Microphones and channels
In keeping with how a real drum kit is traditionally recorded and mixed, we have recorded the kits using close, overhead and room mics.
All Kitpieces include the Overhead (OH) and Room (RM) channels, and these are all routed to the Overhead and Room stereo channels in the mixer.
Kick, Snare, Hihat, Xtras and Toms were recorded with close mics as well.
- Kick and Snare have two close mic channels, Top/Bottom for Snare, and Beater/Front for Kick.
- Hihat, Xtras and Toms have one close mic channel each.
- Snare Buzz
- Kick and Snare Close Mics Balance
Snare Buzz - To further enhance the realism we have recorded the buzzy sound the snare makes whenever the kick or toms are played. The volume of the Snare Buzz can be adjusted with the top slider. This does not affect the sound when playing the snare itself, but rather how much “buzz” the snare generates when you play the kick or the toms.
Kick & Snare Close Mics Balance - The balance of the two close mics on Kick and Snare can be adjusted with the horizontal slider under the image. In general adding in more of the lower mic on snare means you get more of the “buzz”. On the kick the “Beater” side has more click and the “Front” has more deep bass.
Room Distance
The Room Channel has a Distance control that lets you delay the room recordings up to 50ms (simulating a mic distance of up to around 56 ft or 17 m).
The Bus Channel
A commonly used trick in drum mixing is to create a submix of chosen kit elements (i.e. kick + snare + hihat), then distort or heavily compress this submix, and finally introduce this back into the main mix at a lower level.
The result is that you get the dynamics and punch of the “normal” cleaner main mix, but at the same time a nice “crunchy” quality and sustain from the compressed submix.
This effect can be easily achieved in Addictive Drums. Just click the Bus Channel Label to select the Bus channel, and you will notice that a Bus Send panel appears on top of the mixer:
Now you can easily create a submix and process it using the Bus Channel’s Insert Effects!
Channel Insert Effects
Each channel in AD2 has a selection of insert effects:
Noise
Add recorded noise from various mics, studios and machines. The noise sound is triggered when an audio signal is present. You can control the Decay and Level to go from a subtle constant hiss to an exaggerated short noise burst on every drum hit.
MultiFX 1
The MultiFX unit has two different modes: Comp & Dist and Tape & Shape. Clicking on the top right arrow buttons of the MultiFX unit allows you to toggle between the two modes. Note that only one of the modes is active at a time.
Comp & Dist
Combined compressor and distortion effect. Activate or deactivate them separately by clicking the Enable buttons on each section.
The Compressor has an advanced AutoGain algorithm that keeps levels in check. Thr is the compressor threshold, Atk sets the attack time and Rel the release time. GR shows the Gain Reduction applied.
The Distortion effect offers several types of distortion, selectable with the Arrow Buttons, or by clicking the distortion type Name. On the left is a Range slider where you can select a specific frequency range to distort. Frequencies outside of the range pass through unchanged. Useful to just add some crunch to the mid range of a kick for example.
Amount lets you control how much distortion is added to the sound, while Mix let’s you set the balance between the clean and the distorted sound.
Tape & Shape
The Tape section simulates recording to analog tape. The Drive knob controls how hard you are pushing that poor tape, and Bottom offers separate control of a natural low range boost that happens with tape recording.
The Shape section lets you control the transients and decay in an intuitive way. Compressors can be used for this task as well, but the main difference is that a transient shaper such as this affects transients no matter how loud or soft they are. Increase the Attack for more transient “snap” or reduce it to soften the sound. Adjust Sustain to control the level after the transient, turn it up to get almost a “gated drum sound” effect, or down to make the sound shorter.
The Sat (Saturating Limiter) is useful to keep very short spiky transients in check - they simply be cut off, if above the Thr (Threshold) level. This is useful in itself as it adds a little crunch to the sound, but it is often also a good idea to avoid very short transients on individual channels that could cause havoc in the Master Channel compressor.
EQ
A four band equalizer with additional High / Low Cut Filters. Tweak the EQ by dragging directly in the graph: sideways to change Frequency, up/down to change Gain, mouse wheel to change Q value. You can also drag up/down directly on the values below the graph.
The additional High / Low Cut Filters can be dragged in from the sides of the graph, and easily adjusted: sideways to change Frequency, up/down to change Q value.
MultiFX 2
Same as Multi FX 1
Cut (Bus & Master channels only)
A High / Low Cut filter that sits at the end of the signal chain.
Output
Trim adjusts the level of the processed signal. It can be a good idea to adjust this so that the processed and unprocessed levels are about the same. This makes it easier to compare them, and also maintains a nice even gain structure in the signal chain.
Channel Inserts Enable
You can turn on/off all Insert Effects for a channel with the blue Inserts button. When off, a hatch will cover all Insert Effects to visualize that no processing is being done.
Channel FX Sends
Each channel has two FX Sends. They are routed to the two Delerb FX units on the FX Page. Each send has an enable button to quickly turn on/off the FX Sends.
Selecting a channel for editing
Select the channel you want to edit by clicking the corresponding Mixer Section label. You can do this from either The Kit, Edit or FX pages.
Selecting a Mixer channel also selects the correct Kitpiece in the Kitpiece Select section.
There is a shortcut from the Kit Page: Click the little ‘E’ in the corner of a Kitpiece Slot and it will bring you to the Edit Page with the correct Kitpiece and Channel selected.