Try a limiter on your overheads
I basically never use compression on the drum kit as a whole — I prefer instead to use more judicious and precise dynamics control at the channel level.
And one of my favorite ways to exercise this control is with a limiter on the overheads!
Overheads are excellent for capturing detail — cymbals, hats, grace notes, etc. But they’re terrible at capturing balance. They’re too close to the kit! So the snare is more often than not wildly too loud in them, and usually the toms are too.
And compression doesn’t help. Compression generally lets some amount of the attack through, which exacerbates the problem — now the snare’s not just too loud, it’s pingy. Ew! A super-fast compressor can grab essentially all of the attack — I’m thinking here of the Distressor, or other variations on the 1176 — but it still doesn’t sound neutral to me; it sounds vaguely artifact-y.
What I love on overheads, though, is a channel limiter. (I use bx_limiter1 exclusively for this, and recommend it to anyone who will listen.)
What I like about a limiter for controlling the amount of snare in the overheads is that there are no compression artifacts; the attack is instantaneous and total, because that’s how brickwall limiters work. So it just cleanly shaves off the attack of the snare, and perhaps the toms, and perhaps even the cymbals too if the drummer played them too heavy-handed.
And what you’re left with is clean hi-hats and cymbals and general kit ambience, that integrate effortlessly into the rest of the kit, allowing you to shape the snare and toms sounds precisely without undue influence from the attacks of the drums in the overheads. It makes mixing drums so easy!
Bonus: with more extreme downward applications of threshold, you can even use this technique to dial in the precise amount of ride cymbal you want, in context of the mix; the threshold control essentially becomes a ride cymbal volume knob. Brilliant.
Working smarter not harder — jamie
bx_limiter is currently on sale for $40! And if you want to get it for even less, you can usually get it for $10 or $20 during their mid-year and/or year-end sale.