when many sounds are involved, and compressing them all together, like a drum bus

is the main reason to make a pumping effect?......because other than that i don't know how anyone can predict what sound from all those involved in a drum bus will trigger the compressor? whats the main purpose to compress busses?


thanks

 

To glue them and make some dynamics

 

What is Bus Compression?
www.sageaudio.com/blog/mastering/what-is-bus-compression.php

 

Compression denses material. The attack and release times usually slow down on busses, because there you do not want to densen only the tail, but even out all instruments.
That's why you want to set it on a bus, I guess?

I think if you know how compression works, you know when to use it and how to set it up.

 

do you always like the "glue" thats created? ....also isn't that a bit weird..compressing to make dynamics? its supposed to lessen dynamics when using compression, but i understand that pumping effect can feel a bit dynamic

 

compression on bus is 95% of the time is never about compressing. What I mean is, normal compression are just a way to control the volume (leveling) and taming the peaks so you'll get more headroom to work with, eventually volume (make the track louder).

It's different when it comes to bus. There are few other things that could be achieved through adding a compressor on the master bus. I may have a different view about it, but commonly the term "glue" the mix together always heard when it comes to compression on the bus. It's more to control the peaks and transient, tighten them up, so they move together. The compressor will catch all the peaks and release them together to get unified movement of all the combined tracks. It has a lot of subtle result, everything will sound "together" and "in a same room" because it affects the reverbs, fx and everything sent to it. Glue compression also useful when you layering tracks together, ie. Kick drum tracks. If you have 3 samples layered it is advisable to group them together and compress them so it will be tighter, hit and release at the same time so it will sound like 1 track instead of 3.

The other common technique of bus compression is "groove compression". Still it's not really compressing, it's locking the all the tracks to a certain set tempo or timing according to the groove of the song. So the compression will accentuate the timing of the song thus making it musical and more approachable. It is similar to the pumping effects but very very subtle, a little goes a long way. It's like the "accent" feature found in drum machines, it's not the same but hope you'll get an idea. The creative usage of release time sometimes will provide wonderful result for this technique. Me personally I use this on drum buss because there rarely any sustained element present, so I can go crazy with it and experiment with stuff. API 2500 is da bomb.

Famous mixers have their own view on the subject, to name a few, the Michael Brauer "Brauerizer" multibuss compression and Andrew Scheps "Rear Bus Compression". Still, it's never really about compressing the tracks, but using bus compression to achieve a certain desired result/effect. They are awesome and kinda tricky to explain, so Youtube is your friend.

For me I personally think the magic of bus compression it is always about how you set the release time and hitting it at 2-3db at most. Fixed release, variable release, auto release (linear, logarithmic), dual release, all of them have unique effects when used correctly, but you gotta know what you want to achieve and most importantly what the tracks need first.

 

compression is for newbs they say
try sound sculpting first

 

eq you mean right? ....whats the best source you found to learn about that

also who did you hear saying that? i read a book in the past by a producer of michael jackson who said that

 

You're not supposed to hear pumping from mix bus compression. It's meant to introduce subtle (3-5 dB reduction with ratio up to 2:1, typically) interplay between the instruments (i.e. drums pressing in everything else while they hit) while simultaneously make the overall loudness higher and more consistent. That's the "glue" and "density" effect. If you hear pumping, you're overdoing it, and with wrong timings too.
Group bus compression varies greatly depending on instruments and genres. You can press guitars in metal quite heavily, and in something like Dubstep you're pretty much expected to put a maximizer on each group bus and then one on a mix bus.
Once again tho, if you hear pumping where there shouldn't be it's the consequence of your actions and not an inherent trait of bus compression.

 

i like to eq+compress sends/auxes

 

there's a thing on the comp called threshold

 

but i mean if you have a lot of sounds involved, like a drum bass, what does it matter which sound triggers it?

 

are confusing side chain compression and general compression? they are different techniques for different reasons. Side chaining will give the pumping edm osund for example. In DnB compression is used on the drum bus to bring out dynamics and make the drums cut through

 

how does drum bus compression brings out dynamics when in general compression is meant to lessen dynamics (i.e vocals) ?

 

I will link this I think it helps to explain how you can use compression.

 

make a drum track with kick, snare, toms, cymbals and change the levels to have the compressor triggered by each element and hear what it does. like literally that what producing music is. if you can't hear the difference, don't use the plugin.

actually stop using any plugin that you can't hear what it's doing. If you end up with only volume faders in the project, that's your level and you need to grow from that. 99% of your questions are not supposed to be asked because simple practice answers all. This question should not exist if you'd be able to hear compression. And explaining in detail every situation won't make you hear things, just lose everyone's time

 

good idea!

 

You need more practice - take more time.

Golden tip

Do not use the automatic setting option for the attack and release time, as the results are usually insufficient.
Adjust the compressor by ear. The values below only serve as a guide!


Compressor
A compressor should be used for 3 reasons:

1. due to resonances
2. due to high dynamics (30dB)
3. due to too little "sustain" ("decay time")

The attack is between 3-5 ms. To adjust the attack time, let the bass player play deep, loud notes staccato.
Release: under 0.5sec. The attack phase of the next note must not interfere with the release time of the previous one.
It should be as short as possible without hearing too much finger noise, damping noise or the compressor "breathing".

 

i've done that....and indeed the loudest component is getting softer...for example if i boost up the snare more, thats what triggers the compression and snare is getting softer sounding in the drum bus...but i guess i could do that by lowering the snare in the first place without compression, but anyway still trying to figure it out

 

It's triggered by sum of all sounds.
When your sounds arrive to the bus, they are getting summed into one stream of audio. It's not a separate sounds anymore.
And that stream of audio is what's getting compressed in its entirety. When the bus compressor makes your snare softer, it makes *everything* softer for the duration when the signal exceeds the threshold.