, you won't want a mix that's almost clipping. So being sure that everything is turned down would be necessary anyways. Best of luck!
Mr. sickVisionz
New member
The only problem with compression is that he says they are sitting fine and then other times they are too loud. None-side chained compression won't really help you out because it's never going to be triggered (assuming you don't set the threshold so low that it compresses even the hits that don't need it). You could side chain but you need to figure out what exactly is setting it off and make that the source. It might be easier to just make a note of where it happens, then make a new pattern and adjust the volume of whatever is messing things up on that hit.
The easiest thing imo is just from here on out to mix to a lower volume and use a maximization on the master to get it back to where you want the final product to be once you feel like you have a good mix that isn't clipping anywhere.
The easiest thing imo is just from here on out to mix to a lower volume and use a maximization on the master to get it back to where you want the final product to be once you feel like you have a good mix that isn't clipping anywhere.