# Need advice on mixing drums with superior drummer in cubase.



## BTFStan (Apr 3, 2011)

Can someone give me some tips on getting my drums to sound better? I use Superior Drummer 2.0 and Cubase. I want them to have a progressive/thrash metal sound. I just cant get my drums to sound big enough. If someone could help me get my crums to sound METAL that would be much appreciated!


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## ArkaneDemon (Apr 3, 2011)

1. Open up Cubase
2. Start up SD
3. Awesome preset
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

Seriously, though, I ran into the same problems. The easiest but most time consuming way is to individually mess around with every single drum part until you get a tone that you think is perfect. The way I normally do it is start with the bass drum, then snare, then hi-hats and cymbals, and finally end up with toms. Once you get sounds you really like, save the preset.

I know that for me personally, I spend 100 times as much time tweaking drums than working on my guitar's tone. With the guitar, it's just boom: distortion, a bit of messing with the EQ and I'm done. With me, working the drums takes so much longer. Which makes no sense because I'm not a drummer. I think it's because I think the drums are the driving instrument so it better sound flawless.


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## tareqnazlawy (Apr 4, 2011)

ArkaneDemon is totally right. The presets go a LONG way towards pre-mixing a kit by doing a lot of the EQing and compression for you. Here's some specifics which I can offer having just started using this last week...

1. Are you using SD2 standard Avatar Kit, or Metal Foundry? Metal Foundry pretty much does what it says on the tin and has some *awesome* starting point presets (my faves are Frekrik Thordendaal's), but thrash / death kits are aplenty too

2. Have you tried using any of the Toontrack Producer Presets? Bulb from Periphery has a bunch for the SD2 kit I believe. If you like their sound, you'd better get the presets  I think the legendary Andy Sneap has released some presets too for TMF. Plus they're cheap! Check the video on the Toontrack website: http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=94

3. Are you making a judgement on the sound when the drum tracks are in the mix? If so, it may be that some other instruments are masking your drums if they're not recorded / EQ'd quite right. This is the art of mixing, which is also my personal quest atm...

Good luck bud!


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## tareqnazlawy (Apr 4, 2011)

I need some help too...

A traditional mixing engineer might say that:
a) all instrument tracks (including each drum mic on a kit) should be rendered to audio
b) all elements in the mix should be grouped sensibly. For drums this might mean four sub-groups: bass drum; snare; O/Hs; Toms. Each sub-group is then mixed within itself before mixing the sub-groups in an overall "drum" group, and then mixing the drum group in the overall mix...

SD2, however comes with its own mixer altogether, which *could* offer the flexibility that comes with staying in Midi rather than committing to .wav

So, how do I best balance the use of SD2s awesome mixer (and compression, EQ and effects settings that come in the presets) and the Cubase mixer which gives me access to all my regular plugins etc. It seems my options are:

1. Stick with the SD2 presets and assume no further mixing of the drum kit is necessary in my tracks - doesn't seem sensible
2. Do all drum mixing in SD2 mixer - and thereby forego using any of my Cubase plugins on my drum tracks
3. Route all the SD2 mics straight to the outputs and mix in Cubase, foregoing all of the benefits the come with the SD2 EQ compression and effects that come with the SD2 presets
4. Render my SD2 kit to audio drum by drum / group by group and do a bit of further tweaking in Cubase

Anybody been through this thought process before? Am I overcomplicating things?

Cheers

T


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## cazmaestro (Jan 10, 2012)

tareqnazlawy said:


> I need some help too...
> 
> A traditional mixing engineer might say that:
> a) all instrument tracks (including each drum mic on a kit) should be rendered to audio
> ...



Sorry to bring back a dead thread, but I'm going through this though process right now, but I think number 4 is about right. But I don't know how far my weaking should go... 

Reverb would be in Cubase, and bus compression, but what about parallel compression? I don't know where I'm gonna do that...


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## cazmaestro (Jan 10, 2012)

tareqnazlawy said:


> I need some help too...
> 
> A traditional mixing engineer might say that:
> a) all instrument tracks (including each drum mic on a kit) should be rendered to audio
> ...



Sorry to bring back a dead thread, but I'm going through this though process right now, but I think number 4 is about right. But I don't know how far my weaking should go... 

Reverb would be in Cubase, and bus compression, but what about parallel compression? I don't know where I'm gonna do that...


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