I am finishing up a project for this band, the drummer is decent but still unrefined, many of the hits especially the kick (and a few snare hits here & there) were wildly louder or quieter than the others around them.  I had the kick duel mic'd (on outside & one inside to get the beater attack) so I ended up first compressing the crap out of them, still nuts.  So I sent them both to a single (kick) buss and automated the buss input to ride the fader bringing up the soft ones and cutting the harder ones.  Still a drastic sound difference because there was more beater in the hard hits and the levels were still jumping too much. This was driving me crazy.  I ended up pulling up the concrete limiter on the kick buss and smashing the kick to keep it down to about -6db to keep the damn thing under control in the mix & it helped me keep the tone more consistent.  I am not big on running a limiter in a mix, but the tool did the job in this case.
 
How would you guys handle this scenario? Jjust curious!

When I encounter this type of situation I believe by far the best way to do it is to open these tracks one by one in an editor. eg Cool Edit Pro/ Adobe Audition etc. You can see where the average levels are. You can pull the loud ones down and lift the soft ones. Then you end up with a track that is much more even.
 
It does not take long. The way not to do it is to put some effect/s on the tracks and push them hard just in order to tame a few rogue hits here and there. The result will be a more even sound but overall the track will sound much worse for it.
 
It is also faster than automation by far as well. This is where clip gain comes into its own and Sonar still does not have it. In Studio One or PT you can also simply cut either side of the offending hits and either raise or lower them accordingly. And because the waveforms change as well it is easy to match things up by eye as well. But the editor is hard to beat.
 
The editor works on everything as well, eg vocals. Once a lot of things are evened up in the editor then the effects you do have on these tracks can work much easier and they will all sound way better as a result. Any effect or plugin working hard will most often sound worse than effects or plugins that are working easy or relaxed.

This is where clip gain comes into its own and Sonar still does not have it

 
Jeff, Sonar has had clip gain since at least version 6.
And it's very easy to split a clip at your selection points.
 
Not sure I'm following you on this one.

simple way of dealing is with a limiter on the drum buss, set high enough to only handle those peaks.

It depends how anal you want to get with it. I've done the limiter route, but like you said, there is so much inconsistency in the character of the sound when you get a player that doesn't have consistent foot control. If I really want to get picky, I'll find the nicest kick drum hit, and then cut and paste over all the bad hits. Time consuming, yes. But worth it to me.

This is the classic scenario for drum replacement. If the kick's on a separate track, convert to MIDI and use a sampled kick. The drummer will be amazed at how good you were at making his drum sound great.

it will sound more like a machine than a real drummer.
 

The clip gain I am referring to is where you simply cut the waveform either side of say a loud kick and with one simple operation grab a point on the newly created sub clip and just drag the waveform down in level. The waveform gets smaller and the volume drops to match the kick either side of it. Once you have had this you will never go back. It is fast and you can even up things by eye very easily. It just works.
 
I know that Sonar has clip gain but you have to make assumptions as to how much less/more is required and the waveform does not change as far as I know to reflect the gain you have either added/subtracted. Useless IMO. So you have to keep trying until it sounds right and it might take several attempts to get it to match the kicks either side. The visual thing as per Pro Tools or Studio One is just way better. Unless they have put it in of course into X3.

No, it's not in X3
 
I can see how that would be extremely useful

Hey Chuck,
 
When I've been faced with this, I just find another good kick in the song and replace the bad ones. Copy and paste works fine. If it's all over the track, you blew it from the tracking stage. You should have seen inconsistent kick drum levels before the kit was tracked, ya know? For that guy maybe you needed a little more mic pre since he kicked like a girl. I would have D-Drum triggered as a safety net and always do just to save me from situations like this. OR...I can always create a gog file out of the drummers kick drum and re-replace it that way using Drumagog so HIS kick is what hits at all times consistently.
 
Or, you use bitflipper's advice and do the convert to midi using Audio Snap. As long as you have a really good drum module, it won't sound robotic. Superior 2, BFD 2/3, Addictive Drums...something with a decent amount of velocity based samples. Meaning, it may have 15 different hits per velocity so it doesn't give you that robotic sound.
 
But one thing you should always do bro from here on out....buy some good DDrum triggers and always have them on your kit as a safety net. Even if you don't use the midi you create, you'll be happy you have that safety net. Your brain you use for your V Drums will be perfect. And the D Drum triggers work so well, it's crazy not to have them. We use them on all our kits. I just leave them on and when we get someone that wants to use their own kit, we have another set we use for client kits.
 
The one thing about drums that you have to remember is...you only get that one shot to get them right. No one is perfect. But if you have the midi of the performance, it can really help you to enhance things or fix anything that may be jacked along the way. Personally though, I'd try to copy and paste good kick hits from other parts of the song into the bad parts if you can. If there are too many, go the bitflipper route. Superior 2 will handle the kick drum perfectly.
 
-Danny