Having picked up the CA2A and Concrete Limiter yesterday, and the Boz +10, I've been thinking about approaches to compressing my drums. I use AD2, so no live drums, and I kind of think that sampled drums don't need compression so much, but I still want to do it. I like phat beats, Hip Hop, Drum and bass, as well as un programmed Funk, Latin, Soul etc.
 
So with both the Boz and Concrete I was thinking of ways of getting the colour of the Boz, and whether a little of the Boz and a little of the  Concrete may give me a sound I liked, but what to go first. I thought about paralell Compression, and maybe using the wet dry on the Boz, then feeding the result into the Concrete, Or having lighter compression on the boz (even wet dry mix again) and feeding a parallel line into the Concrete.
 
I always thought Parallel compression two lines of light and heavy mixed together, but the inclusion of wet/dry know and comments when they are discussed made me question that. I also wondered if New York was the same or a varient of Parallel Compression, and why if not is it called New York if it was used in Motown. So googling around I found this and having also just purchased the CA2A for a softer flavour not intended for drums, I was surprised by the picture at the top of the article and then for it not to be an editorial accident, but then discussed in the article.
 
http://mix-engineer.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-york-parallel-compression-technique.html
 
Also the sending of individual drums rather than the whole drum buss for parallel treatment was unexpected food for thought.
 

I already knew pretty much everything I needed to know about parallel compression, yet that article triggered a minor epiphany (or maybe just a "duh" moment) for me this morning.
 
Ever since compressors started offering wet/dry mix controls as a standard feature, I had stopped using separate busses for parallel compression. Pure laziness. But a wet/dry knob ain't really the same, because it applies the same amount of effect to every instrument in the kit. All this time I've been compromising between what works for the kick versus what works for the overheads, when the solution was as simple as going back to using a separate mix for the compressor.
 
So thanks for the link, Scott.

Thanks, always reassured when you chip in.
 
I almost didn't get the CA2A, it was the CL I was really after, and though I haven't used it yet, this article reassured my of the purchase, and that there is more range to than I gave it credit.
 
I'm thinking of a the BOZ on the drum buss to pull the sound and glue the kit together, letting some dry through, and having the sends as that article shows feeding the CA2A with of the kit to add some flavoured weight to the middle. And all seems possible without a messy routing set up which I'm really happy about.

I'VE always set up a separate bus, with a compressor set for 'stun' on it,
and routed individual sends from each individual drum track to that bus,
to get my version of 'parallel' compression.......
 
and mix each one into the compressor bus, via the 'send'.......
 
that way i can get more on just the snare, or just the kick, or just the overheads,
just seems like a simpler way to do it..
 
what am i missing?

Thanks from me too Scott. Like Bit, I missed this technique and this method will be very cool to check out.
Drums to tame the kick and snare incrementally. Bkg Vocs to reduce dynamic range for just the problem peaks. Could even automate the send levels if needed. 
Rimshot

I will admit that I did not read the article but I do have a question with Parallel compression for live drums.  I mixed my drums down to a drum master. I created a drum compression bus with a send from the drum master to the drum compression bus and I got a signal, slammed the compression to get the highs mainly and everything was sounding great until I stop playing the track. When I stop playing the track I heard this loud hiss I was like where is that coming from? I open up prochannel eq to look at the actual signal and sure enough there was a signal from up to about 40hz to 100hz just making noise. I tested the input of the signal from the drum master and the signal went down but it changed how my drums sounded.  I am new to all of this but what am I doing wrong to cause that hiss?  My thoughts were sending a signal from the drum master must be wrong but I am not sure how to get the full drum kit to compress any other way. I have heard that some people don't compress the entire kit just the over heads, to my ears everything sounded great, but the hiss was in my export as well so i used a noise reduction plugin to remove most of it but I don't think this correct. 
While I am at it Sonar has tons of plugins to warm up a mix, I have used the Tape Sumilator plugin from Prochannel but honestly I can't tell that anything sounds different.  I am going for a warm drum kit sound like this https://www.youtube.com/w...vKcgxSxMSg&index=5
Thanks for any advice and at some point I will get around to reading that article
 

Kewl - great posts in the thread.  I guess I got lucky, because I had picked up the whole parallel compression approach I use, from watching some Cakewalk folks in one of their free videos on Larger Than Life Drums (which sounded quite appealing to me).
 
In that video, they set it up on its own para comp bus, and routed clumps of drums to it (all the Toms had a bus, cymbals had a bus, kick had a bus, and snare had a bus), so they were able to fine tune all of that from their bus routing assignments.  All my kits I use from Battery 3 in Sonar projects are customized to have each kit piece routed to its own output and subsequently to its own audio track.  I then route the 4 toms to a Toms Bus, which then feeds a Drums Bus, and the group of the 4 toms has a send to the parallel compression bus along the way, etc.....
 
Bob Bone
 

The downside of using buses for parallel processing for me is that every now and then, depending on the plugins you're using, Sonar will throw the track and bus slightly out of phase. I haven't had this problem for a while but I think last time it happened, it was a Waves compressor on the bus. Might have also happened with Native Instruments' Solid Bus Comp as well.

And of course if you flick a send on during playback, Sonar is very prone to putting buses out of phase until you stop and start again.

BMOG
I will admit that I did not read the article ......
Thanks for any advice and at some point I will get around to reading that article

 
my advice, would be to read the article.

Ok read the article and it makes since I went back and changed a few things in my setup is working much better my new question is for warming up the entire drum mix, there are so many plugins in Sonar not sure which one works best for warming up tracks any suggestions?