Drum Bus Rack

This is the rack that sits on your drum group in every template. Three chains run in parallel: a Main chain that shapes and glues, a NY chain that is a squashed, filtered copy you blend in underneath, and a Transient chain that adds only the attacks. The macros are mix moves, not sound-design moves: Punch (transient shaping), Glue (bus compression depth), Dirt (saturation), Air (high shelf plus Drum Buss Damp), Parallel (NY chain level) and Width (stereo of the top end only, with the low end forced mono). Use it on techno, house, DnB, trap and breaks drum groups; with the Dirt macro high it works as a lo-fi or industrial crusher too.

Layout

How it's built

1. On your drum Group track, add an empty Audio Effect Rack. Create three chains: Main, NY, Transient. Audio Effect Rack chains all receive the same input — there is no key/velocity zoning, only chain select, which we leave fully overlapping (0–127 on all).
2. Main chain, Drum Buss: Drive 10%, Drive type Soft (the three-position switch on the left), Crunch 0%, Damp 12 kHz, Transients +15, Boom frequency 55 Hz, Boom amount 10%, Boom decay 40%, Dry/Wet 100%, Comp off (we glue later). Boom at 10% adds a sub resonance under the kick; tune its frequency to the kick’s rest note (see note-to-Hz).
3. Main chain, Glue Compressor: Ratio 4:1, Attack 1 ms, Release Auto, Threshold −12 dB, Makeup 0 dB, Range 40 dB, Soft Clip on, Dry/Wet 100%. Aim for 2–3 dB of gain reduction on hits at your mix level. Attack 1 ms lets the transient through; 0.3 ms if you want it tamer for house.
4. Main chain, Saturator: Analog Clip, Drive 0 dB, Soft Clip on, Output 0 dB. Enable Hi-Quality (right-click the title bar) because the drums carry the most high-frequency energy in your mix and aliasing shows up as grit at 8–12 kHz.
5. Main chain, EQ Eight: band 1 low cut 24 dB/oct 25 Hz; band 8 high shelf 10 kHz, 0 dB, Q 0.7. Then Utility: Bass Mono on at 120 Hz, Width 100%.
6. NY chain, EQ Eight first: low cut 24 dB/oct at 80 Hz, bell +3 dB at 200 Hz Q 1.0, low pass 12 dB/oct at 8 kHz. Filtering before the compressor stops the kick’s sub from driving the gain reduction and keeps the parallel from adding hiss.
7. NY chain, Compressor: Ratio 10:1, Attack 0.1 ms, Release 50 ms, Threshold −30 dB, Knee 0, detection Peak, Makeup off, Output +6 dB. Expect 10–15 dB of gain reduction. This is supposed to be crushed — it never plays alone.
8. NY chain, Saturator: Soft Sine, Drive 8 dB, Output −6 dB. Utility: Mono. The parallel chain is mono so it thickens the centre without smearing the stereo image of hats and percussion.
9. Transient chain: Gate with Threshold −20 dB, Attack 0.1 ms, Hold 10 ms, Release 30 ms, Floor −inf, Return 5 dB. The gate passes only the first 40 ms of each hit. Then EQ Eight low cut 24 dB/oct at 400 Hz so this chain adds attack, not thump. Utility 0 dB.
10. Chain volumes: Main 0 dB, NY −inf, Transient −inf. The macros open them.
11. Macro 1 Punch: Drum Buss Transients Min 0, Max +60; Transient chain volume Min −inf, Max −6 dB. Positive Transients on Drum Buss sharpens attacks; the gated chain adds a second, cleaner attack on top.
12. Macro 2 Glue: Glue Compressor Threshold Min 0 dB, Max −24 dB; Makeup Min 0, Max +6 dB. The makeup mapping keeps loudness roughly constant so you judge the compression, not the level.
13. Macro 3 Dirt: Drum Buss Drive Min 0, Max 70%; Drum Buss Crunch Min 0, Max 50%; Saturator Drive Min 0, Max 14 dB. Crunch is a mid/high-frequency distortion; keeping it to half the knob keeps hats from turning to sand.
14. Macro 4 Air: EQ Eight shelf gain Min 0, Max +5 dB; Drum Buss Damp Min 6 kHz, Max 20 kHz. Below 40% the Air knob is actually darkening (Damp pulling down), above 40% it opens up — a tilt in one knob.
15. Macro 5 Parallel: NY chain volume Min −inf, Max −3 dB. Macro 6 Width: Main Utility Width Min 80%, Max 130%.
16. Exclude Glue and Width from randomization (right-click macro). Randomizing a bus compressor threshold on stage is how you lose a kick. Store Macro Variations: Clean (Punch 30, Glue 40, Dirt 0, Air 50, Parallel 20, Width 50), Techno (40/55/35/40/45/40), DnB (70/45/25/70/35/60), Lo-fi (10/30/80/15/60/30).
17. Save as Drum Bus Rack and drop it in your mix template on the drum group with the Clean variation active. See mix templates.

Macro map

Signal flow notes

Main chain

NY chain

Transient chain

Variations

• Techno: Drum Buss Boom 15% at the kick’s note, Dirt 35%, Parallel 45%. Add a fourth chain Rumble: Auto Filter LP 100 Hz → Hybrid Reverb Dark Hall 2 s → Compressor sidechained from the Main chain, blended at −14 dB. See deep techno.
• DnB / jungle: Punch 70%, Air 70%, Glue attack 3 ms so the break’s snare cracks. Swap the Main Saturator for Roar in Multiband mode with only the high band driven (Hard curve, 6 dB) — breaks love a crisp top. See DnB and jungle.
• House / garage: Glue 10:1 with attack 10 ms and release 0.3 s for the pumping feel; Width 60%; Parallel 25%. See deep house.
• Lo-fi / boom bap: Dirt 80%, Air 10%, insert Redux (Rate 12 kHz, Bit 12) before the Main EQ and Vinyl Distortion after it. See lo-fi hip-hop and boom bap.
• Industrial: replace the NY Saturator with Roar in Feedback routing (Feedback 30%, Pitch −12 st) at Parallel 60%, Dirt 70%, Width 30%. See industrial techno.

Performance notes

• Push: this is a mix rack, so map it to encoders only in the mixer device view; the macros you touch live are Dirt (build-ups) and Parallel (drops). Push 3 shows chain volumes if you enter the rack, which is useful for a soundcheck balance.
• Automation: Dirt and Air respond well to arrangement automation over 8–16 bars for build-ups; Glue should be set once and never automated — compressor thresholds moving under a live mix cause level jumps.
• Gain staging: the rack expects hits peaking around −6 dBFS at its input. Above that, the Glue hits its 40 dB range ceiling and the Saturator clips in a way the Dirt knob can’t undo. Use a Utility before the rack if your group is hot.
• CPU: Hi-Quality Saturator and Drum Buss are the only notable costs; the whole rack is cheaper than one Hybrid Reverb. Safe to run on every drum group in a live set.
• Loudness: the rack adds roughly 3 dB of perceived loudness at the Techno variation. Keep the group fader at the same position and trim with the Main chain volume so your sidechain sources stay consistent. See loudness and limiting.

Related

• Compression and glue · Parallel processing · Transient design
• Kick · Snare and clap · Hi-hats and percussion
• Kick designer rack · Mix bus rack · Roar and saturation