[Greg Pope]

Sounds good dude, At first listen the only thing that stands out as lacking something is the toms, but thats it!, but then if your going for that sound in perticular then stick with it!!

Oh by the by, you know you be sending that template my way blood!

[Leec]

Originally Posted by smueske

Leec, we may have different goals in drum production but I disagree with the notion that compression somehow muddies up or makes unclear ghost notes and such. If anything it makes ghost notes more audible by making them louder. The trick is play with the attack and release settings. Also, I like to throw a gate on the final stage so there is not too much bleed through. I do agree that you should get the best sound possible by EQing before compression is applied. This is just personal opinion but I think the drums sound good but are a bit thin. The snare sounds pretty good.

Hey dude. I wasn't very clear with what I meant start.
I didn't mean that adding compression will make the more subtle elements difficult to hear, or that it'll muddy them. On the contrary, I agree with you.
But I do find that a lot of compression really changes the quality of the sound, and the ghost notes loose some of their lovely soft sound and seem to get ramped up, at least that's the result I get. Anyhow, I just meant I was attempting from scratch to use a little compression and some EQ to get closer to the sound I wanted. It will still require a lot of work.

I'm not very good at mixing, and am going totally by feel and articles I find online, rather than a schooled approach. So I'm probably doing many things wrong.

This was also an experiment on one thing, too.
Whilst looking through the DFHS manual, I was looking at the velocity layers. I have, until now, only programmed one or two hits at 127 in any given song, leaving most between 115 and 125. I thought having this 10 cent range between velocities would help to give it a more humanized approach.
But looking at the manual, I found that:

By default, all soft hits are mapped between midi velocities of 1 and 20. Gradiens hits are between 21 and 126. Hard hits are triggered by a midi velocity of 127.

Now, there are 10 soft hit samples per kit element, 15 gradient hits per kit element, and 10 hard hits per kit element (although, this isn't the case for all elements, it is for snares and toms).
In these terms, when I've got, say, a sequence of 8 'hard' snare hits (and by hard, I mean using my old system of inputting them between 115 and 125), the randomisation algorithm probably only has 2 or 3 samples to switch between.

In this clip, though, I input all hard hits at full 127. All things like ghost kicks and snares are between 1 and 20, and some of the 'frills' and things to emphasise feel are in the gradient range (between 21 and 126).
I did think this clip had a more humanised sound than anything else I'd previously done. I was actually a little surprised people thought the toms sounded 'digital'. This must have more to do with the eq-ing of the toms and the very 'close mic' sound of them, since there are more samples being used than anything I've previously posted. I have barely any ambient mic in the mix, and not much OH, either. And virtually no verb anywhere.

Anyhow, thanks for checking and giving some advice. I'll try to make it all sound a little thicker.

Greg dude, I'll send you the project file. You'll have to do the usual stuff of changing sample rate and whatnot. Catch up soon, mate

[smueske]

I think your approach is very good. I hope I didn't sound otherwise. Sounds like I misunderstood what you were saying. I definitely agree that getting the best sound *before* compressing is smart. Compression does color the sound (as well as fattening and other effects). I'm certainly no expert. I'm in the same boat as you -- reading articles and experimenting to see what works.

[Leec]

Not at all, man. Your advice and opinion is really helpful.

I've updated the clip, tried to make changes based upon what people have said here. I've also turned on some of the bleeding that I normally don't use; all bleeding on kick and both snare mics.

[newamerikangospel]

In my humble opinion, the way the toms are eqed makes them sound ballon-y (bounced beach ball/basketball type sound) and most people are used to hearing that with crappy drum samples, so they are referencing crappy drums. The kit doesn't have any {oomph} to it. It has some lower bass resonance, but not the punchy bass, but again, just opinion and preference.

But programming wise, I and deem this trve

[Variant]

Dude, that was actually quite great... bright & snappy! The only (good) way to mix drums... and the Ministry-esque kicks rocked as well... not "natural" sounding, but natural is overrated.

[Blexican]

That sounded really good, Lee. I actually thought the mix was bright and very balanced. The kicks could be a tad higher, but otherwise, it's perfect. How did you program those snare rolls? I've been trying forever to figure out how to do that in EZDrummer.

[Leec]

Thanks man. I've been tweaking it more today. I'm very close to being happy with my drum sound. For a while, anyhow...

Draw out something like 8 consecutive snare hits as 16th notes, then play with the velocities. Make the first hit around 20, then drop the next to around 5, and from then on, make each climb back up to around 25 in a not surgically steady ramp. So the third is like 7, fourth is 8, fifth is 10, sixth is 11, etc. Obviously you can tailor this to suit how hard you want the roll to sound, start higher and end higher...
EZD can do those just as well as DFHS.

What DAW are you using? I posted a Cubase drum map for EZD on here. Actually, it might have been EZXDFH, but I think I built one for EZD, too. I could send you that if you like?