Hey guys,

I know compression has been spoken about A LOT! though im still unclear.

Okay i know what all the controls on a compressor are for. For eg i know what a ratio/knee etc does. i know know a compressor reduces the difference between the highest and the lowest peak of a signal so the volume can be raised. i have read up a lot..

Though what i cant get is, i can't seem to hear the effect of a compressor much. now when i say that i mean, when i put on a compressor i dont really know when its effect is too much or too little. Obv, when the make up gain is added it gets louder and when not it get softer. Thats very obvious. Though i know what attack release and all the parameters do, i dont know how to customise them for diff signals. i own the KRK rp8s though cant treat my room (not an option sadly). My technique of compressing is: pull threshold completely down, max attack, min release and then slow start reducing attack and suit everything to need.

Whats your technique and what would you advice me?

 

A standard compressor, compresses the signal to tame out of control artifacts on a bus/channel/mix rather you are using it for chaining of just patching up some wild vocals. Instead of just listening for a difference, also watch the difference! Comps are usually used on drums and vocals because of the unintentional emphasis on certain beats/notes that usually occur with drums and vocals.



See here that the signal was compressed to tame the transients on the end of the wavform. Rather the culprit was a loud snare hit or a vocalist hissing or popping too loudly in the microphone, the signal is alot more mixable now that compression has been applied. This is done so you don't have alot of peaking/ducking and unwanted distortion in your mix. These two wavforms might sound the same as far as the ear goes, but if you watched them on a db meter than you could easily see that the tailend of the first wavform is going apeshit compared to the rest of the signal and needs compression so that it sits well in the mix.

Hope that helps!

 

geraldthegenius summed it up nicely. At it's most basic compression is just taming the audio peaks.

BTW: not "hearing" the compressor at work in your mix isn't necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on what you want to achieve.

 

One technique that has helped me I learned from a book called Mixing With Your Mind in Chapter 8: Cracking Compressors. This is just a summary of what I learned. If it sounds like something you would like to explore then you should definitely read the chapter yourself. I'm sure you could find a copy around somewhere...

It suggests to always start off with the following settings:

Attack to anywhere
Release to minimum
Ratio to maximum
Threshold to sensitive

The tough part is figuring out what settings to use for the Attack and Threshold. This will vary depending on the type of signal you are attempting to compress. The Attack has to be fast enough to effect the signal and I usually lower the Threshold to around -6dB of gain reduction. I've saved this preset so I can quickly load it without having to set the parameters again.

First adjust the Attack. With the ratio at maximum and a short release you should be able to hear the effects of the Attack knob more clearly. Keep playing with it until the beginning of your signal is the way you want it to be.

Second adjust Release. This will control how long it takes for the volume of the signal to bounce back. How long it takes, or even if you want this effect at all depends of course on the signal. If you wanted you could use a slow release time and get something like a sidechain effect that you could use rhytmically. Or a fast release time and you won't notice the signal bouncing back at all.

Third adjust Ratio. This would probably be the most difficult for beginners. You want to lower the ratio as much as you can without losing the effects you created with your Attack and Release settings. Two things to keep in mind are that a high ratio means more compression and a smaller sound. A low ratio means less compression and a bigger sound. How tame or wild do you want the signal to be?

And finally adjust Threshold. This will control how much of the peaks of the signal will be affected. Maybe a signal just has a really high peak that you want to contain a bit. Or you may want to compress the entire signal. Normally you probably wouldn't want the compressor to be working during the entire signal. You may want to let certain uncompressed parts of the signal through. These can all be controlled with the Threshold knob.

But I believe the most important part is practice, practice, practice. You must train your ears to notice these changes. It doesn't come naturally. And don't just put a compressor on everything. It's a tool and you should know why you want to use it. What effects are you trying to achieve? And most importantly, A/B at equal perceived volume levels. Use makeup gain in the compressor so the compressed signal sounds as loud as the umcompressed signal and then turn the compressor off and on. Don't set the makeup gain by reading the meter. Use your ears as best you can so the two signals sound like they are at the same level.

 

You should hear the difference if you use correctly.

First, put any waveform display or use FabFilter Pro-C per example (it has graphical represantation of compressed signal) and listen.

Best for practicing is on drum beat or vocal, as geraldthegenius said. There is a one video about compression, but I don't know how it's named... It's great. A pure analysis of any compressor control with graphical representation and the general using practice.

... yes, it's cubaseguru compression masterclass, try to find.

 

Compression decreases the amount of dynamic range or the difference between the softest part of a signal and the loudest part. It effectively squashes it. We have some useful resources in AudioSex Academy Part I that cover this in depth with video and practical applications. Check it out.

 

It took me a long time to grasp compression (if I ever have). I usually didn't think it was working until I listened back at a later date and realised I had squashed the sound to f***.

My first rule was to compress until you can hear it working (ie bring down threshold until too much) then ease back. That sounds a little like what you've been doing anyway.

Secondly try a variety of compressors. Some are designed to be transparent and used on a whole mix so you may not notice it working, while others have more 'character' and let you have more fun with them, giving some power to a drum loop for example.

 

yeah this is what I tend to do, although there is no hard/fast rule on whats right/ wrong...if it sounds good go with it!

I was too tight/skint to buy a compressor for the first few years of producing which I think helped me in the long run. I think it's far too easy to rely on compression alone to try and boost the energy of a mix.

 

I forgot to mention to pay attention to the presets of your compressors. If your compressors have presets for certain sounds, pay attention to the where the attack, release, ratio and threshold are set. They'll usually be in the same ballpark regardless which compressor you use and are often a good starting point.

Also if your main concern is you want to hear what a compressor is doing, then don't rely on any graphical displays. Use your ears to hear, not your eyes.

 

have nothing to add to the loosely quoted passages, just glad to see, to read, that you found these worth to include in your response...
all the best...

 

In simple plain english:

The highest peak gets compact and the lowest gets boost it.

You lose sound/volume that's why most compressor have a gain/boost/trim to regain the lost of volume/sound.

It just make that soundwaves are not super spike or super low through out the entire audio file.


P.s. Don't compress everything cause you might lose sense of personality on the song.


klanghelm is probably a great compressor but it's a little bit advance.
http://klanghelm.com/DC8C.html

 

Check this one out, Best Dynamics course I've ever watched

http://www.lynda.com/Logic-Pro-tutorials/Foundations-of-Audio-Compression-and-Dynamic-Processing/85998-2.html

 

I think from your question what you're trying to understand is how compression actually sounds like in practice. That's such a huge topic and is completely subjective but I'll try and sum it up for you in a few different categories.

1) Transparent peak compression - this is where you are trying to control short, quick peaks in your audio so that you can save headroom and ultimately be able to make your song louder in the mastering stage. A lot of times this is used on percussion, controlling clicks and pops on vocals, or other instruments with strong attacks and peaks. The point of this type of compression is not to be creative, or add any kind of color or change to the way your audio sounds, it's simply meant to catch peaks, and bring them down to save headroom. This type of compression for the most part you will not be able to hear, and should't be able to. It should be transparent. With this type of compression it's usually a fast attack time (1-5ms), short to medium release time (10-30 ms), a medium to high ratio (3-6) and a threshold that only catches peaks and does not eat into the rest of the audio signal (use s(m)exoscope from Bram Electrix to see see your audio changing as you are compressing)

2) Dynamic control - This type of compression is meant to keep the dynamics of your audio even, and can be as transparent or colored as you like. For example, a bass player a lot of times plays in a large variety of hard plucking and softer playing, so you would need to even out the overall volume of the bass track so that it does not drop out when the rest of the instruments play. Same goes for vocals, some singers go very soft in some parts and then sing loudly in other sections, so to bring things closer together you would use compression. The best way to achieve this is to actually listen to the part or instrument you want to compress, and carefully listen for parts when things jump out at you in a way that you don't want them to, these are the parts you want the compressor to target. Depending on how fast they jump out at you, you will need to adjust your compressor settings. For example let's say you have a vocalist singing normally and then suddenly they sing one word that is noticeably louder than the rest of the verse. You would need to set a fast enough attack time to catch only that word but not completely kill it, a release time that will bring the volume back up before the next word or words, a threshold that will catch just that word, and a ratio that is medium to high to make sure it gets compressed enough.

3) Creative compression - This is where you purposely want to hear the compressor work. You might want things to pump in a certain way, or want to use parallel compression to crush your drums and get that particular sound. Usually this type of compression uses more extreme settings like very fast attack and release times, very low threshold and high ratios.

So what I'm trying to say is that sometimes you should not hear the compressor work and sometimes you should. It depends on your goal and the reasons you're using the compressor. In dance music for example compression is an essential part of the sound of the entire genre. People want to hear the compressors working because it imparts a certain sound to the music. It makes it pump and glues everything together making it sound full, thick and loud.

My suggestion to you is to play around with compression. Experiment. See what extreme settings do and what effects they have on the audio. And always have a reason for using a compressor, and that way you will better understand how and why it works.