Re: Jamming... with myself.
Sound excessive?
I just have done a real quick go with the mix. Not too much EQ, random limiting and compression all over.
1. There is almost nothing on the snare. Just a really light peak limiter sort of thing for like when i accidentally hit the mic with a stick or something.
It is two mics, top and bottom, about the same distance from their respective heads. The sound is pretty close to 50/50 each mic.
2. The kick is actually two cloned tracks. On one, there is nothing but EQ(a big mid scoop, for the CAD KBM412) and the same limiter as the snare, which is like: threshold at -0.8dB, ceiling at -0.3dB or so. Not doing much squashing, just there for freakishly aberrant loudnesses.
The other kick track is just for the "click" bit of the kick. It has an EQ that cuts out most of the low end, and also IIRC some superhighs too. On this click kick, the compression is nuts, i am definitely smashing like 10-12dB out (again with a limiter) so it is a super consistent attack sound. This track is just brought in enough so that there is some definition in the (er... very roughly) double kick parts.
Oh, and that is just on the heavier stuff. The quieter one only has the first kick track, and not the wildly compressed one.
3. Lets see. The overheads have maybe about 3dB being compressed with Blockfish.
4. The toms have a whole fuckpile of compression on them, and some goofy EQ so they make the boom sound i like for them. Due to what the EQ does to the mic bleed, i have them gated with Floorfish also, which i don't usually like to do.
5. Lastly on the drums, the one you are probably hearing the most, is i had an extra track available so i put the old radioshack PZM almost in the next room. I did not realize at the time that the single AA battery in the thing needed replacing, so the mic was a little crunchier than it usually is. I decided to run with it, so i am slamming the piss out of it with TL's Saturated Driver. The mic isn't super loud in the mix, compared, but its presence accounts for much of the crunchy compressed feel of the drum mix, particularly the hihat which is fuzzing out pretty well in a lot of spots.
6. The drum mix has a few random things, squashing the overall drummix about another 4-ish dB with a soft limiter onnit.
If there were any other instruments than the one guitar track, i would spend more time trying to clean it up, but as it is, these are just the basic settings that i have on saved FX chains from older recordings.
Definitely excessive.