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I've always wondered what's considered the correct method, adding parallel compression before or after adding reverb?

I kind of assume the order in which you do them will depend on the effect that you are after, and at the end of the day whatever way sounds best is probably the way to go about it. I'm interested in making the hyper tight drum sounds in neuro-style drum and bass tracks mainly, but it would still be nice to here about how it's used in other genres too.

Was wondering what everyone's opinion was on this?

Thank!

I have 2 reverb buses. One long and one for short reverb. I parallel compress my drums in their own bus (I use a limiter with a dry/wet knob) and then send that signal to the short reverb bus along with everything else that needs short reverb.

So.. that's how I do it.

Try and see what's best to you. The compression can introduce distortion to the reverb which can sound pretty nasty, but it depends on how harshly you compress and on other factors (output gain of the reverb into the compressor, etc etc).

So.. yeah. Do what you feel is best

I bus my drums to reverb after compression, but I've been doing some weird shit lately. I'll send my hats to a really long reverb bus and my snare to a shorter reverb bus and bus both of those to a channel with heavy sidechain compression from the kick, but they're usually drums from breaks which I like to smash the shit out of with compression, so the reverb happens after that. Or something like that. Experimentation is key. If it sounds good, it can't be wrong.

Whatever sounds good to you, whatever works with your music.

END OF.

Don't make something that is difficult, more difficult.

If you compress after reverb I will come to your house and kill you in the face.

and u will have thick cloudy reverb if u dont want that do it before. see what u prefer for that particular sound

Before the reverb, personally. However you can get some awesome sounds with OTT after reverbs as it brings all to the front of the mix.

evil_cliff wrote:Before the reverb, personally. However you can get some awesome sounds with OTT after reverbs as it brings all to the front of the mix.

AxeD wrote:If you compress after reverb I will come to your house and kill you in the face.

Strike one, man.

There's a good reason to do it before though.

And that is usually you don't want the transients of the drums to change because of the compression and then having to re-align them because it muddies it up a bit.
Past 140 bpm it's imo a good idea to keep the drums pretty clinical and then saturate and distort in the context of the mix, so there's less chance that the sounds occupy the same frequencies or clash or cancel each other out.

Then again... if it sounds good!.


Neuro funk sound design is usually pretty close to the opposite of simplifying production tho imo imo imo ... make it as complex as possible and geek the fuck out of it. If not inside the daw then atleast inside your head .. it HAS to be that way