New York, NY (June 9, 2023)—Mixing multitrack drums is a complex and challenging process. Although you don’t need dedicated drum-mixing plug-ins to get good results, they can be helpful. The latest such plug-in to hit the market is MDrumStrip (Mac/Windows), by the Prague-based software developer Melda Production. It offers a comprehensive solution for drum mixing that includes EQ, compression, saturation, gating, reverb and more.
The idea is to put an instance of MDrumStrip on each drum track and bus. On each plug-in instance, you choose whether it’s for a kick, snare, hi-hat, tom, overhead, room, master, or parallel bus, and you get a dedicated set of controls matching your selection.
Pressing the Auto-Input button on any of the drum types (aka “devices”) while the track is playing triggers an analysis of a few seconds of the track’s audio and automatically sets the input level to gain stage it correctly. If you have the Matching (auto-EQ) knob turned on, it will also configure the audio to match a preset, idealized drum sound.
QSC L Class Loudspeakers – A Mix Product of the Week
The EQ sections, which you find on the GUIS for most of the drum types, include the ability to set the fundamental frequency of the drum. Once set, you can boost or cut not only that fundamental but also the second, third and fourth harmonics, Ring (mid frequencies) and Air (high-frequencies).
The Dynamics sections, which are also on most drum types, include three primary parameters: Pop controls the initial transient. Comp adjusts compression for the body of the sound. Squash adds aggressive compression to the signal. An XY-pad lets you graphically adjust the relative amount of all three parameters.
Other processors available on various drum types are ResoKill for controlling drum resonance, BleedKill for reducing cymbal bleed, and Gate for full-spectrum bleed control.
The Reverb processor, included on most individual drums and the three bus types, offers plates, chambers, halls and more. Global controls for a Maximizer and a Saturator are available for most drum types.
MDrumStrip will be available for $52 until June 18. After that, it will rise incrementally every week until it reaches its full price of $320 in September.
For more information, go to the MDrumStrip page on the Melda Production site.
