The ubiquitous channel strip audio plugin known to most occasionally comes in drum-shaped flavours. Going one further, we check out one solution that has a flavour for each drum. We put it to work to see what it can do.
In Summary
Melda Production MDrumStrip has 9 piece-specific modules. It is billed as being able to analyse audio and customise its internal algorithms to optimise the sound. While most are for single channel processes, MDrumStrip includes dedicated buss and parallel flavours as well.
Going Deeper
Channel Ingredients
Fans of channel strip plugins often rate the Everything In One Place ethos as the quickest way to get sounds in the bag. With many trading multiple options for simplicity, one-window channels can certainly focus the engineer with fewer tools. Some developers also spin the format to provide job-specific channels for things like vocals or drums.
Dynamic Processing
Drum channels almost always feature a few staple modules covering everyday utility tasks, as well as creative shaping. Starting with cleanup, gating or expansion is firmly in drum territory to kill close mics’ eavesdropping on other drums. Compression and/or limiting can take these purified sounds to increase their density for effect or hits’ evenness as needed.
EQ
Although its quite possible to get the rights sounds with nothing more than a drum key and and the right mic, few engineers will leave EQ controls completely alone. Staples such as high pass filtering can quickly give way to the kind of snap, fizz, and thump that clients and listeners expect.
Extras
Saturation can evoke the kind of cooked sounds that can give either analogue vibes, or full-on destruction for effect. Other harmonic enhancement can see complimentary tones generated to sit above or below the Real Thing for extra weight, complexity, or sparkle.
Melda Production MDrumStrip
Taking the drum-specific concept a bit further is MDrumStrip. This strip attacks drum mixing tasks with individual flavours for each part of the kit. Once loaded, the engineer selects the drum in hand from the stack of radio buttons at the side. Each instance’s Auto button analyses the input and dials in sounds for the engineer. All settings can be overridden or tweaked from the ground up.
Modules:
Bass Drum
Snare
Tom
Tom Bus
Hi Hat
OH
Room
Parallel
Master
In the video, we use the Bass Drum, Snare, Tom, OH, and Master flavours, going completely manual to shape the drum sound from the ground up. Using MDrumStrip’s simple gates and filtered reverbs, we clean up and add dimension. We also use its dynamic EQ to dial in some classic thump and fizz for a larger than life response, as well as to downplay other bands where needed. We round off our mix using MDrumStrip’s novel Glue module in the Master flavour.
Final Thoughts
By zeroing-in and providing a subset of tools for each drum, MDrumStrip gives new engineers a way to improve their sounds; this can be as simple as using the Auto button for instant settings. Engineers can then refine the sounds if they like, and more advanced options via MDrumStrip’s Bus and Parallel modules further open up the options available.
Although there is a choice of drum-specific channel strips out there, Melda Production’s offering provides an approach that is very different from the blank-canvas-with-presets offered by the competition. Along with features such as its novel XY controller pads for blending compression styles, MDrumStrip’s set of nested tools certainly makes it a different kind of drum mixing experience all round.
A Word About This Article
As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. In 2023 we are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.