How The Pros Use Compression - Audio Compression Instruments and Mixes

Hello everyone. I'm Rick Beato. Everything called music today is how professionals use

compression

. It's how they use it on individual

instruments

and on the mix bus. Coming next Okay, so what is

compression

? A compressor in music is something that makes the music or instrument sound louder. Increasing their amplitude and volume makes them sound louder without increasing their volume. It's also used to lower the loudest part of a sound to make it sound more even or consistent, so if I have a bassist and he's playing where some notes actually are. loud and some notes are very soft.

I'm going to compress the bass so it's more even and sits much better in the mix because if I don't compress it it's going to sound like it's going in and out and one of the things about bass in your mix is ​​that you don't want the bass to go down. in the input and output ratios and in the presser foot threshold. Determine when the compressor actually kicks in and is running, once it passes a certain threshold the compressor kicks in and starts to ramp down. The sound or amplitude at a compression ratio is generally where you start to apply one-to-one compression.

There's no compression at all as you look here straight line That's just the sound straight through Two to one is the lowest ratio 4 to 1 6 to 1 10 to 1 and 20 to 1 over 20 to 1 is? Basically limiting. Here are your compression curves 1 2 1 boom, that means it's not even at 2 2 1. You're just reducing the dynamics with a little bit of 4 to 1, you're reducing a little more, 20 to 1 and This is infinite to 1 , you are limiting. 20 to 1 is going to sound limiting anyway, limiting is when the sound goes up, hits a brick wall and doesn't go up any further, overtakes the sound or overwhelms the wave if you look at a sound that has been highly compressed.

And the tracking is literally flat, meaning the waveforms have a top like a little plateau and are straight, that's one of the reasons. Why don't you normally do it? Compress distorted electric guitars or those that have square waves. The Moog synthesizer sounds like this or buzzy pads. You don't have to compress those sounds because they're already compressed because they're basically square wave sound and a square wave becomes zip zip. zip zip zip Square waves look like this. They have flat tops because they are compressed. Now you don't need to compress things that are already compressed like distorted electric guitars if you want to use a multiband compressor.

Which we will talk about later. toning the shape is something completely different. We'll get to that in a minute. Well, the first thing we're going to talk about is proportion. You know your compressor when you see these things. It says like two to one or four to one. That's your ratio. Let me explain the ratio control, whether you're going into Logic, Pro Tools or Sonar, whatever it is, you're going into a two-to-one ratio. Once a signal entering the compressor exceeds the threshold by two dB, it will be attenuated or rejected. for one DB, if the threshold was exceeded by 8 DB it would be reduced by 4 DB so 2 to 1 works if it was 16 DB and would be rejected at 8 TB and the other ratios would work the same but normally 2 at 1 ratio is Mild Compression, starts to become more Moderate around 3 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 Is this typically what mixers use in mixing?

Good bus. I based it here, that's a common thing, but the mix bus is really. Most large mixers will use a 4 to 1 ratio on the mix bus. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Then you start using a medium compression around 6 to 1 or so and then you start using a stronger compressor at 10 to one which is recert. Compress your room microphones where you want to get that kind of advantage. zeppelin when the dam breaks what kind of sound is it? Compression of those room mics so they start pumping and sound like they have a lot of energy.

Next we have the attack and release times. Ok, attack time is simply how fast your compressor runs? Pick up the sound if you have a slow attack time, allow more transient to pass through the initial band of transient. I guess your drum has a very fast transient and then the sound decays quickly or a piano has a fast transient or an acoustic guitar. You realized? How did the waves from the piano and the snare look almost identical? Do you have this huge transient here? and then it narrows afterwards, this transient is what you want to control sometimes, if you compress it too much it will literally flatten out.

That and it will compress the bandwidth, that's what compression does, same with acoustic guitar. It has many spikes on its beaks. True, the dynamic range of those peaks can be controlled by compression, the same with bass parts. You'll see a lot of these really sharp transients on the studs and then you'll be able to see the volume, the amplitude go up and down, what you want to do is do you want to smooth it out and make it more consistent? That's one of the things you use compression for if you have a fast attack time on something that has a fast transient.

Are you going to listen to the compression and maybe you want the sound many times you want the snare to really attack? but generally with drums, slower attack times give you more punch because you really want those transients here on the top track. I'm going to play the snare uncompressed and it sounds like this. There is almost no sustain. This is a very compressed trap. No, for much longer the waveform is Jiri here. They are played in a row. You can really hear the difference. The things you might want to use a fast attack on are actually bass if you have a bassist who plays very inconsistently.

You're going to want to have a fast attack time because a lot of times those initial transients are really inconsistent. You will see these spikes everywhere. You just look at the track on your dawt and say oh. That's really inconsistent because you can look at these transients or the acoustic guitar the same if you really want to level out that sound, the pick attack and make it much more consistent and punchy, actually a fast attack. It works the same way it perceives sounds, if you have very fast transients in sounds, a fast attack will make the thing jump out of the mix a lot of times, without vocals, a lot of times when I'm sure I'll be using two compressors.

This is in the tracking part. I use a compressor to slow down the transients. Because you don't want your voice to jump all over the place, so you can go through and set these things up. And you might not want your voice to be compressed at all. But a lot of times you want that sound, so sometimes I have compressors set to a really slow setting like a two-to-one ratio with a slow attack time, but then I have another set. with a higher ratio behind with a fast attack time, it's okay, but I won't have the input on this side.

So just certain peaks, so grab those to pick up any really strong transients. So you don't have to go back. and you ride these things in the mix all the time don't you want to turn up? And hand mount every attack if you don't have to, sometimes you have to. You'll know just by looking at the waveforms. What is it about really sharp transients? Things like drums, although I like to use a slow attack time because I want those transients to come through, that's what gives you your attack. That's what gives your aggression and your punch the slow attack times.

So your release time is how fast does the compressor release the sound? How quickly do you let go if you want to get that Led Zepplin back when the dam breaks? So you can hear the difference between the dry and compressed room when I switch to the compressed sound. I'm using a high compression ratio, around 20 to 1, and have the release time set just right. So that's got the pump you want to hear. and gives you that Led Zepplin sound, it's a good time to use a long release time on your compressor. It's when you have a bass note that dies out too quickly.

Notice how the first note decreases and look at the second bass note that has been compressed with an alto. ratio of 6 to 1 and a long release time. You know, this bass note here decreases. But you see how thick the back of this is. That's what compression is doing. This thick back. Here's to making a note have so much more. sustain and amplitude So that the bass does not drop or narrow as it does here. Do you use that? Compressor to support the back of the note and keep it stable so that the bass does not dissipate the attack and release times.

Are they really crucial in the mix bus? Most mixers will set the mix cuts at a ratio of four to one. And if you're using an SSL compressor, which is pretty much the standard, I'm talking about a plug-in or if you're mixing on a console, that's pretty much been the standard for mixing like mixed bus compression for the last 30 years. years 35 years With the exception of Chris Lord-alge, he uses a red focusrite compressor on his mix bus, the attack time will generally vary from 1 to 10 milliseconds and the release time if he is using an SSL compressor.

Most mixers, whether it's a wave plug-in, like a Universal Audio, have an SSL. There are many different G+ compressors that exist in the plug-in world, most mixers use auto release. The same goes for the alan smart c 2 if you have the hardware unit or a software emulation. That's just a copy of the BIOS of the G series compressor one cell or Focusrite Red 3 That's a Crystal Red LG compressor. He'll use auto release on that too, the attack time will really vary depending on what you're mixing. What is the tempo and stroke you want. Do this if you have slower attack times, you will gain more strength.

But sometimes you want the compressor to grab things and stick them, so you use a faster attack time when it comes to ss emulations. LG Compressor + Steven Slate makes one, your ad makes a wave, makes one and Ssl. Make one. I've tried them all, they're all pretty similar. I actually put them on a mix bus. I've tuned the input to get exactly the same gain reduction and they are quite similar. I guess it sells a lot. I really like the 80s, but you know I have them all, so you know, sometimes I'll do a mix and I'll go from one song to another and I'll use a different SSL, a buss compressor around it, so it's really kind of a personal taste. .

And anyway it depends on the song. I have been talking about all these compressors, but we haven't even discussed the types of compressors. You've heard many of these terms like optical or opto compressor. standard optical compressors most commonly seen in plug-in form or in hardware units a through eight By tell atronics or Universal

audio

has a great emulation of an a a 3 a 2 2 XC L-1B That's a really nice compressor common that is used in Nashville, every time I go there, people use it to record vocals and stuff like that. It's great on bass, these things are great based on La-2a.

Incredibly cool, Daniel, Lanois, who is a phenomenal producer, produced Peter Gabriel's records and brings you many Tuesdays. of the records of him? He uses it on everything and vocal guitars. Call it the Chris Lord-Alge II, this is just a go to A 3a compressor for electric guitars if you're looking for something that picks up really fast transients. That is not the compressor to use the qa, although on a bass anything has low levels. -final as a bass killer sounds great, the fet compressor field effect transistor, well the main one that everyone knows is the Ua 1176, it is probably the most common compressor and the most used compressor in any musical genre, both in hardware form as well as format. softer way there are great emulations.

I own the waves. I own the pump factory. I own the Uad. I like the Uad. I like the fact that they are the ones who did their own modeling of their own hardware. I think they sound fantastic? These sound very colored and are not transparent Which means the same thing These are very colored settings I say I say non-transparent oil means the same thing They start with a four to one ratio They have super fast attack and release times 11 The 70s are a little confusing to people regarding attack and release timing because they are actually backwards from what one would think the fastest attack is 7 and the fastest release is 7 so all clockwise to track the voices.

Go to the compressor on the right. There is a spectacular sound at the bottom here, the VCA Ssl g+ compressor voltage controlled amplifier or you can find a 384 rack unit called neve 33609 compressor limiter, these are mixed bus compressors. They are dominating the compressors. They are great at handling program information, that is, they are great at handling

mixes

if you can afford to use real

mixes

. You'd be excited, but the emulations are fantastic. I have the wave ones, I have uad in both. I love the uad version of the 33609 here, this is really a great compressor and it's actually much more versatile than the ssl bus compressor because you can use it on other things and because of the limiting function because it has a compressor and a limiter.

It's really very useful. The design offourth compressor is a variable mu. It is an older gain control design that uses a buyback Esteem tube for its gain reduction. In reality, they lack a traditional. threshold and ratio, but relies on input and output controls to drive the compressor. The most common type that you see and think of is the Fairchild 660 or 670 and 650. It's this mono unit. Gaze unit 672. Think of the Beatles. Think Pink Floyd. Things like that. that these have an incredibly rich sound the compressors are incredibly expensive the emulations are very good that they are made of them many companies make plugin emulations Emi made her own compressor to emulate on a Fairchild hardware it is called Emi t Ge one two four one three that's the Abbey Road compressor and they sound incredibly good.

Chandler makes a copy called Tg and it is one of my favorite compressors. It is a very expensive hard drive. But it's amazing on drum room mics. It is so thick that you can pick up the sound from the weaker sounding drum room. Pass it through that and suddenly you sound. Like Led Zeppelin, the mu manly variable is also named after him, of course, and is a really cool sounding compressor for the words I would use to describe this glue and rich sound. These are really rich sounding. They had a lot of harmonic distortion information and they really make your mix sound fat and stick it together.

You have to experiment with them, especially with the input and output controls, to get them compressed exactly how you want, but you always can. afford a true fairchild. They are phenomenal, you can use the Fairchild plugins. They sound incredibly good. I own the uad steven slate and use all three if you want to get that drum sound like tomorrow. Knows by the Beatles, it's on Revolver. It's a fairchild 660. I use them on the mix bus when I want something to have a vintage vibe OR if I really want to compress the drums in a really particular way, it crushes them and makes them sound super explosive.

Other types of compressors I use all the time. Multiband compressor I have been using. Them forever. I started years ago with McGee's PMC 2000 and then they introduced the Ml 4000. I remember talking to Chad Blake who is one of the best mixers out there and Chad uses this ML. 4000 Multiband limiter on your mix bus What's good about it? Can you use it instead of an equalizer? Can you take a sound that you could take from a guitar? You can take a keyboard and change it radically because you can select which areas of the sound, like an equalizer, you can compress them and then move the volume sliders, and actually?

Completely change the tone, and I actually find them more effective than Eq's in some cases. If there is a problem with the frequency and an instrument or I just want to radically alter a sound, I will use a multiband compressor. Most of them have at least four bands. And you can move the crossover point, the C6 is actually a six band fabfilter. Pro-Mb is fantastic, all the fabfilter there, Kate is one of the bad ones. I really like the fabfilter ITope Ozone 7 stuff. I have their full suite, so I'm a big fan of the multiband compressor. "He's like I said: I've used him in mixing, but sometimes I'll put a multiband compressor on the mix bus before my bus compressor, and I'll shape the mix and mix it into the bus compressor number, two.

Here is the side chain." our ducts are using a signal to activate the compressor. Let's say you have a box that sounded really bad on your overhead, and you wanted to put a sample in to cover it and you didn't want the real box in there. Can you activate the compressor to bypass the snare on the top track every time it plays and they will just disappear from there, so that your snare sample can be heard unhindered by what is coming through the top mics? Also, this is used a lot in Edm music. You can have a scented bass sound and have a kick drum going and when your kick drum hits, what you can do is send the kick drum signal to the compressed bass channel and use a compressor jack. -There it has a key door so you can send it this bus signal.

And you say, let's say you send it to bus 10, you put the compressor key input. Door to bus 10. So every time the level is activated, it lowers the level. So it makes the kick drum much more present and punchy and prevents you from having to do things with the Eq that you don't really want to do because you want to keep your bass really full. Some of the compressors that have key gain waves each compressor, the API 2500 and the Fabfilter Pro-Mb, these are all great. Lateral chaining, ducting and compressors and the last thing here is parallel compression.

Most of you know what parallel compression is now because virtually all compressors have mix knobs. In them they basically call it New York style compression. That's what they called it years and years ago. But basically it's about mixing an uncompressed sound with a very compressed sound. I love the parallel compression on all the different

instruments

. It's really great on vocals if you have a vocal that's not quite sitting in the mix and sometimes it's just buried Having the parallel compression We have that track really at rest that when the initial one isn't as compressed it falls below that threshold The track with parallel compression it appears And fills it out and makes it sound Much fatter, as I said, most compressors that exist today in plug-in form have a mix knob.

One of my favorites that I have used forever is glue. I love glue. It is like an emulation of an SSL compressor. I like to use it on my drum bus. It's really cool because you can shape the sound and using that mix knob you can really compress it but then you can back off so you don't really hear the pumping. But it still just makes the battery much tighter and more solid. Also the Kush

audio

ubk that you saw me use earlier in the video on my drum room mics. I've had that plugin since it came out, and it's really cool. .

It has many different things. You can add harmonic distortion to it. You can have compression, it emulates five different compressors. And it is one of my favorite accessories. These are the plugins I like to use on my drums for both tracking and mixing because I have some of these hardware units, for example, on the kick drum. I like to track with a DBX 160 Vu because I have one, but most of the time I do it without compression, it depends on what I'm doing. But to mix. Your ad does an excellent emulation, it's really snappy. I also like the waves SSL channel.

I like the meter, a low channel. It's really versatile and has an excellent equalizer. It has compression and an excellent equalizer. I like the DBX 160 Ssl, the Ua 1176 channel or the Bond Factory. There are many different ones, the wave ones are great, the crystalloid ones are LG. I like the metric channel, a bass channel again if I need that Eq along with the compression that has a signal so tight that you can really notice unwanted timbre if it's out of tune with the track. I also like a de-stressor, the supplement, the uae supplement, relief or supplement. and I own the de-stressor.

And I will use it sometimes following the trap of times. I like the SSL channel because I'm always compressing them a little bit and I'm going to get about 500 Hertz or so or maybe between 4 and 500 Hertz. My general expenses. I don't compress overhead costs much. I like to ride them up and down. I like to ride them on the hits and then ride them back because I don't like to influence the sound of the drum too much. So I don't like to compress them if I'm going to compress them. I'm going to do some radical things to them.

I like this 1176 connector on the Ssl channel, Halo plugin biometric channel, I like the renaissance channel. I like the channels because I can shape the sound if I want to remove the midrange from the overhead for some reason or if I want to take too much? Low-end overheads and I use them to build microphones. I can do it because I like having that compressor and Eq together, a lot of people ask me. What do you like? Do you like to put Eq first or last, it depends on the sound you don't want to accentuate? Something that has a weird EQ with compression, so you'll EQ it sooner.

But if you like the sound, you want to shape it after compressing it and put the EQ on afterwards. For room microphones, my favorite room microphone compressor plugin is the cush audio you BK1 you see in the video here. I like the SSL channel. I like the MC 2000 from 8 McGee Sp. That's a great multi-band compressor sound that kills room mics any of the 1176 emulations Bomb Factory makes that Chris Lord-alge e once wasted. They are all great. They were great and the destress emulation works great too, compressor plugins alike on the La-2a bass. I love it for tracking, as well as my favorite tracking compressor for bass.

The DBX 160 is my second favorite, it sounds great for tracking and mixing. 1176 Works great with the Fairchild le to A, these things really retain a lot of bass, especially the la-2a. It retains the large bottom end and levels it out very well. But the fairchild is also a great choice for acoustic basses. guitar I always compress the acoustic guitar when I'm recording, so I'm going to use something like my destresser 1176. Something is fast. I don't like to compress the acoustics I'm tracking too much because a lot of times you get stuck with something you don't want, but in the mix I always do compression or most of the time these compressions are used for 1176 Plug guitar. -In a plugin they often use a multiband compressor.

And I have all different multiband compressors. They work very well. The Wave Cla Guitar Fader package works great because it has compression that sounds good, and it has effects. So you can do everything right with it for electric guitar. If it's a distorted electric guitar, I usually don't compress it at all. It's already super compressed, but for a clean electric guitar, if it has a lot of onsen skank part, it'll grab it fast. The 3 at 1176 DBX 160, but many times I put compression on those things while I'm recording. Maybe even with a pedal in front of my hands and a piano, I pretty much only use compression if I'm doing rock music or any kind of electronic music, if I'm doing jazz or well, you get it when recording country.

I'll use compression. Helps jump out of the mix I want something in the ubk Compressor the channel Cache Audio Ssl is great 1176 Fairchild is great the Api 2500 It could be a lot of different things because generally getting the piano to sit on the track You might want to use some compression and you will also equalize it. It really depends if it's a piano function, then you won't use it as much because you don't want it. I don't want to hear it. That's the thing. Actually, that's all. It really depends on what's going on in the track with the piano, but if you're trying to get through a heavy rock track and you have the piano there, you're going to use some compression for the vocals.

I have a lot of compressors, it really depends when I'm tracking. I almost always use compression. I'll use an 1176 or a destressor or sometimes I'll use a la-2a. That is a slow compressor. And then I grab the peaks with a distress or something that's really fast, you can pick it up just the really really loud peaks 11:36 distress or fairchild if you want to color your vocals DBX 160 La-2a is a great vocal compressor La3 is a great compressor En Nashville, people who sing use Tube tech Cl. 1b I've seen people use it for years in Nashville.

It's a kind of compressor for vocals on the drum snare. Glue is one of my favorite compressors. I love the fabfilter compressor. I love all your products, your door there. I mean, they make fantastic plugins called 33609 and the SSL channel. Those are my favorite drum bus plugins. I'm going to check out some bus compressors, turning them on and off while the tracks play. This is a clue. I wrote with a good friend of mine, an Australian DJ. Tidy in 2013 is called Live This Lie and I'm going to put it on the mix bus, so I'm going to go between four different bus compressors so you can hear what they do and make your own decisions.

So this song is called Live This Lie, okay? I'm going to put in four different bus compressors. Well, this mix is ​​playing, you can see they are all overridden by the brown bypass button. So when you see I click on one it will look like this, so I'm going to I'm going to switch between them. Well, the track is playing, so check it out, starting with nothing. And when we can meet. I'll see you at the Chateau. Do not make me wait. I miss you when you're gone I was the things you never knew So many faces where where?

Hey, I tried setting all levels so that the gain reduction is about -4 DB. So you can at least hear what they are doing. I would like to know what you think, if there is one that you think is better. others The Glue is basically an emulation of an SSL bus compressor. Then I had the Universal Audio SSL Bus Compressor. Then I had the Stephen Slade SSL bus compressor and I had the Uad Neve 33609 compressor, which is a completely different flavour. I'm very curious to see what do you think of the difference between them? That is all for now.

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