compressing at the end

ok sorry to open what is probably a very old can of worms, but can someone direct me to a handy compression guide. i just basically want to know what sort of levels to put for teh ratio, attack etc. to overall finish a song.

ps. I'm using the compressor contained in the cubase VST DYnamics plugin, if that helps.

this is a pretty descent site with lots of tutorials. I used to go here long time ago, but i checked for you....

Click this Link --- Computer Music Site

Should take you to a search page, then in the search box, type "compression" and hit enter. you have to hit enter cuz i couldn't find a search button and it popped up a whole bunch of tutorials for compression. not sure if it's exactly what you needed but there's lots to look at. I would've gave you the direct link to the search results but i couldn't get the page address for the lists. Again, hope this helps man, best i can do.

normally i dont compress the master channel.....and if a track gets signed and they want it mastered (which they probably will) then the mastering engineer will just want a good mix to play with rather than a dodgy amateur master.......so dont bother....compress channels individually.....and worry about getting your mix right....if your after more volume try a very transparent sounding limiter.......

if you must do it then what you really want is a ,multiband compresser.......but my honest advice is leave it be....

I never put compression on the final thing, fucks up the dynamics!

quote:

Originally posted by Surya I never put compression on the final thing, fucks up the dynamics!

Idd, I came back from (over)doing that. Just get your levels right and you won't have to use any compression/limiter.

i dont even touch the compressor now ... its all about the eqing and yourt levels... and tbh everything sounds much better now ...

I had some nasty results with compression
cos I didnt know any better Id just throw the final mix thru one
thinkin it would fatten things up but it didnt

It messed with all the dynamics causing rises and falls where I didnt want em.

I second the opinion of leavin well alone and just gettin your eq and levels sweet
Thats all I do now and get the desired results.

I dont even bother compressin seperate channels/tracks either, Ive tried in the past
and again just ended up squashing the bollox out things.
I know its good to learn how to have seperate compression settings on different instruments
but imo it ends up gettin in the way of creativity! as if it aint enough to come up with a great idea lay down some fat edits and then start twiddlin with compression settings - not!
One less thing to worry about man!
I think you might be best focusing on sampling/recording some quality sounds first that sound fat already and dont need much done to them, and youll get a good signal to noise ratio s/n.
And yes I second the fact that most mastering engineers request a non- compressed final mix to work with and not one that You've 'had a go at!
Good Luck.

quote:

Originally posted by Surya I never put compression on the final thing, fucks up the dynamics!

yea, unlike real instruments that have major transient, and even just general dynamic pick-ups, (guitars, and drums for sure), you don't need to worry about compressing the sound, you can crank the sound, and not worry about getting too much ambient (verb).

that and any mastering you could do (compression, limiters, eq) won't mastter shit in the end, because you need high quality equipment( talking some AMAZING transparent compression, what ever that is, but it sound more natural, and would be the expensive stuff, usually multi-band also, one band compression on a bad mix would make EVERYTHING drop in volume if the kick was just too loud, thus making the lead, the bass, the snare, EVERYTHING go quiet, and the bass just sounds normal sound, in a very unplesant way. even the good comprssions can make that sound GOOD like Benni B does.)

... OH, AND extreme skill. doing the final mix on a track is an art on it's own. just try to get the loudest, without clipping, song you can.

make sure each track has absolutly NO clipping. cehck all the levles for red, ya know, that's what you need compression for. besides that the loudest track you cn get, but that's a lot more of another topic.

you don't need compression on the finally mix, if you don't have anything clipping, if you do, try putting it on the one track, or eq it to get that one Freq down, or at worset, turn the track leel down.

sometimes the hardest thing to learn is when you actually need to just, turn the levels down. it'll still sound loud and big even if it's not above 0db. you ear's adjust to loud sounds, so than they stop sounding loud after a bit. so you go through a track and it just doesn't sound loud anymore, so you crank and crank. but if you turn the sound down, at some point you, you'll realise that it just seemd like it wasn't that loud, that if you turn it down, you still hear it AS good.

all you do is wreck your ears. than you cannot do ANY producing. BAAAD.

I use compression rarely too.. find out it can flatten some strange frequencies that appear when using vocoded sounds and/or bandpass filter

quote:

Don't worry about knee it's stoopid.

stupid? dont think so.......hard and soft knee make a lot of difference on a hign quality compressor....

quote:

Originally posted by MUNKI C quote: Don't worry about knee it's stoopid. stupid? dont think so.......hard and soft knee make a lot of difference on a hign quality compressor....

exactly. just tried with waves c4, it makes huge difference

quote:

Originally posted by MUNKI C quote: Don't worry about knee it's stoopid. stupid? dont think so.......hard and soft knee make a lot of difference on a hign quality compressor....

Indeed, when doing mastering I usually spend a lot of time in setting the knee just right. Makes all the difference.

quote:

Originally posted by cynik quote: Originally posted by MUNKI C quote: Don't worry about knee it's stoopid. stupid? dont think so.......hard and soft knee make a lot of difference on a hign quality compressor.... exactly. just tried with waves c4, it makes huge difference

i second this waves c4 is a nice compresswion unit touchy but nice ...

voxengo has an AMAZING limiter, which is best used at the end of the mix (they suggest) that is greatly transparent and doesn't mess the sound up, with 4x oversample, dither, and bottom end cutoff which are all great for final step in mastering. there's also a compressor they suggest for mastering, but i wouldn't use a single band for that. just the brickwall limiter for stopping the sound from clipping, and it doesn't mess with dynamics to any extreme. even the "breathing" sound you get from compressing it, sounds almost pleasant. it's good. and i never see it advertised around, but i know it works great.

good compression's goal is for mastering is simply that to get the most volume out of your sound. there are people that do ONLY this for songs. it's also very subjective, and "superstious" can be about right. some labels get several people do mastering on a song, and than choose from the different sounds. there's no real final say in it as absolute.

http://www.smartelectronix.com/~magnus/index.html
great quality free compressors.

multi band for master (you can also have a compressor set, and then turn the wet/dry down a bit so it's not OVERLY compreswsed, but still a tad bit controlled.)
and a single band fo tracks.

The discussion about compressing individual tracks has been split off to a seperate thread: compressing individual tracks

Please stick to discussion master compression only in this thread!

Here is the philosophy behind compression:

in a given second of the tune, it has a look something like this:

/\................... /\. /\.................. /\/\/\ /\
-----------------------------------------------------
......... \/\/....\/.............\/\/. \/............. \/

The sounds that make the peaks ( /\ s) cause clips when you turn up the volume of the tune, and also if you turn it down (since these sounds are way too loud) you will loose clipping but will loose the silent sounds too. BTW, turning the volume down when the tune is too loud is kind of compression human one, but no way that it's comparable with the response times of real compressors

Anyway, the compressor destroys the difference between the peaks and the silent sounds (depending on its settings, of course) so that you have this:


-----------------------------------------------------

In this way, you can rise the volume of the tune just enough not to make clipping and to ensure that your silent parts are heard.
But this kills the dynamics of a tune, because you cannot have a hammer snare banging anymore. This is because the peak of it will be reduced, and you won't feel the full power of the snare.

Now you should start understanding compressors from this point of view.

well, here's my opinion on the subject.

actually i work with compression on my master track , especialy in the process of editing and sequencing.the reason herefore is that see mixdowns as a seperate partition of making music. I mostly use a combination of a good maximizer eq and a multiband not in that order and most of them have rather small ratios i put them on the master track so that i don't loose much time eq'ing and mastering each seperate track (i allways put some on my seperate tracks to but again for compression i use small ratio's). i have noticed that i'm more in touch with the so flow of a tune when i use that method.

Now when i'm about done with most of the sequencing i remove all plugins from the master fader, and work on each track putting them in a mix ; mixing them down to 0 (altough sometimes i use other db values than 0 ,most of the time i work to 0db) using compression and eq on every track that needs it, (this is the hard part knowing the needs of the track in function of the mixdown)

When i'm done with the mix of the track i save it under a diffrent name in 1map you got several mixes a edit and a few masters. now i do a shitload of mixes and save the best ones.

Now i've got a good mixdown of my track, i process all the plugins on each seperate track and save this one (This one has to go with you when you go to a mastering engineer this is'nt the only one that has to come but you you need a solid clean mixdown)

Now i do a few masterings of my own , using multiband compression a good eq but even some tapecompression can be used here ,or an ad/da trip trough a sampler of choice.

i use my own masters when spinning or listening . But as said before i allways have my mixdown savefiles when i get the chance to go to a mastering i have a cd with me with a couple of mixdowns and a couple of my preferd homemade masters .

this is how i use compression on a mastertrack

greetz

akwiezz