drumnbass.be forum » Production » Production questions & answers » Maximizer/compressor Maximizer/compressor Author Post brucifer Making all the tunes your mum loves Registration Date: 23-10-2007 Posts: 997 Helpfulness rating:  This going to sound like a stupid question to some of you, but what is the difference? I have tried messing around with both devices in Reason and they both seem to do pretty much the same thing... Could someone explain why and how you would really use a maximizer instead of a compresser. Thanks __ 06-07-2008 22:57 Gregg Wicked Producer Registration Date: 16-05-2007 Posts: 417 Helpfulness rating:  A compressor turns the quiet parts louder and the loud bits quieter. It pretty much works as an automatic volume control. By using it you get a stable gain across your tune. Furthermore you can achieve punch or other nice things with it by playing around with thershold,ratio, attack, release… So if you are actually about to change your sound, use a compressor. If you simply want to boost volume, go for the maximiser. I’d use the maximizer instead of the compressor when I want to gain the overall volume of my track without affecting its sound. A maximizer was once created for that process so it might do the job better for some more reason I don’t know. My point of view, I might be wrong though. Cheers. 07-07-2008 00:11 Sentinel Mr. Grumpy Registration Date: 05-04-2008 Posts: 845 Helpfulness rating:  I think technically the Compressor is meant for compressing sounds as it states ! Whereas house producers and the like use it to get pumping bass. Also you can use it for side-chaining - Very useful to allow the bass and kick to pass through without clashing and distorting ! The maximizer is really meant to boost sounds overall volume whilst keeping them from going over the max peak limit and clipping ! Far as I know ! ¿0Ok? __ 07-07-2008 00:13 Sentinel Mr. Grumpy Registration Date: 05-04-2008 Posts: 845 Helpfulness rating:  Yeah what Gregg said ! I guess he was posting at the same time d'oh ! __ 07-07-2008 00:15 brucifer Making all the tunes your mum loves Registration Date: 23-10-2007 Posts: 997 Helpfulness rating:  Thanks for your replys. I have been playing with both and useing them in some pads. I found the idea on youtube. Just had a real nice tune going, kind of early 90's hardcore/dubby thing. I managed to create some real nice new sounds/combi's with the ideas from youtube.... .... BUt I just had a power failure and lost the lot All the patches are gone, I can't find the correct breaks. Everything is fucked I just tried doing a rough demo of the melodies/stabs, but they are not coming out right now. Think I will walk away from my computer now, really pissed off. But thanks for your help again __ 07-07-2008 00:52 Sentinel Mr. Grumpy Registration Date: 05-04-2008 Posts: 845 Helpfulness rating:  Damn I had that happen yesterday ! I lost the tune I'd started yesterday due to bloody windows explorer freezing and restarting itself ... While doing so it shut all active programs down ! What a cunt ! Luckily I managed to remember a few of the patches and sequences and whatnot ... unusual for my bad memory but never the less ... I've managed to get 42 bars redone. __ 07-07-2008 02:24 brucifer Making all the tunes your mum loves Registration Date: 23-10-2007 Posts: 997 Helpfulness rating:  quote: Originally posted by TheSentinel Damn I had that happen yesterday ! I lost the tune I'd started yesterday due to bloody windows explorer freezing and restarting itself ... While doing so it shut all active programs down ! What a cunt ! Luckily I managed to remember a few of the patches and sequences and whatnot ... unusual for my bad memory but never the less ... I've managed to get 42 bars redone. Sorry to hear that. Oddly enough, I had Internet explorer running at the time when it died. I hardly ever use IE, but I was streaming Don FM at the time. Also, only my computer died suddenly, nothing else lost power..... Maybe Bill Gates don't like my tunes and crashed my computer __ 07-07-2008 11:05 Sentinel Mr. Grumpy Registration Date: 05-04-2008 Posts: 845 Helpfulness rating:  Yeah man I don't use IE ever ... Used to use it before but it kept slowing my old laptop down everytime I opened and sometimes it just crashed and burned ! So I switched to full time FireFox ! __ 07-07-2008 15:51 Ketz Thinking outside the box... Registration Date: 10-10-2007 Posts: 2,865 Helpfulness rating:  yeah my first browser ever was Netscape Navigator - thought it was ok! but nowadays, everything has micosoft on it monopoly! um so im not off topic, compressor like senty and others said squashes the sound together (compresses it lol), maximiser works more like a booster eh __ 07-07-2008 16:36 drumnbass.be forum » Production » Production questions & answers » Maximizer/compressor