XLN Audio DB-30 Drum Butter: Fry Up Your Drums

XLN Audio brings the magic of RC-20 to your drums with DB-30 Drum Butter, a drum bus multi-effect processor built around the idea that drums should be fun. Does it deliver?

When it comes to drums, XLN Audio knows what they’re doing. Take a look at the company’s catalog, and most of their instruments and effects are drum-related, from Addictive Drums 2 and XO to Life. And yet most producers will probably know the developer best for RC-20 Retro Color, the incredibly popular lo-fi multi-effect plugin. Now XLN Audio has united these two worlds into one with DB-30 Drum Butter, a drum-focused processor with an RC-20-like interface. 

Can XLN do for drums with DB-30 what they’ve done for lo-fi processing with RC-20? 

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Anyone familiar with RC-20 will feel instantly at ease with DB-30. It’s got a similar look, with six effects processors arranged in columns across its single screen, plus a global Magnitude dry/wet slider at the top and master-level parameters at the bottom. It does offer some crucial drum-based differences. It also offers more than just compression and clipping, with some unique - and powerfully useful - features that you don’t often see on drum shapers.

As previously stated, DB-30 is a multi-effects drum processor. The signal moves from left to right, passing through six effects units, each with its own set of parameters. Let’s look at these modules individually.

Boom Shack is a dual effects unit aimed at both low-end shaping (the Boom part) and noise for hats and snares (the Shack). The Boom lets you tune and shape the tone of the boosted bass, almost like adding an electronic kick body to your low end. There’s even an Acid button for wilder color. On the Shack side, you get 18 different types of noise for rattling the highs, from basic white noise to the sounds of waterfalls and clanking metal. You can also send both sections straight to the output for a cleaner sound, bypassing all of the ensuing effects.

Another unexpected processor is Shift, which lets you play with pitch shifting of both the frequency and formant portions of the signal. This can result in some really freaky effects, but it can also add punch and power. Crucially, you can weight the effect towards just the transient or sustain.

Compress does what you expect, with six different compressor types tuned for drums, including OTT, everybody’s favorite dynamics preset. There are no traditional compressor parameters to worry about, like ratio or attack, just directing the compression up or down. You also get a Bands slider to push dynamics into multiband territory, although there’s no control over what’s happening other than amount.

Saturate is also easy to understand, with six saturation types on hand, including Console, 4 Track, Tape, Tube, Digital, and Flub, each with a style slider that changes parameters depending on the type, for example, Choke Vs Hype for Console. There’s also a Target slider to push the saturation into the transients or the sustain portion of the drums.

Interestingly, there’s a reverb module included called Space. This includes a variety of reverb types, from rooms to springs, with not only decay and pre-delay but a clever control for stretching the width of the room, along with Ducking and Pan/Width. At first, we were unsure about baking reverb into the drum bus, but hearing all the processing happening in context, especially with compression after the verb, can deliver some very exciting results.

Lastly, the aptly named More effect massages a waveshaper and clipper into the signal, with up to four stages of application, plus a tone slider and transient/sustain target adjustment. 

All of the modules offer a large knob to dial in the amount of effect, and many also include a Focus adjuster to choose what frequency bands to apply to the effect. And, unlike with RC-20, you can freely swap the modules around - with the exception of Boom Shack and More, which always anchor the start and end of the signal chain.

Lastly, the Master Section gives you final control over the drums, with an EQ with Tone control, an Air knob, Attack and Sustain for final transient shaping, and a clipper.

Although there’s only the one screen, having six modules, each with their own parameters, plus the Master Section, makes DB-30 capable of producing a surprising variety of results. Let’s try it out in a few different use cases. In every example, we’re using the plugin’s Loudness Match parameter to keep inputs and outputs at the same level so your ears don’t get tricked by volume.

First, here it is across a drum bus, with a break, sampled kick sourced from a loop, and a topper. We’re using a little Space with a medium room algorithm, a restrained amount of compression, and a touch of More to add presence and weight but not overdo things. 

First without DB-30:

And then with:

DB-30 is fantastic for more extreme processing, too. Here it is again on a bus, this time across a TR-909 Drum Rack. This setting is more over the top than the first example, with Boom and Shack adding heft to the kick and sand to the tops, formants shifted down with Shift, a reverse reverb in Space, OTT compression, saturation and More. You always want More.

The dry signal:

And processed with DB-30:

DB-30 isn’t only for busses. It works well on single drums too, as in this example with the plugin creating a rumble on a 909 kick via lots of Boom, reverb Space, glue compression, tape saturation, and More. 

The original 909 kick:

And with rumble:

DB-30 is being marketed as a creative processor, and in this, it excels. Here we’ve started with a dry and admittedly pedestrian preset loop from a Roland CR-78. You’ve heard it a million times before. But with tweaking of the Boom and Shack sections plus frequency shifting (and not to mention extreme compression and saturation), we get an electro monster, and the starting point for an entire track.

The original loop:

And processed:

Lastly, there’s no rule that says you have to put DB-30 on drums. Indeed, there’s a preset section called Other Instruments to prove this. Here we’ve got it across a Jupiter-6-style pad with the Shift amount automated to create a riser.

The plain pad:

And Shifted:

DB-30 is part of a trend of effects plugins that don’t do anything drastically new, but instead reconfigure existing ideas into a package that’s easy to use and - most importantly - creatively inspiring. If you had a lot of time on your hands, you could probably build up an effects chain that does largely what DB-30 does. But then you wouldn’t have this interface, nor this experience (not the automatable Magnitude macro). DB-30 is, ultimately, more than the sum of its parts. Yes, it’s a series of effects that you may already have individually but put together in a way that makes you want to tweak and play. 

It’s also inspiring. While working on this review, we started dropping it onto every track in an unfinished song, drums or not. It quickly inspired new ideas, and had us reaching for breaks and bass and other sounds just because we wanted to hear how they would sound through the plugin. That long-abandoned track now feels like something that wants to be finished. It’s full of new energy, with a crispiness that can only come from frying in butter.

DB-30 isn’t perfect. While it’s nice to have the multiband slider in the compressor, it would be even better to see what was happening with those bands - and better yet, to have multiband processing as part of the overall deal. Modulation would be a blast too.

Speaking of multiband drum bus processing, DB-30’s biggest competition is undoubtedly MIX DRUMS from Arturia, which offers separate processing for bass and mid/high frequency bands. MIX DRUMS is also cheaper, with a regular price of $99 compared to DB-30’s $129. They are, however, different beasts. Arturia’s effort is cleaner and sharper-sounding, while DB-30 is very much in line with RC-20. Drum Butter doesn’t have to be lo-fi, but it’s much better at character and creativity than clean (though it can do that too). Your best bet? Get them both, or at least demo them both and see which one fits your genre and workflow better.