Parallel Compression and Upward Expansion

I am using parallel compression on a particular song that I am currently working on. It is a fabulous technique. Currently I am only using Sonitus on the second bus with hard limiting down to something like -15 or -20dB. Mixing it in at around -6dB peak lower than the clean drum bus. This song is still in the early stages so that's just how I am using it to get a rough sound. Later on I plan to move over to using a tape compression such as JB Ferox (can be found here, scroll down about half way looking for 'Ferox') instead of Sonitus when I get down to really mixing this song. Still much more to record. I plan to cut the cymbals from the compression bus as overcompressed cymbals just sound terrible to my ears. I am considering placing an EQ before the compressor (in the compression bus) and cutting much of the highs and see how that sounds. I think that could be a good one to try.

I have not really tried this with anything other than drums but I may give it a go on a master one day now that you mention it. I hear it often works well on rock vocals. Often with a big of distortion on the comprssion bus (again you would probably get this sound by use of JB Ferox - Really great tape simulator, really great, highly suggest it).

The expander I don't really work with except in the form of gating. I often use parallel gating on the kick and snare of drums. For example, this is what I do with my kick (same as for snare):

Clone the kick track.

Place an EQ on the clone and find the sweet spot in the low end and the nice click in the high end. Also find the cardboardbox sound in the mids.

Boost the low end something like 10dB and the same for the high end. Cut the mids by -10dB or more. Make it sound amazingly fake.

Now gate it. Gate it hard. I'm talking like only 50-100ms of sound getting through. By itself it should sound almost like a quick spike which is gone in no time at all.

Compress the hell out of this if you like (I have not actually done that as I use parallel on the entire drums, but you could do it twice, I might try that one day)

Now bring this up in the mix with your original that has very light gating and EQ and compression and you get a fat kick.

Repeat for snare.

Awesome, Matt and Grotto! I'll be using these techniques more and more.

(I have to fix a computer and will return, thank you for your validation)

I've used expansion on drum overheads with interesting effects. It makes cymbals ring out longer, resulting in a Ringo Starr-like constant wash of cymbals. It's nice if you're going for that busy 60's style.

One caveat, though. Because expansion interferes with the natural decay of instruments, it can become noticeable during breaks or fades.

Another cool thing is to use Ozone's multiband compressor and only expand between 2KHz and 5Khz.

Try it and see if you'll like it, as I said I use the New York compression a lot on drums (not always though but when the drums bus talks to me and ask for it ). When trying DIY-premastering I often follow Bob Kats's advice in his book for smooth loudness and tweak to taste. Even though I'm mosty making urban music I think it gives a nice roundness to the sound.

I have done similar back analog dayz with 2 dbx units. I did it alot on certain instruments. I was thinking of trying to do that and send the split expanded tracks to the REAR channels of the surround to give one more of that ON THE STAGE feel instead of facing. Especially with remastering old analog takes. You can do alot with shifting frequencies, keep an eye on phasing though.