Breakbeat drums: too much attack due to compression - HELP!

[chroma]

sounds distorted... are you using a lot of makeup gain? maybe you're overloading something somewhere...

[ohmicide]

yeah your beat sounds distorted and too stereo widened

try a different snare sample

[eazyrock]

Yeah these are distorted, I know But what bout the attack?

[EddieTheRed]

Originally Posted by eazyrock

So, it seems to me that the way to achieve this sound is some heavy compression, right? My concern is the "clicking" on the kicks and snares' attacks caused by the compression. Obviously, the more compression there is, the more clicking I get because there will always be the attack phase of the compressor before the volume reduction takes efect. I have tried to minimize this by using some transient altering VST's or by putting the individual drum sounds into envelopes with slow attack to make up for the clicking caused by compression/limiting but the results are not very good as you can hear. Now if you take a listen to the "desired" drums above, you don't hear anything like this - so how the heck do they achieve this fat sound without this "clicking" or simply too much attack ?

On a compressor:

Slow (long) attack = more transients/attack
Fast (short) attack = less transients/attack
Slow release = less sustain/room/verb etc
Fast release = more sustain/room/verb etc

So for less transients it sounds like you need to set your compressor for a fast attack and release, to suppress that intial transient attack but still let you compress hard. Set the attack as fast as you can and adjust the release to taste until you're getting the right amount of 'pumping' - it'll sound good

For catching transients, Stillwell Rocket is the fastest plug-in compressor I've found - you can download a fully functional trial version which never expires from the Stillwell site.

[golden beers]

Originally Posted by EddieTheRed

On a compressor:

Slow (short) attack = more transients/attack
Fast (long) attack = less transients/attack
.

should be

Slow (long) attack = more transients/attack
Fast (short) attack = less transients/attack

[EddieTheRed]

Originally Posted by eazyrock

So, it seems to me that the way to achieve this sound is some heavy compression, right? My concern is the "clicking" on the kicks and snares' attacks caused by the compression. Obviously, the more compression there is, the more clicking I get because there will always be the attack phase of the compressor before the volume reduction takes efect. I have tried to minimize this by using some transient altering VST's or by putting the individual drum sounds into envelopes with slow attack to make up for the clicking caused by compression/limiting but the results are not very good as you can hear. Now if you take a listen to the "desired" drums above, you don't hear anything like this - so how the heck do they achieve this fat sound without this "clicking" or simply too much attack ?

On a compressor:

Slow (short) attack = more transients/attack
Fast (long) attack = less transients/attack
Slow release = less sustain/room/verb etc
Fast release = more sustain/room/verb etc

So for less transients it sounds like you need to set your compressor for a fast attack and release, to suppress that intial transient attack but still let you compress hard. Set the attack as fast as you can and adjust the release to taste until you're getting the right amount of 'pumping' - it'll sound good

For catching transients, Stillwell Rocket is the fastest plug-in compressor I've found - you can download a fully functional trial version which never expires from the Stillwell site.

[EddieTheRed]

Originally Posted by golden beers

should be

Slow (long) attack = more transients/attack
Fast (short) attack = less transients/attack

Sorry, it's late over here!