For simplicity sake, lets say I have a kick, snare, and an overhead drum track.
I create a "drum buss" and route the outputs from the 3 tracks to this buss
Now I want to route the output of the "drum buss" to the "master buss" and to another buss called "paralled comp drum buss"
 
How can I set the output of drum buss to feed both the master and the comp drum buss? Would I use sends from the drum buss?
 
Thanks for the help!!
 
 

Yep, you could use sends from the drum bus, that would work fine.

Its best to have each drum go to its own bus when when your doing parallel compression or just normal compressing. This way the compressor can be set to each drum individually. This will yield a more controlled compression.

If you have more than one instrument going to a bus with a compressor on it, the compressor will not react efficiently, because maybe the kick is hitting the threshold harder than the snare. This will make the compressor compress the kick more than the snare. That's just one example of many scenarios that will happen you have more than one track going to a bus with a compressor on it.


Food for thought

CJ

Yes sure, I run a compressor on each drum before they are sent out to a "toms" buss and then into a "drums buss". I've just seen some drum recording videos on youtube where adding in a heavily compressed version of the entire drum buss mixed in with the drum buss can help give you that larger than life hard rock drum sound. Thanks for the replies!

Sometimes you don't need an extra bus. Many compressors have a dry/wet mix knob that will give you the same result.

Thank you scrook, that is an excellent idea I had not even considered. I'm giving this a bump as I'm hoping some other members have more thoughts as well. My reasoning behind this post is that I am constantly on a obsessive journey to improve my drum sounds. I have a small room and a typical mid level kit but layering in samples and reverb just hasn't brought it up to what I'm hearing in my head that a well recorded drum set whould sound like.

I'll second scook's suggestion. The problem with any kind of compression on the drum bus is that it's going to mostly be triggered by the kick drum and have little effect on the other instruments other than raising their volume via makeup gain. Parallel compression is the only case where this is not true, but only because you normally set a very low threshold. This has the effect of bringing the quieter components up in volume, which gives the overall drum mix a thicker, more consistent sound. 

However, parallel compression on the entire kit is crude compared to the precise control that's possible by compressing each drum separately and mixing in its own dry signal on its own track. The classic and time-honored drum-bus compression technique came about during a time when putting a compressor on each mic was simply not an option for all but the best-equipped studios. Nowadays we have no such restrictions.

bandso


Thank you scrook, that is an excellent idea I had not even considered. I'm giving this a bump as I'm hoping some other members have more thoughts as well. My reasoning behind this post is that I am constantly on a obsessive journey to improve my drum sounds. I have a small room and a typical mid level kit but layering in samples and reverb just hasn't brought it up to what I'm hearing in my head that a well recorded drum set whould sound like.

And Sonar saves you the small hassle of setting up a separate buss with Pro Chanel. Crank up the compression and mix the heavily compressed signal in to taste with the wet/dry control. Parallell compression via Pro Channel.