Following the feedback from my AST recordings, It has become evident to me that as well as individual flaws in the drum sound, there is a distinct lack of presence in the overall sound of the drums. After discussing the topic with my classmates, it was suggested that parallel compression was definitely worth a try.
I headed into the studio armed with the stems from the drum recording Kieran and I did for the Paige D track for AST. I decided to use the drawmer 1968, with a very low threshold, in order to squash the sound. I sent the drums out as a single bus, and compressed them, then added them to the original signal.
The result was pleasantly surprising. The parallel compression added a perceived thickening in the overall sound of the drums, without killing the transient of the kick and snare.
Following trying this out, I feel that our mix hand in could have benefited from using this technique before.
samuellewis5515 