how many times does your track get compressed?

[Jason Poulin]

lets say a kick track.

will you compress on the way in?

will you compress on the track once recorded? more than once? parallel? series?

will you send that to a drum buss and compress that whole buss?

it will get compressed again in the mastering, what about two track mixdown, are you compressing again?

will you eat green eggs and ham? Sam I am....

haha

god damn compression... it's so easy to overdo it. But so godly when you get it bang on.

Jason

[C.Lambrechts]

whatever works I guess.

For me as a general rule, as few times as possible but more importantly as good as possible.

I'm not afraid of compression, neither on the way in, nore on they way out.

I'll definately use caution on the way in. but once in the mixing stage ... sure, ... mults, compress individually and then again on a bus, ....

Godly in skilled hands, pure poison in the hands of the ignorent.

[faeflora]

I always compress when tracking sometimes with more than 2 comps. Then I compress some more when mixing. Now please understand I don't end up with 1db of volume amplitude, I usually am compressing gently multiple times. This is so I can hit various sweet spots in compressor distortion or get the right smoosh factor. Also understand I'm a compression freak.

[jbuntz]

Using several compressors is a good way to cut down on obvious artifacts from a lot of GR on one compressor. Kind of like LA-2A into something faster like an 1176 or SSL to grab the stuff the slow attack on the LA-2A left. I've had luck doing this when I need alot of GR on those whisper then scream tracks. The RNC's super nice mode if i'm not mistaken is 3 sequential vca's that split up the gain reduction so there are few artifacts and it sounds less obviously compressed.

[epsy]

I sidechain everything except subbass & on 3-4 seperate compressors and use the sidechain amount for each track as kind of a secondary volume control.

[thethrillfactor]

No compression for me on the kick while mixing(very rare). Maybe once in a while on one of the parallel chains(mid mult). Sometimes drums and bass sent to a stereo comp.

[jazzius]

Thrill'.....what about compressing the instrumental, then laying the vox on top? (one of my personal fav's)..........get's it bouncing while keeping the vox upfront......then the little bit of limiting in the mastering can glue the vox to the mix (otherwise it might sound a bit disconnected).........

[Drumsound]

I never let things get compressed more than 13 times... tutt

[covert]

Originally posted by Jason Poulin
lets say a kick track.

will you compress on the way in?

Nope, just a little limiting to keep it under FS.

will you compress on the track once recorded? more than once? parallel? series?

will you send that to a drum buss and compress that whole buss?

Guitars are often bussed and buss compressed. Bass is often compressed. Kick and snare ore often compressed, but not buss compressed. Overheads are currently getting compressed with frequency set to cut low end. In other words I'm using compression to pull the kick out of the OH's.

it will get compressed again in the mastering, what about two track mixdown, are you compressing again?

Been using an RNC in super nice mode on the two buss lately. Glue and keeps the peaks in check.

will you eat green eggs and ham? Sam I am....

I will not eat them in the womb
I will not eat them near your tomb

[thethrillfactor]

Originally posted by jazzius
Thrill'.....what about compressing the instrumental, then laying the vox on top? (one of my personal fav's)..........get's it bouncing while keeping the vox upfront......then the little bit of limiting in the mastering can glue the vox to the mix (otherwise it might sound a bit disconnected).........

Sometimes this works.

Other times its too much separation between instrumental and vocals.

I like a combination of stems(with comps), seperate instruments with mults and parallels and multiple busses with comps and EQ's.

Nowadays no comp on the 2 buss though.