The Waves C1 Compressor.
Here’s a little trick I found the other day with one of my favourite swiss army knife compressors, the Waves C1. It’s especially good for snare drums and toms. If you find your drums are a little bit too snappy, especially with a really hard stick sound, this setting can work a treat to control that snap while retaining the drum sound’s dynamics.
First, you want to set the attack and release settings as fast as possible (one of the best features of this compressor is the wide scope for adjusting attack and release times), then crank up the ratio to at least 30:1 leaving the threshold and the makeup gain at 0. If you feel the need you can play with the ratio and release time, but pretty much it’s a set and forget.
Jack Prest is an Inhouse Producer/Engineer at Studios 301