Parallel compresing drums. how to?

hi, i can't seem to find the way to make the drum tracks go to 2 parent folders one with comp and the other dry. how can i do this in reaper? thanks ed.

Just make a new send. For example, if track 1 is the parent drum folder, create a new track with the comp inserted, send track 1 to it, then adjust level to taste.

You can do this with one bus if you want. Just add the compressor to your bus, and play with the wet/dry level to mix the two signals. Some comps like Reacomp have wet and dry built in, but you can adjust wet/dry on any plugin in Reaper by using the knob (it becomes a knob when you click it) immediately to the upper right of the plugin skin in the fx window.

Yes right next to the bypass check mark. I would do the other way when you need to send a little bit of a different mix. Say your comp track you want less kick drum in it so not to push the comp so hard or less toms or something.. Then it's nice having one buss that has your normal balance then the squeeze comp on another buss that has little different mix. That's when it's best to use sends (I'll do pre-fader here) on each track you want to send to the comp buss.

Thanks for your comments, but I definitely want to avoid the 2 scenarios you propose. The first having to use a send is the obvious one, it should be a prefader, prefx send in order to avoid any processing like eq or whatever I wish to use in the "dry" or non compressed folder... however I don't want to go this route. The other using the knob for making wet or dry the process of compression is not at all what I'm lookig for and I would get totally different results with this. I want to do real parallel compression, this means that each drum track goes to 2 different aux tracks, one with no comp at all and the other with heavy compression. I will use and automate the compressed track to fatten up the drums in the heavy parts of the song (chorus, solo, etc). The result of doing this is different than if I just raised the level of the drum buss in those sections of the song. I dont want more volume, I want a fatter sound!!! Since Reaper can't handle 2 parent folder tracks for the same group of tracks, wich would be the traditional way (In protools you just send the drum tracks outputs (not sends) to 2 aux tracks inputs and voila!). I consulted the manual and it seems that I have to use a JS plugin called IX 8S and set the folder track to 4 channels instead of 2. It's, if I understand right, like inserting a 8x2 mixer at the end of the fx chain and this will let me route the outputs to more other tracks... If someone knows more about this it would be great to read his comments. Meanwhile I'll keep on experimenting. Thanks Ed.

Don't understand what the problem is here, a send is a send no matter if you send to a parent track or not and it can be pre or post FX. Heck, you could take your main drum buss, mute it's master send and send it's signal to 4 different track each with their own processing, mute the master send of those and then send them to yet another to be processed in one go.

Uhm just use a send. Reaper's mixer is more than capable of creating whatever routings you ever happen to need - you can route anything to anywhere, even feedback routing if you so wish. For example make a folder wich contains all your drum tracks. Then create a send from this folder to a new track wich will be your paraller compression buss (yes you can set it to pre-fader and pre-fx, just use the send options to change these) and voila, now you have two drum busses wich you can process differently. Alternatively you can use per track sends to send from each invidual drum track to the paraller comp track/buss (this is the way I do it usually since it gives me much more control over the compressed sound). Also reaper has a complete automatic PDC so phasing stuff shouldn't be a problem - unless the plugin gives incorrect latency readings or something like that.

Check this attachment out.

I'm wondering if you've ever mixed on a analog console? It's pretty much the same.. You route to a stereo buss then you use sends to send another mix to another stereo buss that has a Comp on it. You can then send both of those stereo buss to a master drum buss if you like. I don't think you realize what your asking is what we are telling you want. We are pretty much talking about the same thing here.. But to say it's not how you want to do things after asking us how seems funny.

Ok Here I show how I could make the routings and sends in order to achieve parallel compression the way I wanted, It's less confusing than what was propossed before, and with less gain stages wich can be a PITA when things get complex. 1. Disable Master Track output for every drum track in the Routing Matrix. 2. Create 2 tracks. Track 1 will be Wet or compressed track and track 2 the Dry one. Both are routed by defect to master track. 3. Create a post fader (post pan) send to both wet and dry for each drum track. That's it. Now I can have all my drum tracks routed to a pair of drum busses. The key is to disable the Master track output for each drum track thus making the post fader (post pan) the only output for each one.