I have an additional SSL instance on the instrument bus, set much faster to 0.3ms and 0.1s, at 1:4, hi-pass also at 150Hz. This does two things: Helps finding the perfect balance between snare and kick, as it should take 4dB off the snare, and 1dB off the kick, and secondly, this setting glues the whole instrumental mix incredibly well. I think I learned this from Nolly. Thanks for an other great video, my man!
5 or 6:1 23-33 dB threshold Eq 180 up. 380 down ish. 2.8 up 10k shelf How 70 -80 hz. Then drum bus all shells 10:1 no compression on Tom’s individually just the stereo group bus.
On snare top I'll offen use Waves Kramer PIE (oversampled via Reaper) with a medium to slow release. Not too much of reduction will shape the transient quite nicely. Afterwards I parallel "choke" that transient with an SSL E channel comp (DMG TrackComp or SSL Native Strip) with fast attack (!) *but very low ratio* (1.5 to 1.7:1). Snare bottom gets some dbx160... Kick drum depends... but Reapers JS collection from stillwell has the "fairly childish" for free - that one can be a secret weapon. Overheads usually opto if any. Another amazing freebie, especially on parallel bus, is Airwindows Pop 2.
Nobody, in any RUclips video, has ever explained what a SIDE CHAIN compressor does. You have. And now I finally understand it. Thank you. I've clicked subscribe.
@@adamhiggins2160 Well. There's two types of sidechain. In most hardware compressors the sidechain is an internal low-cut-filter that you can't hear, but the compressor will react to. In DAWs it's a different story. Let's say you have a bass guitar and you want to glue it together with a kick drum. So you put a compressor on your bass channel and use the kick as a sidechain. Now the bass will attenuate when the kick drum is being hit. Depending on the compressor and the source tracks it can help make room for the kick drum and glue both together
Hi Kristian! I am a professional and have been in the business for years and know how to apply a proper bus compression, but believe me, I enjoyed A LOT your video, really didactical and perfectly explained in every parameter in a way -almost- everybody can understand; the continuous comparison between on/off made all the trick. Also, those drums were greatly recorded, kudos to the drummer too. Thanks so much for sharing this quite entertaining tutorial!!
Quite possibly the best tutorial I have seen on compression and how it works. Could easily hear the changes as you were making them. I wish EVERY video explaining something on RUclips was this clear. Thank you!!
Idk, I really liked how much room sound came out with the 4:1 ratio. Made it sound bigger and more glued together. Great video explaining every aspect of the compressor though. Helps a lot!
Excellent video, everything very well explained and understood by everyone, now compressors like SSL have a trick in the ratio and the correct emulations too, in 2 it would have to compress less but it compresses more than in 4 because the knee in that setting as it begins to compress the audio earlier, and the knee in 4 is less wide, in 2 it ends up compressing more because it compresses more gradually since in 4 in that model compressor bus works that way
First when I've seen the title I almost scrolled through it with my eyes rolling but something just stopped me doing it and I thought I could give a chance, its 4 AM, what could go wrong? And damn I'm glad I did! I'm producing electronic music in various genres for like 15 years now and man I have seen a shit load of courses about compression... But THIS ONE finally made this confusing topic crystal clear as your beautifully compressed drums. Thank you, I'll show this to everyone from now on if I feel like they need a little more understanding of how proper compression works.
Thanks! That’s great to hear. I’m glad the thumbnail stopped you then. I know they look over the top, but unfortunately that’s what you need to get people’s attention even for the good stuff.
This is such an interesting and important piece of sound processing... Compression is almost always overlooked by musicians, but usually: What we all compare our recordings to, is fully mixed and processed CD tracks. We simply fool our ears. Compression is an absolutely amazing and essential tool.
I use the Lindell 354E multi band bus compressor for the drum bus. Having separate settings per band helps to not squash the kick and cymbals too much, but really focus on that mid area where the snare and rooms live.
A talk about "how dry recorded drums" should sound in order to get a great punch sound will be awesome. I mean there are a lot of videos on how to process, even "how to mic placement". But, what sound-we must-achieve
Great vid. Been getting into serial. Distressor, Fairchild, then a digital compressor, all: Med att, Fast rel, High ratio, kind of crushing, all blended at around 25% (Reaper). Sometimes swapping one for a 76, 78, Shadow Hills, etc.
Thank you very very much! I come from the live side of things as I'm an AVL technician and I've already gotten into the nerdy weeds of lighting, video signals and PA systems, but my mixing abilities are still lacking. Proper compression has been a bit of a mystery to me. I've known what compressors do and what settings they have for ages, but using that to make things sound good has been a mystery, and combined with the fact that I mainly do lighting, I haven't advanced in this area much at all. Thanks to the plentiful A/B comparisons in this video and your pointers and explanations, I now feel like I can figure it out, for drums at least.
Great video, Kristian! It was very helpful. One thing I seem to find in common with a lot of drum mixing tutorials is that the raw drum tracks already sound fantastic on their own and that makes them easier to mix and get a great result. We have a crappy sounding room and some middle of the road drum mics going into an X32 and into the DAW, no outboard gear. I always need to sample enhance or sample replace the close mics and the overheads and rooms aren’t great and always seem to give me fits. I would love to see a video on how you would record and mix drums in a similar scenario with a bad room and cheap mics and give them that same polished sound you typically get with your tracks. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
The new drum forge compressor is pretty dope. Has a setting for every part of kit including rooms. It's stupid simple. Good for beginners to hear what compression does at different levels and ratios etc. the shadow hills is my go to for almost everything. Or the dbx 160
@KohleAudioKult this is great and I have to admit you've got a way of tutoring that works better for me. I'm going to go over to your other courses and look through them. I'd like to see you use the SSL Bus+ hardware on these drums and see and hear what you'd do with the additional features and stuff like the 4k mode, dynamic EQ, THD and Feed Forward/ Feed Back. Love it dude!
As always - one of the best breakdowns of drum bus compression out there. Do you use also use clipping on your drum bus? It would be great to hear how you see compression & clipping fitting together (or not fitting together!) to yield punchy vibrant drum sounds. Danke!
There was some kind of a clarity, and tangibility, to watching you move the knobs that made it make way more sense, than watching a plugin get the knobs turned😂. Fuckin awesome🤘🤘🤘 i know what to do but i get immediately dumb looking at the plugin, except fg grey. Thank you for this🤘🤘🤘
A legit question: @9:14 you soloed the overheads and there was no kick. Did this get tracked using the Queens of the Stone Age/Lamb of God technique of tracking shells and cymbals separately? Or were triggers used on the kick during tracking? Just curious from a production point of view.
It's interesting to me that you say drum bus compression is the most important compressor on the drums (and I think 80% of other mixers would say the same), yet legends like Andy Wallace and CLA don't use a drum bus compressor (or even a drum bus for that matter). I know CLA sometimes uses a parallel bus, but Andy Wallace's drums go straight to his 2 bus comp, yet his mixes still have so much glue and the feeling of drums being played in a room. What are your thoughts on this?
Wow. Thank you very much for this video. I haven't learned this much in a mixing video in a long time. I previously had an 1176 on the drum bus. And somehow it didn't produce the desired result. Now I'm a big step further. Thank you!
This is great, so you have stereo Buses for each instrument then, such as Drum, GTR and Bass, Vocal bus etc. Then as the end you at master 2 Bus compressor on the whole mix? Do you mix ITB?
Tolles Video. Danke Kristian. Frage von einem Amateur: DrumBus Compression zu Beginn und dann die einzelnen Spuren mixen, oder erst ganz zum Schluss als I-Tüpfelchen?
Hey @ KohleAudioKult what's the unit in the rack above your green compressor? Is that an SSD dock rack or something? Great lesson in compression btw thanks for sharing.
Hey man! Great video, how you like your Cranborne Audio R8? I have one too and it's probably the best piece of gear I've bought in years! Not many people have them, curious to hear your thoughts.
@@KohleAudioKult Very cool! I personally like the fact that I don't need to worry about cable management lol. It's so helpful to have the rack built into the interface. I have the Camden 500 preamps too, I see you have some of them as well. They are fantastic as well. Take care man!
Doesn't matter, because it'll all get squashed in mastering. See @Dragonforce 's newest release, "Warp Speed Warriors". ---> No snare drum. Every part is the same level. No dynamics.
Great stuff! I have a question: When I put my overheads in the drumbus and compress, they always sound harsh and spiky. So lately I have sent them to my main out, and the other 10 mics go to the drumbus-compressor. Is this unusual practise?
Drums sound like someone is hitting the empty upside down bucket in the beginning 😂 so what’s the point trying to make it sound good when the source is terrible? Get a better recording and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to manage drums to sound good.
This tutorial is for beginners, so I feel that I must comment. Many statements of fact about how a compressor works, how a compressor sounds, and how a compressor should be used are literally the exact opposite of the demonstrable truth. I'd get what you can from this video, but remain skeptical. Continue your research, both from presenters/tutorials such as this one, as well as your own use and critical listening to compressors, plugin or hard, that you use. Learning through "expert" instruction and personal, practical use/experimentation are very important in compression... dynamics/compression is more, if not the most, intangible skill in music recording/production/mixing/mastering, in my opinion. It's a ghost*, it requires a substantial sensitivity in order to experience, and once grasped, you may expect a degree of control, but that grasp may prove ephemeral, and may insubstantially slip from your hand. It may take years to really know what's actually happening, and others with more experience may help you discover how to hear (and use) compression (and limiting). At least, compression/dynamics has been difficult/ephemeral for me over the past 30 years. But I'm half re1arded and a really slow learner, with hearing loss, who has always contended (and often lost) with budget restrictions. * Ghosts, like the spirit of dead humans, are not real, only a figure of speech for the simile. I'm just sayin', I don't want to contribute to the concerted disinfo op that is, and has been running in regards to this subject.
How do You compress your drums? Show me your approach! 🤘
Don't forget to check out the academy here:
www.kohleaudiokult.com/
I have an additional SSL instance on the instrument bus, set much faster to 0.3ms and 0.1s, at 1:4, hi-pass also at 150Hz. This does two things: Helps finding the perfect balance between snare and kick, as it should take 4dB off the snare, and 1dB off the kick, and secondly, this setting glues the whole instrumental mix incredibly well. I think I learned this from Nolly. Thanks for an other great video, my man!
5 or 6:1 23-33 dB threshold
Eq 180 up. 380 down ish. 2.8 up 10k shelf
How 70 -80 hz.
Then drum bus all shells 10:1 no compression on Tom’s individually just the stereo group bus.
On snare top I'll offen use Waves Kramer PIE (oversampled via Reaper) with a medium to slow release. Not too much of reduction will shape the transient quite nicely. Afterwards I parallel "choke" that transient with an SSL E channel comp (DMG TrackComp or SSL Native Strip) with fast attack (!) *but very low ratio* (1.5 to 1.7:1).
Snare bottom gets some dbx160...
Kick drum depends... but Reapers JS collection from stillwell has the "fairly childish" for free - that one can be a secret weapon.
Overheads usually opto if any.
Another amazing freebie, especially on parallel bus, is Airwindows Pop 2.
Make the drummer wear compression socks during tracking. Makes the kick extra punchy.
That’s a pro secret! Nothing for RUclips 🙀
Ba dum tsss
As a drummer who wears a compression knee brace from playing 280bpm. That's funny and also GFY 😂
@@WarrenBey Does it give you a hard knee or a soft knee? Wakka wakka
No boxing gloves?
Nobody, in any RUclips video, has ever explained what a SIDE CHAIN compressor does. You have. And now I finally understand it. Thank you. I've clicked subscribe.
I don't think that's correct lmao
@@adamhiggins2160 Well. There's two types of sidechain. In most hardware compressors the sidechain is an internal low-cut-filter that you can't hear, but the compressor will react to.
In DAWs it's a different story. Let's say you have a bass guitar and you want to glue it together with a kick drum.
So you put a compressor on your bass channel and use the kick as a sidechain.
Now the bass will attenuate when the kick drum is being hit.
Depending on the compressor and the source tracks it can help make room for the kick drum and glue both together
@@TinoSchulz1990 I'm aware. I meant it was incorrect that he's the only person on RUclips to explain that.
@@adamhiggins2160 Oh, ok 😀 True. While this video is a nice demonstration, there are far better videos out there explaining sidechain-filters
What a great video! You made it seem so simple! 😂
It is pretty simple 😎. The settings really work on most heavy drums. Just don’t overcompress.
hi Ola
Hi Kristian! I am a professional and have been in the business for years and know how to apply a proper bus compression, but believe me, I enjoyed A LOT your video, really didactical and perfectly explained in every parameter in a way -almost- everybody can understand; the continuous comparison between on/off made all the trick. Also, those drums were greatly recorded, kudos to the drummer too. Thanks so much for sharing this quite entertaining tutorial!!
Great to thear that! Thanks!
Absolutely SUPERB video!!
Thank you! Cheers!
Quite possibly the best tutorial I have seen on compression and how it works. Could easily hear the changes as you were making them. I wish EVERY video explaining something on RUclips was this clear. Thank you!!
Idk, I really liked how much room sound came out with the 4:1 ratio. Made it sound bigger and more glued together. Great video explaining every aspect of the compressor though. Helps a lot!
BEST compressor tutorial on RUclips. Thank you!
This is EASILY the best GBus tutorial I have ever seen.
Quick, simple to understand. Bravo!
Glad you liked it!
@KohleAudioKult that's why I love my SSL Bus+, because it's got 3:1 option. and i get the best of both worlds with it. solid video
Fair enough. Haven’t really tried 3:1
Glad to see we have nearly identical settings! Good video
Excellent video, everything very well explained and understood by everyone, now compressors like SSL have a trick in the ratio and the correct emulations too, in 2 it would have to compress less but it compresses more than in 4 because the knee in that setting as it begins to compress the audio earlier, and the knee in 4 is less wide, in 2 it ends up compressing more because it compresses more gradually since in 4 in that model compressor bus works that way
One of the best compression tutorials I've seen in quite a while.
First when I've seen the title I almost scrolled through it with my eyes rolling but something just stopped me doing it and I thought I could give a chance, its 4 AM, what could go wrong? And damn I'm glad I did!
I'm producing electronic music in various genres for like 15 years now and man I have seen a shit load of courses about compression... But THIS ONE finally made this confusing topic crystal clear as your beautifully compressed drums. Thank you, I'll show this to everyone from now on if I feel like they need a little more understanding of how proper compression works.
Thanks! That’s great to hear.
I’m glad the thumbnail stopped you then.
I know they look over the top, but unfortunately that’s what you need to get people’s attention even for the good stuff.
This is such an interesting and important piece of sound processing...
Compression is almost always overlooked by musicians, but usually:
What we all compare our recordings to, is fully mixed and processed CD tracks.
We simply fool our ears.
Compression is an absolutely amazing and essential tool.
this sounds great! best tutorial on yt.
I use the Lindell 354E multi band bus compressor for the drum bus. Having separate settings per band helps to not squash the kick and cymbals too much, but really focus on that mid area where the snare and rooms live.
Yeah, that's another option. For me it was never worth the hassle, but maybe I should give it a shot.
Very very nice explained! Thank you for this tutorial.
Gotta be honest: I never really understood it until now. Thanks Kohle!!
A talk about "how dry recorded drums" should sound in order to get a great punch sound will be awesome. I mean there are a lot of videos on how to process, even "how to mic placement". But, what sound-we must-achieve
Wir haben vor 20 Jahren mal als Vorband von TENSIDE in GAP gespielt. Schön, dass es die Jungs soweit geschafft haben.
Absolut!
Sehr cooles Video. Sehr verständlich erklärt!
Great vid. Been getting into serial. Distressor, Fairchild, then a digital compressor, all: Med att, Fast rel, High ratio, kind of crushing, all blended at around 25% (Reaper). Sometimes swapping one for a 76, 78, Shadow Hills, etc.
One of your best Videos!!!
do you use compresor on single, separated drumtracks? or on "drumbus" mixed ?
You are a great educator! Very valuable lesson, got a lot of it!
Very well explained and demonstrated thanks!!!
Very compressive video!
gewaltig wie immmer, DANKE für deine Info
Nice see you over there when we get there! Cheers dude, keep on a rockin'
Great video..i learn so much!!!
Thank you very very much! I come from the live side of things as I'm an AVL technician and I've already gotten into the nerdy weeds of lighting, video signals and PA systems, but my mixing abilities are still lacking. Proper compression has been a bit of a mystery to me. I've known what compressors do and what settings they have for ages, but using that to make things sound good has been a mystery, and combined with the fact that I mainly do lighting, I haven't advanced in this area much at all. Thanks to the plentiful A/B comparisons in this video and your pointers and explanations, I now feel like I can figure it out, for drums at least.
Great video! Just got yourself a new sub!
Thanks man for this very well done video!!
Great video, Kristian! It was very helpful. One thing I seem to find in common with a lot of drum mixing tutorials is that the raw drum tracks already sound fantastic on their own and that makes them easier to mix and get a great result.
We have a crappy sounding room and some middle of the road drum mics going into an X32 and into the DAW, no outboard gear. I always need to sample enhance or sample replace the close mics and the overheads and rooms aren’t great and always seem to give me fits.
I would love to see a video on how you would record and mix drums in a similar scenario with a bad room and cheap mics and give them that same polished sound you typically get with your tracks.
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
As much as it is a great idea to do a „cheap gear in a crappy room“ video the way how to use a compressor on the drum bus is exactly the same.
thank you! this tutorial is gold!
Really well explained Kristian!
The new drum forge compressor is pretty dope. Has a setting for every part of kit including rooms. It's stupid simple. Good for beginners to hear what compression does at different levels and ratios etc. the shadow hills is my go to for almost everything. Or the dbx 160
Wow very detailed and clear explanation amazing 🔥👍🏾💯 bookmarked this
@KohleAudioKult this is great and I have to admit you've got a way of tutoring that works better for me. I'm going to go over to your other courses and look through them. I'd like to see you use the SSL Bus+ hardware on these drums and see and hear what you'd do with the additional features and stuff like the 4k mode, dynamic EQ, THD and Feed Forward/ Feed Back. Love it dude!
Thanks!❤️
I hope to check out the new SSL. Let’s see.
Let me know how you like the academy!
Im taking your word for it mister..thanks
Thanks for this very useful tutorial :)
I could be wrong, but on this type of SSL bus compressor, the ratio also determines the knee, doesn't it?
As always - one of the best breakdowns of drum bus compression out there. Do you use also use clipping on your drum bus? It would be great to hear how you see compression & clipping fitting together (or not fitting together!) to yield punchy vibrant drum sounds. Danke!
Good idea fire another video
Enjoyed 🫶🏽
2:1 is a good ratio.
I used to favour the 1:75 available on my old Fostex V160 multi-track.
Analoge Obsession COMPER.
Amazing!
Great vid, cheers
There was some kind of a clarity, and tangibility, to watching you move the knobs that made it make way more sense, than watching a plugin get the knobs turned😂. Fuckin awesome🤘🤘🤘 i know what to do but i get immediately dumb looking at the plugin, except fg grey. Thank you for this🤘🤘🤘
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video as always!!! What about the mix bus, do you use similar settings?
I don’t use a mix bus compressor at all. At least not when I mix Metal.
Duuudeeeee. LOVE the explanation. 🤘🏽 making it make sense!
A legit question: @9:14 you soloed the overheads and there was no kick. Did this get tracked using the Queens of the Stone Age/Lamb of God technique of tracking shells and cymbals separately? Or were triggers used on the kick during tracking? Just curious from a production point of view.
It was tracked with a kick pad instead of a real kick.
Great video!!!
Thanks
Thank you! 🤘🏽🤘🏽
Great video 👍
Thank you❤
That's a very beautiful compressor
It sure is!
Possessed by these tutorials.
Check out the academy then. There’s a lot more! 💪
Fantastic! Wish to see it 10-15 years ago 😅
Sorry, I was too busy compressing drums back then 😎
Der Blick bei 9:48 killt mich jedes mal
Hab mich halt gefreut!
thank you sir!!
It's interesting to me that you say drum bus compression is the most important compressor on the drums (and I think 80% of other mixers would say the same), yet legends like Andy Wallace and CLA don't use a drum bus compressor (or even a drum bus for that matter). I know CLA sometimes uses a parallel bus, but Andy Wallace's drums go straight to his 2 bus comp, yet his mixes still have so much glue and the feeling of drums being played in a room. What are your thoughts on this?
Wow. Thank you very much for this video. I haven't learned this much in a mixing video in a long time. I previously had an 1176 on the drum bus. And somehow it didn't produce the desired result. Now I'm a big step further. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful! Check out the other stuff in the academy. There's a lot more.
Great vid as usual. What was the input level into the compressor ? Thanks..
Just make sure there’s no clipping and adjust the Threshold accordingly
60% of the time it works 100% of the time. Lol. Thanks, very informative.
Mixing and mastering hiphop has given me some wild ways to manipulate Drums.
This is great, so you have stereo Buses for each instrument then, such as Drum, GTR and Bass, Vocal bus etc. Then as the end you at master 2 Bus compressor on the whole mix? Do you mix ITB?
I actually don't have a 2bus compressor on the full mix.
Just a multiband compressor and a limiter for loudness.
@@KohleAudioKult great thanks for the info !
i like to set it at 10 ms or 15 ms and sometimes 3 ms compression on my drums
Great video, just a question, is there already any compression set before in the single tracks?
Nope
@@KohleAudioKult Okay that sounds awesome then. A lot easier than doing it for each channel, only to be not satisfied at the end ^^
@@flugfloh6281 It is. It also doesn’t bring up any ugly cymbal bleed.
Nice! What about the threshold?
Move it until you have 3 DB reduction
I left that one out in this video. Tried to make things more catchy for RUclips. In the full course I speake a little longer about it.
Tolles Video. Danke Kristian.
Frage von einem Amateur: DrumBus Compression zu Beginn und dann die einzelnen Spuren mixen, oder erst ganz zum Schluss als I-Tüpfelchen?
Das sage ich im Kurs. Ich pack das Ding von Anfang an drauf. Dann arbeitest du nie dagegen 🤘
@ ich muss mal eine Mitgliedschaft bei Dir auf meine Wunschliste vom Weihnachtsmann setzen :)
Danke für die Antwort!!!
Das klingt nach einer super Idee. 🎅
Hey @ KohleAudioKult what's the unit in the rack above your green compressor? Is that an SSD dock rack or something?
Great lesson in compression btw thanks for sharing.
That's a dock for 4 SSDs. It's from BlackMagic. Works like a charm, it's just ridiculously overpriced.
Hey man! Great video, how you like your Cranborne Audio R8? I have one too and it's probably the best piece of gear I've bought in years! Not many people have them, curious to hear your thoughts.
I like it a lot. What do you wanna know exactly?
@@KohleAudioKult Nothing specific, I was just curious what you thought about it. You answered my question.
@ I like the fact that it’s so many things in one!
@@KohleAudioKult Very cool! I personally like the fact that I don't need to worry about cable management lol. It's so helpful to have the rack built into the interface. I have the Camden 500 preamps too, I see you have some of them as well. They are fantastic as well. Take care man!
@@matt_nyc_audioengineer great preamps indeed.
I’m also gonna check out the new EQ very soon
Oh Yeah! 🙌
💪
Your using Cubase. It's the BEST !!!!!
Since Atari days
My man is old schooling with a cc121 😊
Best controller!
Isn't the 2:1 ratio a softer knee than the 4:1 ?
Yes it is.
Lol What if we don't have SSL Comps? I'm guessing the idea is the same, you just need to work with you have right?
Exactly. I just wanted to make it as easy as possible by using the industry standard.
How about eq in Tom’s
His playing was tight.
Great drummer indeed!
Doesn't matter, because it'll all get squashed in mastering. See @Dragonforce 's newest release, "Warp Speed Warriors". ---> No snare drum. Every part is the same level. No dynamics.
Make drums punchy: hit them harder. Solved.
So you apply sidechain compression without a side input. That's weird.
There's an inbuilt low cut filter that can be engaged. It has nothing to do woth an externatl trigger signal.
@KohleAudioKult why isn't it than called High Pass filter..
Great, now the high hat is louder.
Seven Churches!
YES!
@@KohleAudioKult Great album, and T-shirt!
Great stuff! I have a question: When I put my overheads in the drumbus and compress, they always sound harsh and spiky. So lately I have sent them to my main out, and the other 10 mics go to the drumbus-compressor. Is this unusual practise?
I don’t have that problem. Try to imitate what I’m doing here and see if the problems are still there. Then it’s maybe something in the recording
Doesn't matter how you snare sounds if your music is sucks.
Зачем вы одеваете шапочки, вам холодно, нет отопления или вы лысый ?
Drums sound like someone is hitting the empty upside down bucket in the beginning 😂 so what’s the point trying to make it sound good when the source is terrible? Get a better recording and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to manage drums to sound good.
This tutorial is for beginners, so I feel that I must comment. Many statements of fact about how a compressor works, how a compressor sounds, and how a compressor should be used are literally the exact opposite of the demonstrable truth. I'd get what you can from this video, but remain skeptical.
Continue your research, both from presenters/tutorials such as this one, as well as your own use and critical listening to compressors, plugin or hard, that you use. Learning through "expert" instruction and personal, practical use/experimentation are very important in compression... dynamics/compression is more, if not the most, intangible skill in music recording/production/mixing/mastering, in my opinion.
It's a ghost*, it requires a substantial sensitivity in order to experience, and once grasped, you may expect a degree of control, but that grasp may prove ephemeral, and may insubstantially slip from your hand. It may take years to really know what's actually happening, and others with more experience may help you discover how to hear (and use) compression (and limiting).
At least, compression/dynamics has been difficult/ephemeral for me over the past 30 years. But I'm half re1arded and a really slow learner, with hearing loss, who has always contended (and often lost) with budget restrictions.
* Ghosts, like the spirit of dead humans, are not real, only a figure of speech for the simile. I'm just sayin', I don't want to contribute to the concerted disinfo op that is, and has been running in regards to this subject.
The ARRT method!! 🦾