Set the drums a bit on top of the mix

One of the secrets I've learned about mixing drum kits is that, for modern styles, you want the drums (the actual drums, with shells — not the cymbals) to be a bit louder than you might first think. A bit more on top of the mix. For two reasons.

Reason one: that's where the groove lives! The drums are the heart of the song. So you want to accentuate that. The secret is to compress each drum a bit, so you get that punch on the front end of each hit, but the sustain of the shell doesn't muddy up the mix. A dbx 160 is a great compressor for this; the Universal Audio version is particularly excellent. It has “that” sound.

Reason two: from a mastering perspective, if drums are too loud, it's trivially easy in mastering to set them back in the mix. But if the drums are too quiet, it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to make them louder.

TL;DR: for drums in forward modern styles, louder is better!

Safety first — jamie