Compression question..

[Atari]

I just read the Michael Brauer article on compression and there's a lot becoming clear to me. But there's a question coming up to me.
I also noticed in comparisation to other mixes I like my mixes sound smaller. I heard that those mixes sounded less compressed and much more open. I own a small recording studio. My stuff is all about a HD|2 and a millenia STT-1. I'ts pretty simple and I try to keep my price reasonable. When I record kick or bass drum or vocals the musicians tend to play not really consistent and I feel I have to compress a little bit of the snare/kick/bass/voc to fit it in the mix. But then again it starts to sound smaller. Is it just about the musician then? Let him play more constant wihout losing feel and it 'll be all much easier? Or am I just doing things wrong?
Tim.

[T_R_S]

If I had MB clients you would loose the comps as well it's all fine until you get a bass player or a drummer that can't play the same note the same way way two times in a row. Or the guitar track looks like the Rocky Mountains. Till then a comprssor is much needed help unless the client wants to pay to volume each note.
BTW if the comp makes it sound thin use another comp.

[Atari]

I know it sounds stupid to many of you, but I can't afford other comps than the plugins in Protools(bf, joemeek,..) and the comp of the Millenia. I would really want to try to track and mix really good musicians in a studio with lots of good outboard and then see what comes out.. But that won't happen in the next ten years I think..
I didn't say the comp made it sound thin, it makes it sound small.

[max cooper]

How about trying slightly better plugin compressors? I wouldn't use BF compressors on my mixes. IMO they make stuff sound muddy and smaller. I haven't used the Joe Meek but I've worked with several BF compressors.

How about Sony Oxford, McDsp Compressor Bank, etc.?

[Sqye]

Originally Posted by Atari

I know it sounds stupid to many of you, but I can't afford other comps than the plugins in Protools(bf, joemeek,..) and the comp of the Millenia. I would really want to try to track and mix really good musicians in a studio with lots of good outboard and then see what comes out.. But that won't happen in the next ten years I think..
I didn't say the comp made it sound thin, it makes it sound small.

Man, there is ALWAYS a way - maybe you SHOULD have some kickass studio experiences. Hook up with a school, or another producer or engineer, or independant band with a little cash - there is ALWAYS a way to do the big recordings with all the toys - you gotta UP your OPPORTUNISTIC attitude, yo. Meet some people - things happen through people. It might help you to actually be doing this stuff at a higher level, so you can see and FEEL and HEAR how it's REALLY done, and not just sit round reading about it, and trying to get everything right in PRO TOOLS. I'm not dissing PT - but there's not substitute for being a part of the process on a higher, or better level - working with people who have experience, good equipment, and good artists. I'm also not saying you need to lay our any cash for this - most of these suggestions are free, but this stuff will help to give you tremendous insight. In my experience, (and this is a stereotype - does not apply to everyone) some of the best PT/ daw guys are the ones who have a really well rounded track record, and have at least dabbled in the many other forms of recording at a semi-serious, if not totally professinal level.

So get out there and hook up with some serious audio and mixing folks, dude.
Life is short. Then you can not only be a part of the process, which is exciting, but you gan glean lots of valuable information, make friends, pick brains, and then you'll have a better sense of whether or not what you're trying to do in PT is possible. You can also just hook up with a serious PT guy/gal, intern for a few hours, whatever, I'm just saying - there's no experience for the real world.

Good luck.
To me, compression is like life - you have to be careful sometimes - too much, too little - learn from the best around you, and most of all, keep using your own ears.

[absrec]

Originally Posted by Atari

I know it sounds stupid to many of you, but I can't afford other comps than the plugins in Protools(bf, joemeek,..) and the comp of the Millenia. I would really want to try to track and mix really good musicians in a studio with lots of good outboard and then see what comes out.. But that won't happen in the next ten years I think..
I didn't say the comp made it sound thin, it makes it sound small.

You need front end, bro. I've sat around messing with plug ins for hours only to find that I could get the sound I wanted in a couple minutes with my hardware compressors and eqs. Also, mixing ITB for me personally tends to make things sound small. It's not just compression either. It's eq, gain structure, 2 buss compression, monitoring, etc... But in my opinion, you can't do it with plugs alone. At least if you are trying to get a big professional sound.

I use plugs when I mix but only after I track it with my rack of goodies.

[loudist]

What attack and release settings are you usually using with your plugins?

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by Atari

. When I record kick or bass drum or vocals the musicians tend to play not really consistent and I feel I have to compress a little bit of the snare/kick/bass/voc to fit it in the mix.

Problem here.

Those are the most dynamic instruments in the mix.

You steal their life away yeah it will sound small.

Originally Posted by Atari

.
But then again it starts to sound smaller.

Yep.

Thought so,

Originally Posted by Atari

.
Is it just about the musician then?.

Always.

In a perfect world.

Originally Posted by Atari

.
Let him play more constant wihout losing feel and it 'll be all much easier? Or am I just doing things wrong?
Tim.

Yes on the first.


And try "micro" automation.


Sounds more natural than relying on dynamic controllers alone.

[Atari]

Hey Max,
I do have the McDSP, I'll check it out.
Sqye, thanx fo the advice. But that is actually what I did till now. I started four years ago. The only reason why I got this little studio is because of other people. I went to school to "study" audio engineer. I didn't find a job, so I asked a famous artist here in Belgium if he could help me. He lives in my town, but I didn't knew him personally. He was so kind to ask his engineer if I could sit and watch on the rehearsals of his live tour. The guy turning buttons was really good and started teaching me some serious stuff from day one. He asked me if I wanted to assist the whole tour. The next year I got paid for it and worked in sound. The company I worked for was really high end and the stuff they used was more studio than p.a. Avalons, tube-techs, neumanns were all there. I did this for two years and then I ran into someone willing to build a little studio. I jumped in, bought some gear and now here we are. I have the feeling that here in Belgium it's really difficult to learn something. There's not a big budget for bands/artists. So that makes that there are not really much studios/engineers as in f.e. the Uk or the US.
(If there's someone in Belgium reading this, who needs an assistant..)

So, absrec, what you're saying is that I just have to be patient till the day I have earned enough money to buy this outboard you're talking about. Ór get the chance to work in a studio where they have this stuff. Untill then I will be messing around with my little sounding plugs to try to get a big sound.
Yes Sqye, there should be another way. I hope.

And still my question is: could it be that my mixes sound smaller because I have to compress them from step one to make them fit in the mix? If I had a decent musician playing the same kick with the same mic/pre config. would it be easier then?

Thanx for the replies allready.
Tim.

[Atari]

Originally Posted by loudist

What attack and release settings are you usually using with your plugins?

Depends on what I'm doing. If I want to level it I use a slow attack and medium release. When a kick is not consistent I use a short(er) attack and a short release, but it could be the other way around. On Vocals also medium attack, medium release.

[loudist]

Ok, just checking to see that you are playing around with the settings.
Try speeding up the release even more to see if it takes care of the "small" effect.

[u b k]

for a different perspective, consider this: depending on the song, the arrangement, and the tones, things may need to sound small on their own in order to support a coherent mix. and it does not matter what an element sounds like when solo'd, it only matters how it sounds in the context of everything else.

if you really want to pay your dues and get your chops happening, learn to build a mix without ever using the solo button. strap a mono plug across the output of protools, turn off one of your speakers, turn the volume down. remove all processing from all the tracks, and bring up all the faders. now balance things out as best you can. don't chase stuff, just get a decent beginning.

next, switch back to stereo, 2 speakers, and do some quick and dirty panning to get things off the top of each other. back to mono, 1 speaker.

now stick eq on any track that refuses to sit, that sticks out and doesn't blend. just do cuts, no boosts. you'll probably be pulling mostly from the 100-400 zone. listen to how an eq affects the balance as much as a fader does. learn to exploit this, and learn to hear when you need to adjust levels and when you need to shape freqs.

compression happens last. put it on tracks where they still jump out and pop out at crazy times in an unpleasing way. if you get the mix dialed the way i described above, you'll notice that uneven playing is now way less offensive, and the amount of compression you'll feel is needed will be a lot less than you initially thought when you pulled up the faders.

one speaker mono has a unique thing, but if you take the time to learn it it will reward your mixing tenfold. start listening to the music you love this way to get a feel for the particular way that music sounds in mono. vocals tend to be way out front. double tracked wide panned instruments sound smaller. snare is king.

and while it may not be possible to get world class results using plugs alone, it is certainly possible to get REALLY REALLY GOOD results that way, and lots of people do it. it's not as effortless as good outboard, but it can be done, and as a wise man in these parts once said, "the best tool for the job is the one you have."

now get to it.


gregoire
del ubik

[Atari]

Originally Posted by u b i k

and while it may not be possible to get world class results using plugs alone, it is certainly possible to get REALLY REALLY GOOD results that way, and lots of people do it. it's not as effortless as good outboard, but it can be done, and as a wise man in these parts once said, "the best tool for the job is the one you have."

Thanx, that's what I wanted to hear! The opposite would be demotivating. (I would still have tried though..)

Thanx for the tips also, I will sure try them out!
Tim.

[Mike Caffrey]

Originally Posted by Atari

I just read the Michael Brauer article on compression and there's a lot becoming clear to me. But there's a question coming up to me.
I also noticed in comparisation to other mixes I like my mixes sound smaller. I heard that those mixes sounded less compressed and much more open. I own a small recording studio. My stuff is all about a HD|2 and a millenia STT-1. I'ts pretty simple and I try to keep my price reasonable. When I record kick or bass drum or vocals the musicians tend to play not really consistent and I feel I have to compress a little bit of the snare/kick/bass/voc to fit it in the mix. But then again it starts to sound smaller. Is it just about the musician then? Let him play more constant wihout losing feel and it 'll be all much easier? Or am I just doing things wrong?
Tim.

I'm pretty confident that I understand how he mixes and can tell you that it's not just his 4 mix busses that make the sound. One especially important thing is that he has the attitude and the means to do anything necessary to make it work.

My first guess as to something you might be doing wrong is confusing compression and peak limiting. Based on the way I think of compression and limiting, there's no such thing as too much compression, just too much limiting. We use the term "over compression" when referring to dynamic free mixes, when in many cases when mean "over limited".

Take Michael;s drums for example. They;ve be going through Distressor with the Brit mod in, but the meters will barely get lit - not too much compression - but the kick an the snare will explode. That may be him sending one or both to a Chandler TG-1. It may also be the same thing, but don in parallel, so that the original source is natural and retains it's dynamics, but the parallel channels are overlimited and then blended. Or maybe the kick and snare are left alone, but the rooms are overlimited. Then there's the Distressor subgroup providing a nice little gelling pumping effect to a delicate kick/snare performance with the thunder of John Bonham coming from the room mics, squashed to the point that you can hear the color of the paint on the walls. Then maybe he's getting hired because they band wants a hi-fi, majestic sound, but they did a crappy lo-fi recording and the kick drum is anemic and a little inconsistent. Let's say it's a case with no parallel kick compression, but big rooms compression. How do you get a little more heartbeat out of the track that sounds like a click instead of a kick. That's where the Forat comes in (which he mentioned in a response). Rather than do the impossible with a compressor, he might add a sample to the kick and blend the two before sending them to the Distressors. Or maybe, he'd have the original track, plus a parallel compressed channel, plus two kick samples one with the right lows and once for the mids or highs. Then he might do that again for the snare and toms. Maybe eight tracks of drums take up 20 faders.

Then on top of that, there are some Avalon EQs following the Distressors, so when the slight compression does make subgroup slightly smaller, there's some slight EQ to open the top and bottom back up.

Let come up with another scenario. The drums are such that when compressed and EQ'd one way, they work for the verse, but not at all for the chorus. Then when set for the chorus, they don't work at all for the verse and there's no acceptable middle ground. It's very simple what he'd do - mult everything out and have a verse subgroup and a chorus subgroup. Whatever it takes. That attitude and the belief that there is a solution are the fuel for the creativity need to make great mixes.

I doubt this happens much, but I'm sure at some point he'll detail what he does with vocals.


Another thing for big and small is the order of EQ and compression. Blow up your anemic bass with a low end boost and squash back to anemic with the compressor that reacts to all that low end. Or compress to shape your attack and get you leveling and then blow up the low end which now stays and is in fact more even because the signal hitting the EQ is more even. Or EQ before and after if it's necessary. OR do some parallel compression to retain you original source with some original dynamics. Or automate in the parallel signal for the choruses when it's supposed to get bigger. Or make fader moves. Or change EQ for certain sections.

Keep in mind this is all before going to the Distressor buss and these are some of the standard techniques used within the context of his multi-buss approach.

The reason for the multi-buss approach is not so much about compression as it is about vibing the groups. Vibing meaning an attack/release feel for the group or a tone (EQ/gear type) for a group.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say Neve is the sound of hiphop and API is the sound of rock. You mix a lot of both and book your mix room based on the music. Now you're hire to mix a hybrid, where do you go?

How about make two subgroups: one where the signal passes through a Pair of Neves and the other where the signal passes through some APIs (lets make these compressor/EQ paths). Now buss all your hip hop elements to the Neve buss and your rock elements to the API. Maybe you're bass is a little of both, so you send it to both. What about vocals? Maybe they're fine, so the go straight to the mix buss.

What if the sound and feel you like for drums is a pair of Distressors and what you like for you mid rang instruments/guitars and a Pendulum ES-8? Then you've got the same taste as Brauer does. Maybe you have other tastes or you deviate for the needs of the specific mix etc.

The pumping he's talking about isn't usually massive amounts of gain reduction. In some cases you might have to hold your breath and be really still to see the needles in the meters moving. You can do some really nice things to a sound with fraction of a dB movement in the gain reduction. Think about how some subtle de-essing can go a long way. And keep in mind when looking at VU meters, there are a lot of attack times that will be some much faster than the meter that you could have 3-4 more dB of gain reduction than you see.

In all seriousness, why do compressors have meters? What are they for?They don't provide you with any information for how your track/mix sounds.

So, view the multi-buss approach as an organizational approach to the whole mix setup and keep in mind that within what you send each buss there will be a variety of techniques to build the group that you send to the buss.

And if you mixes are sounding small, try a little less gain reduction, slow down your attack times and speed up the release. Try experimenting with making sure that the compressor has reset to zero dB of gain reduction before the next attack for that instrument or subgroup. That will firs you to use less gain reduction and then you start to see the need for things like the Distressors Brit mod, the 4-buttons in on the 1176 and why solid state, FET compressors can be better choices than tube compressors.

This works for analog summing boxes too. Make groups within the box and then send them out to the summing boxes set up with stereo subgroup pairs.


Hope this helps a bit.

(Also, keep in mind, while some of my comments refer to specific things that Michael does, many of my comments are my own opinion. I don't want to accdentally imply that I am giving the answer that Michael would if you asked in his forum.)