Ugly Snare BOOM I cannot tame, HELP

[Christopher Har V]

I'm using the Progressive Foundry library with Superior Drummer 2.0 and no matter what snare I select, there is this terrible BOOM that just pops out over the rest of the mix on random snare hits. This is so difficult to deal with because some of the snare hits just sound BRILLIANT and perfect, and then others sound terrible and have this HARD FLUB.
"Hard flub" is probably the best way I can describe this sound. I only notice it on laptop speakers and my cell phone speakers, and I don't notice it on any professional/reference mixes that I play back through these same speakers. So I can be content with the snare on my monitors and in my car and on my headphones, but when it comes to the medium that most people check out new music through - their laptops and phones - the snare randomly flubs all over the mix.
All of this despite a LOT of dynamic control on the snare track. I've dialed it back several times to make sure the HARD FLUB wasn't some kind of artifact from too much compression, but it actually only gets worse the dryer the track becomes. But after a certain amount of processing there is a diminishing return as to how much more it gets tamed.
I've got it comp'd hard, experimented with all kinds of attack and release times, different ratios, different SNARES themselves in the SD setup. Different mic balances and processing in the SD mixer, different velocities, different send levels to the room mic, to the parallel comp bus... everything. Well, everything I can think of.

Is my only solution to automate the low-end dB of every single snare hit throughout the entire album? I thought this is what compression and dynamic control is for, so that I don't have to do such terribly tedious things. I like automating and automate a lot, but if I have to automate the low-end of the snare for every snare hit... that just strikes me as a sign that I must be processing the snare incorrectly, or that something else is wrong with it. Any advice? Do I have to use RIMSHOTS on every single hit? Those are less boomy. But I don't want that sound, not for every snare hit on the album.

 

[Chri]

Post a clip. We can only speculate otherwise.

 

[ArtDecade]

Turn the Boom knob down.

 

[DudeManBrother]

Have you tried removing the compression and sticking a clipper or limiter on there instead? Anything slower than the fastest attack will let the transient through, and in most every compressor, save those with look ahead, you will be letting some portion of it through, which will only make it worse when the make up gain is used.

A limiter is by default the fastest attack, with no ratio getting past the threshold; and a clipper will shave off the peaks, while usually keeping all the punch, if not abused.

 

[Christopher Har V]

Post a clip. We can only speculate otherwise.

I'm trying to log into my SoundCloud but it's telling me that "Our robots think you are a robot." and won't let me log in. Trying to find a way around it but to no avail.

 

[ArtDecade]

I'm trying to log into my SoundCloud but it's telling me that "Our robots think you are a robot." and won't let me log in. Trying to find a way around it but to no avail.

You need to pick the three pictures that have boats in them.

 

[Christopher Har V]

Post a clip. We can only speculate otherwise.

Well here's a link to an example of what I'm talking about, but of course SOUNDCLOUD compresses the mix to the point where the HARD FLUB is much less noticeable. So you probably wont really be able to hear what I'm talking about.

But here, in my DAW, every snare hit in this segment sounds just fine besides the 6th hit, and then the third-to-last and second-to-last hits. Doesn't come thru the same on soundcloud at all tho.

The second-to-last hit is the best example of what I'm talking about, and does manage to come thru on soundcloud a bit. But like I said, it's only noticeable on laptop or phone speakers.
https://soundcloud.com/christopherharv/the-world-of-difference-hard-flub-on-snare

 

[Lorcan Ward]

What velocity are you programming the snare hits at

 

[Christopher Har V]

You can hear it all over this production too, during this passage, odd hits will FLUB OUT on the laptop/iphone speakers.

 

[Christopher Har V]

What velocity are you programming the snare hits at

I've tried changing the velocities and it doesn't help. Unless I go so soft that it's just inappropriate. Going with a hard 127 actually helps a little bit, because how loud the high-end transient becomes. But I can't 127 every snare hit.

 

[GunpointMetal]

Is it possible you've doubled up some MIDI notes on accident with a lower-velocity hit that's adding more bass. I haven't used SD2.0 in a loooong time, but I do remember it basically playing back hits twice as loud if they somehow got doubled. I'd be going through a track and out of nowhere there would be a kick/snare/tom that was 2x louder than everything else.

 

[Christopher Har V]

Is it possible you've doubled up some MIDI notes on accident with a lower-velocity hit that's adding more bass. I haven't used SD2.0 in a loooong time, but I do remember it basically playing back hits twice as loud if they somehow got doubled. I'd be going through a track and out of nowhere there would be a kick/snare/tom that was 2x louder than everything else.

I'm still working with the piano roll, it's still open and the drums are not a stem even tho I am going back and forth in the mastering stage of the production. So I can open the piano roll and see that there is no doubling up of samples. I can also see the piano roll Map in the SD2.0 UI, and there is no doubling-up of snares associated with the key that has the snare hit. Just one snare hit I'm dealing with here. 2 mics on it, and I've treated both of them in various ways. When I reduce the low end to cover up the boomy FLUB snare hits, then there are many other hits that sound way too thin. So I think automating the low end is the only way forward...

 

[GunpointMetal]

I'm still working with the piano roll, it's still open and the drums are not a stem even tho I am going back and forth in the mastering stage of the production. So I can open the piano roll and see that there is no doubling up of samples. I can also see the piano roll Map in the SD2.0 UI, and there is no doubling-up of snares associated with the key that has the snare hit. Just one snare hit I'm dealing with here. 2 mics on it, and I've treated both of them in various ways. When I reduce the low end to cover up the boomy FLUB snare hits, then there are many other hits that sound way too thin. So I think automating the low end is the only way forward...

It just seems like such a random problem, I'd have to think there is something causing it that can be fixed, because automating EQ on snare like that is not only a huge pain, but really shouldn't be necessary. Does the sound occur in correlation with something else in the mix, like is the bass/guitar hitting a specific note in those instances?

 

[Christopher Har V]

It just seems like such a random problem, I'd have to think there is something causing it that can be fixed, because automating EQ on snare like that is not only a huge pain, but really shouldn't be necessary. Does the sound occur in correlation with something else in the mix, like is the bass/guitar hitting a specific note in those instances?

No, there's no pattern like that, no corresponding specific bass note or anything like that.

I've actually just tried a mini notch at exactly 200Hz and i'm having pretty good results. So counter-intuitive because you think snare you think 200HZ. But the notch is narrow enough and only -5dB or so , and so far it's doing the trick on my laptop speakers. I don't think it's going to translate well in the car test and the headphone test and various other reference speakers - it's gonna sound too thin on the hits that aren't the random HARD FLUB. Shifting it around between 190-230HZ, actually, hoping I find the sweet spot that takes away that random hard flub yet leaves the other good-sounding hits alone and doesn't make them sound too thin.

 

[Adieu]

You need to pick the three pictures that have boats in them.

While using an updated browser so it loads the right picture set instead of an expired set of buses & without clicking on the fourth picture that totally has a smaller boat in it too, except their robot didn't notice that one?

 

[Christopher Har V]

While using an updated browser so it loads the right picture set instead of an expired set of buses & without clicking on the fourth picture that totally has a smaller boat in it too, except their robot didn't notice that one?

I wound up being able to log in through google. Which I don't like doing, google kind of winds up holding dominion over everything then. But Soundcloud would not let me log in otherwise, besides being a totally stable genius on the boat quiz.

 

[WarMachine]

I wound up being able to log in through google. Which I don't like doing, google kind of winds up holding dominion over everything then. But Soundcloud would not let me log in otherwise, besides being a totally stable genius on the boat quiz.

Not to brag but i've gotten pretty good at the stop lights, palm trees and buses. Just sayin'

 

[Christopher Har V]

For anyone still reading this thread, I think I've solved the UGLY BOOM.

I should have tried this before making the post, but it just didn't occur to me. A very narrow surgical cut on the heavy rhythm guitars at 250Hz was exactly what I needed. I'm talking a -12dB cut at 250Hz with an 18Q and a -24 Slope. Luckily my heavy rhythm guitars still sound great with this cut. They may even sound better.

This alone isn't enough, the snare still needed massive compression in a bandwidth spanning roughly 170-240Hz, centered at 200Hz. I use Fab-Filter's Pro-C Internal Side-chain feature to add loads of extra compression to that bandwidth while moderately compressing the entire spectrum of the snare. But now the snare boom is finally tamed for the laptop and cell phone speakers, no ugly distortion, while still not sounding too thin anywhere else.

 

[WarMachine]

For anyone still reading this thread, I think I've solved the UGLY BOOM.

I should have tried this before making the post, but it just didn't occur to me. A very narrow surgical cut on the heavy rhythm guitars at 250Hz was exactly what I needed. I'm talking a -12dB cut at 250Hz with an 18Q and a -24 Slope. Luckily my heavy rhythm guitars still sound great with this cut. They may even sound better.

This alone isn't enough, the snare still needed massive compression in a bandwidth spanning roughly 170-240Hz, centered at 200Hz. I use Fab-Filter's Pro-C Internal Side-chain feature to add loads of extra compression to that bandwidth while moderately compressing the entire spectrum of the snare. But now the snare boom is finally tamed for the laptop and cell phone speakers, no ugly distortion, while still not sounding too thin anywhere else.

Have you tried using the dynamic eq in pro q? I'm only a few years late to the party lol, but that feature is a godsend.

 

[c7spheres]

Pan the snare hard left or right (slowly) for each hit as it plays and see if it gets noticably better or worse. If so, you might have a psychoacoustic phase issue which can be solved by panning it to where it sounds best, but that usually means an out of balance snare mix, so then you can pan it to that location anyways and then in series use an actual 'balancing pan pot' to recenter/locate the snare, the opposite also can work just as well. - This first corrects or identifies the phase issue then adjusts the location or level in the stereo field, depending on which type of pan use used first. -- Some daw's reverse their terms of 'pan vs balance'. when I say balancing pan pot I mean the one that actually moves the stereo information/program material side to side (for example hard right= 100% Left and 100% Right in the right channel etc), not the one that just controls volume levels on each side. The the first adjustment will be of one, then use the other one. I just had to deal with it and it's a nightmare. It's easier to just use a better sample, but if they all do it then something else is possibly going on. - In all honesty your clips sound pretty good to my ears, but it is a thumpy snare. Maybe it's just a thump snare by nature?