How to get more rounded punch shape and sound.

[Masd775]

How do I get my 808 drum to sound louder and shape it so that it sounds more rounded and big?

 

[DarkRed]

How do I get my 808 drum to sound louder and shape it so that it sounds more rounded and big?

I would say in this case a FET compressor followed by a Tube compressor is what you are looking for. The FET compressor will stabilize the dynamics and add a bit of warmth and character to the punch, the Tube compressor will smooth out the remaining peaks and make it sit softly in the mix. You can then run this into Tape Saturation at the end to add a bit of harmonics, which kind of brings back a little of the peak information at the target dynamic level. If you want a very specific 808 sound, you can zero phase frequency match it both before and after this chain. But apply that at the end in order to make that process as light as possible on the audio. When you dial this in, you want to do so against the final loudness, so that what you hear is what you will get. Also use monitoring filtering early on when you dial the bulk of it in.

Overall I think it is to a great degree about not letting brickwall peak limiters act too hard on it at any compression stage, meaning resolve most of the mix loudness early so that the very dynamic sound sources do not get a too hard touch by the brickwall peak limiters during the mix maximization process.

A tip is to run each dynamic sound source, like kick, snare, bass, vocals through their own separate master buss, so that the remaining peaks coming from all of the master busses can be ceiled gently in order not to make the sound of the mix too numb. The peak information is especially important for the sound sources that have been panned towards the sides, so if you have those on the same fader as the kick, snare, bass, vocals, the stereo image might get damaged. So use Opto compression on the sound sources panned towards the sides.

 

[Charlestheproducer]

This^

 

[BRHSM]

I would say in this case a FET compressor followed by a Tube compressor is what you are looking for. The FET compressor will stabilize the dynamics and add a bit of warmth and character to the punch, the Tube compressor will smooth out the remaining peaks and make it sit softly in the mix. You can then run this into Tape Saturation at the end to add a bit of harmonics, which kind of brings back a little of the peak information at the target dynamic level. If you want a very specific 808 sound, you can zero phase frequency match it both before and after this chain. But apply that at the end in order to make that process as light as possible on the audio. When you dial this in, you want to do so against the final loudness, so that what you hear is what you will get. Also use monitoring filtering early on when you dial the bulk of it in.

Overall I think it is to a great degree about not letting brickwall peak limiters act too hard on it at any compression stage, meaning resolve most of the mix loudness early so that the very dynamic sound sources do not get a too hard touch by the brickwall peak limiters during the mix maximization process.

A tip is to run each dynamic sound source, like kick, snare, bass, vocals through their own separate master buss, so that the remaining peaks coming from all of the master busses can be ceiled gently in order not to make the sound of the mix too numb. The peak information is especially important for the sound sources that have been panned towards the sides, so if you have those on the same fader as the kick, snare, bass, vocals, the stereo image might get damaged. So use Opto compression on the sound sources panned towards the sides.

Wow! Nice walktrough. I just want to add that a boost at 200-300hz could help adding punch. but make shure to relevel your sound afterwards! Also make shure there are harmonics there using distortion or saturation!