About the author: Graham Cochrane is a producer, audio engineer, singer/songwriter and the man behind The Recording Revolution – a blog that helps recording musicians make better music.
The more experience you have with mixing audio, the more you will become aware that our ears tend to like the sound of saturation, otherwise known as distortion.
Why We Like Distortion
Analog circuitry (mic pres, consoles, etc) naturally would distort audio as it passed through. This actually added character and “warmth” to the signal and usually happened again when audio hit the tape as a final medium. All of these stages of distortion or saturation became part of the sound that we so desperately love in all the great recordings in the world.
So what’s the big deal? The big deal is, there is no distortion or saturation in a DAW. Just pure, clean tracks. There is nothing wrong with these clean tracks in your DAW, don’t get me wrong. My point is, however that you can bring some of that distortion and saturation into your mixes as an effect and it will mimic what analog circuitry has done naturally for years.
It’s Time For Some Plugins
If you are mixing something that is super transient heavy like drums, you can add some warmth, presence, and power to your tracks by simply adding some saturation to them. We do this via a distortion or tape saturation plugin. Many of these plugins have free demo versions. Just google tape saturation plugin and you’ll be off to the races.
But don’t miss out on what you might already have. Many DAWs ship with some random distortion or harmonic plugin of some kind. If you insert one of these plugins on your kick, snare, or drum bus and dial in just a hair of distortion you can get a similar effect to a tape saturation plugin. They are no rules or magic settings so you must simply experiment. When it starts to sound bad, dial it back a bit.
The Key Is Subtlety
In practice, you may not notice a massive difference in your mix by using a little bit of saturation. It’s truly an art of subtly. As you put little amounts on say your kick, snare, OHs, and even the drum bus (or some combination thereof), your drum tracks will start to warm up and pop in the mix. It brings a nice crack and distinction to the drums that will help.
After all of your appropriate EQ, compression, and ambient effects, adding a bit of tape saturation or distortion might be the final step in getting a massive punchy drum mix!
Do YOU use distortion in your mix?
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