Sound Design Live

Build Your Career As A Sound Engineer

  • Podcast
  • Training
    • My Courses
  • Archive

Give Me MORE Kick! This effect saved the day.

By Nathan Lively

UPDATE: This article appears in The Ultimate Guide to Creative Mixing on the Digico SD5.

I kept getting asked to turn the kick up, but it was never loud enough.

Eventually, it sounded like a kick drum solo with the rest of the band as backup.

I was struggling with how to make the mix work when I discovered the Audio Enhancer effect on the Digico SD5. Through experimentation, I found that if I inserted the Audio Enhancer on the SM52 Beta channel with a setting of 2.3kHz on the crossover and 1.45 on the drive level, I could mix the kick much lower. The kick could still be heard well, but with improved headroom in the mix.

Loved this post? Try these:
  1. Use a Ducker to Get Your Vocals (and your kick!) in the Pocket
  2. Help, I can’t hear the vocal! Waves Vocal Rider Plugin to the rescue.
  3. My two favorite features of the Digico SD5 faders

Get My Top 5 Posts

about mixing and sound system tuning

I respect your privacy. I will never share your email address with anyone, period.


Smaart® and the Smaart logo are registered trademarks of Rational Acoustics LLC and are not affiliated with Nathan Lively or Sound Design Live.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2023 Nathan Lively