i wrote can be tho
definitely
anything to impart some saturation or sound good is worth it ofcourse
yeah you right. sorry to come at you lol. i feel like sometimes you come up with weird takes like that people shouldn’t compress or eq their drums and I don’t know what you’re talking about. but I like your posts regardless man its all love
Hate the trend where the creator of a tutorial video uses his effin face in the thumbnail. makes me steer away from the whole channel even tho the content might be good. Am I the only one?
aye, bunch of smug ■■■■■
All looks like the same dude
Don’t worry I dont take offense at all.
There’s a lot of nuance. I’m only talking about software tho.
But I would say you shouldn’t if you can avoid it, or at least if you do use it, only ‘think of it’ as applying an effect like saturation, like making a creative choice, but dont think you get any sort of control or clarity from using software EQ or compressors because of how they behave and impart different problems into a situation where you want clarity of the sound and control of the dynamic.
I’ll try to find some quotes from some of the OG masters, to explain it better.
It’s sort of in the same realm as why parallel compression is often a good idea if you want compression, because of how it retains the transients.
It’s also a different thing using compression or EQ in the tune making stage compared to an engineer doing it on second hand.
This bit about the dynamics of colour can be applied to dynamics of volume too in a super abstract way. Obviously not practical advice but a mix could be perceived as a picture if you try. I think most producers have some form of synesthesia or other visual impression in the production stage.
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In terms of optical illusion and perceptions, white and black are not colors but they represent the presence or absence of light. As a color, Grey suggest an in-between. A 100% white (blinding sunlight for instance ) suggests a light condition that bleaches out all other colors. A 100% black is absolute absence of light - a condition that makes the tones and colors absent, irrelevant or invisible.
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Realistic painters depicting a real, ‘visible’ object need to follow the same principle, making ‘pure’ black unnatural or unreal. The shadows or the darker side of colored objects are generally achieved using the ‘mediating’ hues of the object and surfaces of the shadow. An apple’s shadow on a blue bowl could be violet (blue + red). The same red apple would have an orange (red+ yellow= orange) shadow on yellow table cloth for the same reason. Black as ‘no color’ has the highest density, making it very tricky while mixing because it ‘absorbs’ rather than ‘interact’ with other hues/colors.
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For the same reason, an abstract painter depicting an abstract (non real) object/subject or theme might choose an ‘absolute’ or ‘pure’ or 100% black.
A competent watercolor artist uses untouched surface of the paper to depict white or absolute light and almost never uses pure black for black objects or shadows.
Sophisticated realistic painters do use extremely delicate technique using the final gauze of black that is almost imperceptible to naked eye.
For printing a multi-colored image, only three inks, the basic colors of the wheel i.e. Magenta (RED) , Cyan (BLUE) and Yellow are enough to depict any color and tones we see in the lit world. However, most of the advanced printing presses use a ‘forth special black’ to get sharper (hyper-realistic) image. As far as I know, cutting edge art books, calenders and visual magazines like National Geographic use ‘fifth’ black!
I’ve got a Canon printer that has cartridges; CMYK, where K is key colour (black). Prints are as good as if you go to a printing place / camera shop.
its a quote from some art teacher
that bit relates to how theres more versions of ‘black’ because some ‘black tones’ might impart a too vivid or obtrusive/ opaque effect on a nice balanced print
just like how compression or limiting can be too ‘dynamic’ or obtrusive to an overall mix if your mix is really airy, colourful or dynamic
if that makes sense
was an allegory
or how japanese cuisine doesnt use much garlic 
I get ya. Personally I use effects very sparsely. Been starting to use short delays more often than reverbs, at least in the beginning stage of making something.
EDIT to expand a bit on this, I’ve been starting to use effects with more determination now, trying to listen more to the results on different volumes, and generally use less effects if they’re not contributing to the sound/vibe I’m trying to create.
@hubb yeah i agree and appreciate your philosophical musings on the topic. i think using painting as a way of thinking of production/mixing is a useful allegory that I’ve thought about before as well. i think a lot about the time kanye was getting interviewed by seth meyers(??) and he asked him if the artistic process of designing clothes was similar to making music, and without missing a beat kanye says “everything in the world is exactly the same.” because he’s kind of right in a way that’s hard to explain. everything is just another medium
i still also think its fine to eq and compress drums with plugins so long as you know the pitfalls and work to avoid them 
but yeah keeping perspective of why you’re doing it is key
for example sometime snare no have hi end then you do hi shelf and now snare habe more hi end
i think in complete b&w terms that the pitfalls of EQ and compression are much bigger than the good they can do - in the digital realm
but that any choice that is done artistically has perfect merit
does that clear it up lol ?
i think i need a miyagi in all my posts about this
probably goes without saying but you’re of course entitled to your opinion on the matter. even in some of those interviews you linked they reference using eq and compression on drums and using a mix of hardware and software. which frankly is, i believe, the practice of 95%+ of pro producers and mix engineers these days. i also feel its relevant that more than a decade of plugin development has happened since those interviews. not to say you should do it if you prefer not to. i just think the differences between digital eq & comps and analog is not nearly big enough to warrant discouraging people from doing it as a general rule, and i think theres perfectly logical reasons to do it. pointing out the potential repercussions is another matter. i dont imagine we will resolve this discussion anyways, if it works for you then 
I didn’t post these Q&As as examples of people saying dont use compression on drums
-i’m still trying to find the time where that was a common talking point in jungle production, but these Q&As are still neat and full of advice - i will post it when i find it
i will find them sometime when i’ve read it back again - but it was a common position for a while that i fully believe still is the case in the digital realm and is atleast somewhat backed up by the sound achieved
one thing is practical advice, ie ‘you can approximate engineering by using this or that method and software’
another is the overall discussion including any known artists work, about what can lead to the most delicate, intricate, ‘perfect’ hi fi mix - where using most digital effects are going to impart some problems, and most of all that goes for EQ and Compression,
although for different reasons:
-compression in the box, can sound as good as real physical compressors because you can print the same effect onto a sound - you can basically sample the saturation that happens if you just use it on individual sounds
(they actually come up identical in listener tests, but how you approach that is possibly more difficult, than fucking around with hardware compressors in the first place, but they can ‘sort of print’ the effect somehow)
-then theres the very common mistake of being fooled by loudness, confusing it for power or clarity - that talks against using compression in generel if theres no natural saturation or any specific benefit or whatever
with EQ in digital theres really no level where software EQ can compare because its a tonal, physical thing, you need all the little artifacts and the whole sculpting a physical EQ goes through to be able to represent it fully in the box.
EQs are practically built like physical instruments - not to say its live like acoustics but almost similar in what it imparts on a sound or track running live
(a lot of people will say its the same for compressors)
but on drums, its only really the loudness war, cramming sounds into a tight levelled brick that points to using compression as being a good idea.
kind of like how a limiter is not a good idea - fidelity wise, its only really the ability to cram stuff together that makes it viable, its not because it makes anything clearer or higher fidelity
i mean you could argue a compressor or limiter can create space in that it can suck or force something to move away in a direction, glue some shiz up
-but if you want to do that, you can do that with much more control and to a more general effect by fading, silencing, volume balancing, arranging the sequence or the elements better etc via much simpler effects that doesn’t impart the issues on the whole of the mix
now back to the initial bit, lol rant rant, re jungle and fast drum music
since the drums are so central and you sort of compete with other producers, at least back in the day when it was a bigger scene
you want as much control and personality from the drums - the way to do that ‘satisfyingly’ is to create enough space for the transients and try to maintain part of the engineering from the original recordings the breaks came from - especially since its such a dirty sound in the final product, going thru dumb samplers and filters, clipping, being distorted and finally being played back on horrible systems back in the day
and if that is to be combined in a really dynamic mix, then the way to fit it all together its better to go for tone, clarity, saturation and clean transients - than to dynamically enhance certain sounds - because that forces other parts of the tune to be enhanced to stand up to the drums
but if it sounds interesting in the creation stages - then definitely go for the effect
its just worth thinking of this super pure - almost classical music approach to dance music, because some guys make some stuff that rivals classical or the best jazz music recordings on that fidelity level, pure mix level etc
and this goes for breakbeat music mostly innit, you could do as much to ‘artificial drums’ as you want in the digital realm
its more when the sounds have a real life counterpart that it becomes a problem
i think im getting closer
although not the thread or the era im thinking about when it was more common
loosely following up on the point that saturation is better for drums than eq or compression - re peaks and transients
it is an interesting perspective, i do like hearing these explanations about the processes these artists use, very good stuff