That super compressed cymbal sound that used to be massive.

[debord]

How do you do it? I would imagine it's two compressors in series?
I'm talking about the Jeff Mills style wall of white noise thing on the rides...

[Hectic Cum Balthazar]

Parallel or 'New York' compression is really good for that.
Basicaly batter a duplicate track or bus of the cymbals with a compressor or limiter until they are totally flattened.
Then mix this in with the original, with the compressed version at a fairly low level, you keep the nice defined hit/rhythm of the original but below a certain volume it's just solid. Sounds great on the whole drum bus too.

Even simpler if your compressor has a wet/dry mix.. most people tend to go totally wet on compressors but the blend is where it's at on drums.

[les diamond]

i like to run a 909 ride through the ableton "saturator" effect... turn the drive way the fuck up and the track volume almost all the way down and TADA!

[ivan]

run the 909 through a guitar distortion pedal.

[Hectic Cum Balthazar]

I don't remember mills cymbals ever sounding that distorted on vinyl.. sure they ended up like that in a club.

[ivan]

step to enchantments.

[Hectic Cum Balthazar]

well rather It doesn't sound like he put them through a guitar distortion pedal

[JE:5]

I used to run the ride cymbal and kick drum through the same channel for that effect.

[love_tempo]

I think I used to get a similar sound by plumbing a jomox doing kick and ride straight into a DBX 160x with high gain and high compression settings. I can't remember whether I used the overeasy mode or not.

[M H]

Gain up & line fader down with bit of reverb on the rides, with compression on the whole mix... easy- dunno how you would do it with software tho...

[AVX23]

I tried various ways, pretty much most of the suggestions above this week, and compared with some mills records and older stuff I'd done myself (I say myself cos loads of people asked about our 909 sounds and how we'd done them at detatched - I usually do it the same way as mister diamond-san), pretty much all are appllicable, but there is one thing which will ultimately get you there really quick...

a real 909.

It's not the be all or end all, cos pretty much most of the ways above will get something which will approximate it but a real 909 takes seconds to get there, I do like the way Steev suggested tho, tried that out with some 909 closed hats with a slightly longer delay and then a tiny bit of flange/phase distortion on the compressed channel and it sounded fucking mint, different thing, but really works for getting that 'tracky feel' which a lot of old downwards and axis records have.

Of course none of it works unless you put it in context with some serious backbone, sometimes the blend makes it all work, can sound totally shit and not right until you get to the final mix I normally find.

[Hectic Cum Balthazar]

yeah the parallel comp is great for trackyness.. really good for making stuff sound fuller without damaging the snappyness or power of the attack.

works really well with really characterful comps too, stuff which will make drums turn to shite if used on it's own, but in parallel will add a lovely warm throb.

Mixing it in fairly quietly is best although you can also mix it louder then duck it with the peaks of the original signal for a sort of throbbing grunge.

[les diamond]

SIDECHAINING is also another EASY way to get this effect.

[M H]

Originally Posted by debord

How do you do it? I would imagine it's two compressors in series?
I'm talking about the Jeff Mills style wall of white noise thing on the rides...

I have to ask though- why would you want to sound like jeff mills circa 1994?

[Dal-tech]

You can hear loud 909 cymbals in the opening track from my latest mix. I used some analog EQ:

http://soundcloud.com/nawewtech/spw-tronics-10-mix