a couple of (battery 3, but not soecifically) drum related questions

[nattwalls]

so ive been using battery for a while and been having a hard time getting the sounds phat. after months of using it i activate saturator on a kick and snare and bob's your uncle... phat drums!!!

does anyone know what exactly the saturator does, or what happens to a sound that is saturated (in technical terms. i like to know techie stuff like that, so i can know exactly when to use a particular function).

also i have a hard time with drums that ive eq'ed. they always hit the red when get i the sound i want. i turn the volume down and the sound character changes. i limit the sound and it changes. i dont know what im doing with a compressor, but will that help maintain the punch/snap/boom/character of the drums.

can someone offer some guidance?

many thanks!
natt

[longbongsilver]

When you record drums hot to tape they distort a certain way. That's what most of the saturation effects whether in Battery or something else refer to & try to emulate.

[nattwalls]

would it be fair to say that a saturator adds punch to a sound?

the battery manual describes it as so - Saturator: Provides expansion/compression/saturation effects for the selected Cell.

whats expansion in relation to sound?

also help with my eq/volume problem would also be a touch...

[jikky]

Saturation is to emulate and analog character of noise. It helps to thicken the sound. Compression decreases dynamic range in order to increase the perceived volume. U can use both to increase the volume after levels are set if u need to. What DAW are you using?

[nattwalls]

Originally Posted by jikkyboy11

Saturation is to emulate and analog character of noise. It helps to thicken the sound. Compression decreases dynamic range in order to increase the perceived volume. U can use both to increase the volume after levels are set if u need to. What DAW are you using?

i use cubase sx3.

when im tweaking my drums i get the right sound, but its off the meters by far. when i reduce the volume of the channel to bring it within the meter, the sound character changes, it doesnt snap or punch/it doesnt have the same feel to it as before...

[8tracks]

I was just curious to what your volume on your monitors are at?
I mix around -10 on my master
Instead of turning the kick up to get the sound you want
try turning your monitors up
And keep your mix low

[jikky]

give me the name of the samples and ill load em and try to see what you are explaining. tell me exactly your process and ill recreate it. also do it in battery standalone to be sure it's nothing internal in your DAW.

[filin]

Originally Posted by nattwalls

also i have a hard time with drums that ive eq'ed. they always hit the red when get i the sound i want. i turn the volume down and the sound character changes. i limit the sound and it changes.

This would imply that you like the sound of digital clipping. There's no shame in that, sometimes it works.

[Eloheim]

Originally Posted by filin

This would imply that you like the sound of digital clipping. There's no shame in that, sometimes it works.

tutt e

Seriously though, I was wondering where your drum hits are coming from. Are you using actual dry recorded acoustic hits? Or something sampled, as in off a record? Or something from a drum hit collection? Cause when I try any amount of saturation on individual drums like that, they just end up getting waay too distorted sounding. I'm always wondering if this is because I'm using sampled drums so they're already somewhat saturated in the first place when they were recorded and the track was cut n all. Can you all hear a drum sound and just know what's been done to it? (E.g. if its already been compressed, eq'ed, saturated, etc.)

[nattwalls]

Originally Posted by jikkyboy11

give me the name of the samples and ill load em and try to see what you are explaining. tell me exactly your process and ill recreate it. also do it in battery standalone to be sure it's nothing internal in your DAW.

i will take you up on that, but im mad busy at the moment, so itll be in a day or two.

thanks for the offer!

[smoke]

Saturation adds harmonics by hyping certain frequencies related to a root note. It thickens a sound.

I have never tried the saturation in Battery but now I'm curious. I always forget that Battery has it's own compression section.

As for clipping in the DAW, maybe you can bounce the clipped kick drum down, and re-export it, then turn it down. Maybe you retain the clicky clip sound, but turn the thing down, or compress it so it fits. It is true that sometimes a clipped channel has a nice sound thats hard to deliberately create. Even a clipper plug isn't exactly the same.

[Spy!]

Originally Posted by nattwalls

would it be fair to say that a saturator adds punch to a sound?

the battery manual describes it as so - Saturator: Provides expansion/compression/saturation effects for the selected Cell.

whats expansion in relation to sound?

also help with my eq/volume problem would also be a touch...

Put simply (and I do mean simply, before I get ripped to shreds by the pros), expansion is the opposite of compression. Saturation (usually) applies to tape saturation and it's where the signal recorded to tape is so 'hot' that the magnetic properties of the tape become overloaded resulting in a 'warmly compressed' (i.e. odd harmonics) sound.

Digital recording media don't have the same properties as tape so when one hits digital recordings too hot the resulting sound isn't compressed, it just clips (loses all information above 0dBFS) instead.

HTH