let’s say i leave my drums at -2db at the beggining, during hte climax my drums are really drowned out and that takes away a lot from the clubbiness of the track, if i raise the whole drum part from -2db it will be way too loud for the intro though.
Is it recommended to have different db at different parts for drums and other instruments
Generally not… You need to work on the dynamics of your track/ arrangement so you dont have your drums drowned out.
Listen to how the chemical brothers use of dynamics in hey boy hey girl to have the synths sound massive in breaks but when the drums kick in they are compressed but everything still appears loud. They use dynamics and sidechaining and eq to give the impression that the drums are so super loud they drown everything out but infact its just a trick. All the other sounds get quiter but more compressed.
The brain translates it into the drums being really loud beacuse the brain has a sort of comressor built in so when you hear something really loud it adjusts.
The brain also perseaves frewuencies differently as things get louder.
Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia
Very similar to how the human eye iris gets smaller when it gets too bright blocking out the light. In comuter games they recreate this with bloom effects or hdr lighting.
You can do the same trick with loudness perceprion.
[quote]phil johnston (07/08/2011)[hr]Generally not… You need to work on the dynamics of your track/ arrangement so you dont have your drums drowned out.
Listen to how the chemical brothers use of dynamics in hey boy hey girl to have the synths sound massive in breaks but when the drums kick in they are compressed but everything still appears loud. They use dynamics and sidechaining and eq to give the impression that the drums are so super loud they drown everything out but infact its just a trick. All the other sounds get quiter but more compressed.
The brain translates it into the drums being really loud beacuse the brain has a sort of comressor built in so when you hear something really loud it adjusts.
The brain also perseaves frewuencies differently as things get louder.
Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia
Very similar to how the human eye iris gets smaller when it gets too bright blocking out the light. In comuter games they recreate this with bloom effects or hdr lighting.
You can do the same trick with loudness perceprion.[/quote]
im actually embarrassed i forgot about sidechaining 
lmao thanks a lot man and intriguing article, thanks 
So a practicle example of this could be when the kick/drums comoe in you use one of the curves in theloud end to apply to some sounds.
Mainly the 3-5k region gets cut back… I guess this is to protect the ears or something.
Its also the same reason that pumping side chaining on strings/synhs is so popular. It gives the impression that the kick is loud and energetic.
[quote]phil johnston (07/08/2011)[hr]So a practicle example of this could be when the kick/drums comoe in you use one of the curves in theloud end to apply to some sounds.
Mainly the 3-5k region gets cut back… I guess this is to protect the ears or something.
Its also the same reason that pumping side chaining on strings/synhs is so popular. It gives the impression that the kick is loud and energetic.
[/quote]
yea i usually side chain my bass but in this case the bass purposely is out of the way of the kicks so i just sidechained the main synth which is really overpowering otherwise. Also should i sidechain every percussion instrument I have or just the kicks? and in general is it a good or bad idea to sidechain the bass and synth tot he kick?
thanks again
For anyone using TRacks, it actually has an awesome ‘percieved loudness’ meter…
[quote]jjdejong0 (07/08/2011)[hr]For anyone using TRacks, it actually has an awesome ‘percieved loudness’ meter…[/quote]
I checked the site for a dl link and other forum posts they all lead to 404 pages, do you happen to have a link?