Settings for huge rock drum sound!

[keano]

anyone have tips for huge drum sound (AC/DC) meaning reverb settings and compressor settings?
Please!!!

 

[orangeoctane]

Submix your drums to 2 tracks, limit the submix *aggressively*, add that back into your mix. Use a quality reverb with a big room setting and longer-ish decay. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

 

[keano]

Thanks Dave so use a big room reverb rather then a big hall or church reverb. I always get confused as to what reverb type to apply for that big sound.

By saying submix do you mean duplicate my drum tracks and apply limiter (no compression) and then mix those tracks in woith the original?

Thanks

 

[orangeoctane]

Different rooms will give you different sounds. I meant more generally a bigger room is what you are after. Halls can work nicely but so can just very large rooms with big ceilings. That's where the experimentation comes in.

On the submix, you can either duplicate the tracks and send the duplicates to 2 channels for processing or you can send the original track signals via an AUX send or a BUS. All depends on your software you are using (or hardware if that's the case). And yes, go for some brick wall limiting over just some general RMS compression. Then mix that processed signal back in with the original drums. Experiement with the levels of reverb you apply to both the individual drums *and* the submix.