I've been watching a couple of your videos Andrew. You do so much more setting up for a mix than I could ever dream of getting into. I suppose that is mainly because I rarely record audio.
 
The great thing about my drum VSTi though (Battery 3, BFD Eco and Dummaxx) is that they can route each kit part to separate outputs and I can therefore experiment with using busses and parallel compression.
 
I'm currently trying one buss for skins and another buss for tins, if you know what I mean. And then I'm only compressing the skins buss (kick, snare and toms).
 
kinda fun 
 
 

synkrotron
I've been watching a couple of your videos Andrew. You do so much more setting up for a mix than I could ever dream of getting into. I suppose that is mainly because I rarely record audio.
 
The great thing about my drum VSTi though (Battery 3, BFD Eco and Dummaxx) is that they can route each kit part to separate outputs and I can therefore experiment with using busses and parallel compression.
 
I'm currently trying one buss for skins and another buss for tins, if you know what I mean. And then I'm only compressing the skins buss (kick, snare and toms).
 
kinda fun 
 
 Thanks for watching man, I like to be very organised when mixing, helps me work faster in the long run and my workflow isn't disrupted trying to find tracks etc...
There's no limits to what you can do with busses, and whatever works for you should be the way you do it.
Andrew

sausy1981
Here's a video from a mix series I did recently about me mixing drums, It's how I approached this song, each song can take different approaches. If you watch the first video in the series it concentrates on setting up a session including routing.
Drum Mix video ---> https://youtu.be/738p71Ly-Nc
Session set-up video ----> https://youtu.be/LF6EngBNhxM

OK, thanks much for the input...  I figured out how to do what I want:  I can take all the drum tracks and instead of sending them to the Master Bus (the default routing), send them to a new bus call Drum Sum Bus (or some name like that). On this new Drum sum bus I can add the single EQ to affect all the drums at once. Then take that Drum Sum Bus and send it to the Master Bus.  
It's taking a while, but I'm learning....  whew....

I actually have more drum buses than that - I further split things up, to have a separate bus for the Toms, another for the Cymbals, 1 for Kick, and 1 for Snare.  The audio tracks for each tom would get routed to the Toms bus, etc.  I then have these buses routed to a common Drums Bus, and have a Parallel Compression bus that the Drums Bus sends to, and the Drums Bus routes to the Master Bus.
 
This allows individual control over each kit piece, as well as quick grouped control for toms and cymbals, etc.
 
All of the above is saved off as a track template, which has all the audio tracks and the drums midi track in a track folder (allowing collapsing or expansion of the drum tracks), and I have a track template set up for each Battery 3 drum kit that I have used in any Sonar project.  Each track template then includes a custom Battery 3 kit, with each used cell set to use its own outputs from Battery 3, and there is a separate audio track for each of the kit pieces for the outputs from Battery 3, so with just a few mouse clicks to insert from track template, I get a REALLY good start on the drums setup for that project.
 
Anyways, hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

robert_e_bone
All of the above is saved off as a track template, which has all the audio tracks and the drums midi track in a track folder (allowing collapsing or expansion of the drum tracks), and I have a track template set up for each Battery 3 drum kit that I have used in any Sonar project.  Each track template then includes a custom Battery 3 kit, with each used cell set to use its own outputs from Battery 3, and there is a separate audio track for each of the kit pieces for the outputs from Battery 3, so with just a few mouse clicks to insert from track template, I get a REALLY good start on the drums setup for that project.

This is what I should be doing, now that I am settling on a system that works how I want... I might do that today.
 
Thanks for reminding me Bob 

Sure - I might add, I also have some basic volume levels set for each kit piece, and I have it all set to start right at the beginning of the whole signal chain - meaning setting individual Battery 3 Kit volumes for each cell, as well as the overall Master volume for Battery 3.
 
Please note that the following is simply what I do for ME, and that others will quite likely do things differently - it's just the way I evolved into thinking, and I am happy with the results.
 
So, when I create a custom kit in Battery 3, for use in Sonar projects, I will load the desired kit, and will set the Output Channel for each cell of the kit to go to a separate stereo output channel (32 available in Battery 3), and I set the master volume for Battery 3 to -8 DB.
 
I then go to Sonar, and set up a Drums track folder, and add a midi track to the folder, and a stereo audio track for each kit piece that will be coming from the custom Battery 3 kit.  I also set up whatever sub-buses I will be using, which will be: Drums Master, Parallel Compression, Toms Bus, Cymbals Bus, etc....), and I will set each audio track's output to go to the correct sub-bus.  The audio tracks will have their Inputs set to the correct Output Channel from Battery 3 for the corresponding kit piece.
 
Then, I create a simple quick level-testing Step Sequencer midi clip, where there is a drum beat for each of the kit pieces.  Sonar will set Step Sequencer clips initial velocity to a uniform value of 100, so with this midi clip, I can play it over and over as needed to get all of my kit piece volumes to be at -18 dBs.
 
To do this, I play the midi clip, and that will create peak volumes I can see on either the console view or on the track view, for each track/channel.  That gives me some sort of initial volume for each kit piece.  I then figure out the difference between each of those volumes and my target volume of -18 dBs, and I go into Battery and use those volume difference calculations to adjust each cell's output volume to whatever is needed so that when I again play the midi clip, I can see all of the kit piece volumes are as close to -18 dBs as possible.  (this will take a few times playing the midi clip, but it is very short. just having a single 'hit' for each kit piece, so it only takes a moment to play it).
 
Throughout the above process, I do NOT use any audio track's Input Trim, nor do I move any Sonar fader for any of the drum audio tracks off of Unity.  I want to have all of my drum kit's initial volumes controlled by a combination of separate audio output volumes for each kit piece in Battery 3 and the Battery 3 master volume.  (I save the custom kit in Battery 3, as well, named for whatever starting kit I am using, including all the samples)
 
When it is all set, I do a select all to export all the drum audio tracks, as well as their Drums track folder, and the Battery 3 instance, as well as all of the buses and the routing assignments, and this will become a new Track Template for this particular kit - as I save it as a user track template.
 
(once you create one new drum kit track template, you can load up a new project from one of your existing templates, and load up a new kit and make the needed adjustments.  This will save you a bunch of time, because you will have the Drums track folder, all of the audio tracks for the kit pieces, a midi track for drums midi data, all of the sub-buses you create, and all the routing assignments for the kit piece audio tracks to whichever sub-bus is appropriate.  That's a great starting point)
 
I hope the above helps, and makes sense.  I can try to answer any questions you have.  There may be easier or better ways of doing all of this, but I like how the above works for me, as I get really good volume settings really quickly, by inserting drum track templates as needed into new projects.  For ME, this saves a ton of time.
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

Bristol_Jonesey
Route all of your drums to it's own drum bus.
 
Do all of your EQ & compression on the individual tracks - you can add a global EQ on the drum bus IF it's needed. You can also add a further compression stage on the bus
 
Insert sends on your drum tracks to the drum reverb bus. 
 
Whatever reverb you choose, make sure it's set to 100% wet. Several plugins offer separate faders for the wet/dry level, in which case turn the dry level all the way down.
 
I quite often split out my toms to a tom bus so i can treat them all in one go, then route this to the drum bus.
I find it also helps to route kick & bass to a Bass bus. Muting this should totally remove the low end form your mix - anything else which pokes out should be EQ'ed appropriately to get rid of any LF build up

I can't say it any better than this... it is exactly how I work with drum tracks.

3 drum busses for me, typically.
 
1 = kick
2 = all other drums
3 = cymbals
 
the worst thing to do, is compress for drum work, and effect your cymbals
and 
vice versa
 
the kick is just a luxury, because i can. it gives more control over the kick, 
to have it on it's own bus.
 
snare gets compression on track, or parallel compression,
which technically means there is a 4th drum bus, which is just a compressor.
 
all or none of the drums, can go to the bus compressor.
 
i typically put a limiter across my drum bus,
but mostly as an upwards compressor.
i'm not sure any limiting actually ever occurs.
 

Chevy

Bristol_Jonesey
Route all of your drums to it's own drum bus.
 
Do all of your EQ & compression on the individual tracks - you can add a global EQ on the drum bus IF it's needed. You can also add a further compression stage on the bus
 
Insert sends on your drum tracks to the drum reverb bus. 
 
Whatever reverb you choose, make sure it's set to 100% wet. Several plugins offer separate faders for the wet/dry level, in which case turn the dry level all the way down.
 
I quite often split out my toms to a tom bus so i can treat them all in one go, then route this to the drum bus.
I find it also helps to route kick & bass to a Bass bus. Muting this should totally remove the low end form your mix - anything else which pokes out should be EQ'ed appropriately to get rid of any LF build up

Ok...  sorry for being slow on the pickup...  have done very little bus routing... are you saying by "Route all of your drums to it's own drum bus", do you mean route all the drum tracks pre-fader thru insert sends to a new drum bus?  And then just pull the actual drum track volumes down to zero (using the sends for balance) ?  If you don't pull the track volumes down, it seems you will always have the dry tracks playing at the same time as the drum bus tracks, and EQ'ing the drum buss will just be a parallel EQ bus. 

No, that's not what I mean.
 
Set the OUTPUTS of your individual drum tracks to the drum BUS set to POST fader, not pre.
Route the output of the drum bus to the master bus.
Insert SENDS on each of your drum tracks to a REVERB bus and adjust the level of each of these individually.
You can then apply further processing on the drum bus for an overall EQ (if needed), compression (if needed) and you can also EQ & compress your reverb bus (nearly always needed)