How many instances of Compression for your typical mix?

[MarkRB]

For a recent dense pop/rock mix in that 2008 style.

Drums : Kick and snare get individual compression. More often than not both get a sub group,with 2 mics and samples in each, which may get some light limiting if not, a wedge of compression.
Toms as a group get compression, occasionally individually if they need it and I have time.
OH's sometimes get compression (often a critical choice for me).
Room nearly always get's spanked with compression for the weight.
Drum Buss always gets Compressed or even Limited pretty hard.

Bass : 99% always compressed. Di, Amp and room as a group or individually if needed.

Guitars : Not always individually but the group nearly always a bit to tame peaks and bring up the grunt.
Lead guitars get hit hard possibly even some limiting.

Keys. If they are artificial I will beat the crap out of them to make them sound more organic. If they are real it's often nice to leave them fairly dynamic as a contrast to everything else which is slammed to shit.

LV : 2 or 3 compressors minimum.

BV's: Always, always squashed. The feel of a track can change dramatically with BV compression. If you have several lines working together, getting the dynamics working in a complimentary way can be the icing on the cake.

Then squash the whole freakin lot on the 2 buss.

I've read all that and feel kind of dirty. I'd love to say that was an unusual amount of compression but it's pretty average for me.

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by Jaques Beraques

Thats pretty aggressive!

It can certainly add up! I'll be using instances on pretty much all the close percussion mics, bass, all the guitar tracks, vox.... all over the place.

[Unclenny]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

Waves L1. Highly underrated plugin

I've always felt a bit embarassed about my own somewhat prodigious use of L1.

Must be time to come out of the closet.

[Dopamine]

<< In a typical session I may end up using 30 instances of L1. >>

Holy smoke! I might have to try using more L1's. Anything over a few per mix seemed like a lot.

James, are you hitting them lightly, like under 3 db? Do you usually put the release fastest?

[DarkEcho]

yeah, James, are you using a fast/slow attack/release?

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by Dopamine

James, are you hitting them lightly, like under 3 db? Do you usually put the release fastest?

I'll adjust release to make it as transparent as possible. L1's auto detection is very, very smart and it usually only needs a nudge or two to avoid any artifacts. As a general rule bassier stuff gets a little longer release, as does any sustaining sound; percussive things (and guitar) seem to respond well to faster release times. Pretty much similar to setting release times for compressors (obviously).

As far as the amount of gain reduction it varies depending on what you got, what you gotta cut through, and the dynamics variance inherent in the element. I will say that you can get snares to around 9db of GR before they start getting super splatty (sometimes you have to reduce the top end if this starts happening to get that level of limiting), kicks start to fall apart around 7db (solo 'em and listen--if they start to smudge out or distort you're going to have to back it up.... or take out a little bit of low end/lower mids to smoothen it up). I've hit bass guitar with 18db of GR with no problem before. I've hit vocals for 12db of limiting fairly successfully.

But, like I said, it's going to depend on lots of variables. The important thing is to develop the ears and sense to know when enough is enough, or you have too little or too much going on.

One thing I should mention about limiting, and I had to find this out the hard way, is that as soon as you start employing this technique you can start ending up in an "arms race" of limiting. So you've crushed the bass guitar... now you're going to pretty much have to limit the electric guitar in order to 'keep up with the Jones' and so forth. You have to be really, really careful not to over-limit elements early in the mix or you start ending up smashing everything and ending up with an inferior product than what it could have been. You've been warned!

Another thing I wanna get out there--never, ever, ever *think* about your tools when putting together a track. Don't sit back and think that you are using too much of something, or too little. Don't let those thoughts into your head because they will always mess you up. Go with the flow, go with what feels right and sounds right.

If you start evaluating things based on "rational" thought processes you're going to end up thinking yourself into some rather mediocre mixes. Once you let something enter your head as 'the right way' or 'what worked in the past' you shortchange yourself and the music. Sometimes adding 20db of top end is the ticket... sometimes subtracting 20db is what's sounding good. Don't think about numbers, or worrying about having too many instances of a plugin, or any of that whole line of thinking. Just put it together and see where your ears and your heart take you.

The best mixes usually have something extreme about them. Also, your best work often has a few things in it that bug you. Resist the urge to iron out all the character and 'perfect' the song. Keep the important things in front of you at all times, which is: does the production highlight the song's emotional impact, present the style of the artists and take the listener someplace? If so, you have done your job well, everything after that is splitting hairs really.

Hope this helps answer some questions.

[Dopamine]

Another great post, James. You're the man!

[robot gigante]

For me it depends on whether it's ITB or hybrid/OTB, since I mix in a few different places.

ITB
-No compression on the mix bus. A bit of Cranesong Phoenix though.
-Generally I send everything to a few busses with maybe a db or two of compression on each bus to smooth out the volume automation I do and maybe bring out the transients a bit more (long attack, short release).
-Parallel compression on drum bus- meter just twitching on the regular bus.
-I don't compress individual tracks unless they badly need it, which is not that often. I iron everything else out with automation.

OTB/Hybrid-
-Compression on the mix bus. C2 with the meters barely twitching and the lows sidechained out does the trick, or maybe the same thing with a Vari-Mu.
-Again, mixing through busses. I'll actually compress some busses hard and leave other ones uncompressed.
-Drum bus gets the Chandler Zener treatment, maybe a Vari Mu in parallel, maybe not.
-Individual tracks will get as much compression as I can get away with, which is absolutely slammed for some and none for others.

[alyricalmind]

I compress each track going in quite well... so there's not much need for compression later. I think one good and aggressive compression is better than 10 small ones. Just my opinion.

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

One thing I should mention about limiting, and I had to find this out the hard way, is that as soon as you start employing this technique you can start ending up in an "arms race" of limiting. So you've crushed the bass guitar... now you're going to pretty much have to limit the electric guitar in order to 'keep up with the Jones' and so forth. You have to be really, really careful not to over-limit elements early in the mix or you start ending up smashing everything and ending up with an inferior product than what it could have been. You've been warned!

this is about the funniet thing i've ever read on GS.. and the funny thing is that it's TRUE, and i get why james has to do this...

but man, 30 L1s...

**** i miss tape... built in L1 on every channel....

[picksail]

I use as little or as much as required.

I also, enjoy abusing compression just for my amusement.

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

but man, 30 L1s...

Yeah, it seems like a lot but for me to use that many instances you're talking about sessions that are about 80-90 tracks deep, with 30 tracks of vocals or so.

[C_F_H_13]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

If I'm in the analog world I like the Summit TLA100 a lot, although I'll often use that when tracking (heavy guitar stuff).

I really like those too!!

ITB

Masterbuss= compressorbank CB4 or Rencomp (2:1, 10 or 30 ms, 150 or 300 release with about 2-3 db comp)

Drums= goes one of 2 ways. Either severe parallel compression, or I squash the dogpoop out of mults of the individual channels. Little to no compression on close mics, but rooms I give a good squeeze. Almost always this stuff is done with CB3 or CB4

Bass= Ren comp.....slower attack medium release

Vocals= I usually destroy these in a parallel buss, then run A LITTLE bit of RVOX on the raw tracks.

GTRS= none on heavies, lots on cleans (BF1176) and maybe some parallel with the Ren comp

OTB=

WAY MORE OF EVERYTHING....my favs for this are TLA 100, distressors, 1176, focusrite red 3, ADL 1000.....

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by C_F_H_13

Drums= goes one of 2 ways. Either severe parallel compression, or I squash the dogpoop out of mults of the individual channels. Little to no compression on close mics, but rooms I give a good squeeze. Almost always this stuff is done with CB3 or CB4

as long as we're talking about L1 abuse..

try the MC2000 multiband thing... i dig it a lot more than compressorbank, mostly because you can spank just the mids and keep the extreme top less mangled.. its fun to dial in the detector to different freqs.. to me, i can get a lot of color out of it, at least for digital. and i usually despise multi-band stuff.. on this compressor, it's more like a crazy dynamic EQ.

and you can really SPANK the crap out of it... fun on a drum buss

i'll be honest, i'm MUCH more inclined to abuse something like this before i abuse L1. like James says, you get pulled into a loudness arms race.. but with the MC at least you can tailor the crossover to put peaks at different freqs, for some variation in ear candy... instead of L1 homogenizing everything into white noise.

it would take longer, but i'm certain you'd get better results

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

Yeah, it seems like a lot but for me to use that many instances you're talking about sessions that are about 80-90 tracks deep, with 30 tracks of vocals or so.

when you work on big mixes like this, you're subgrouping instruments and starting there, right? so group all the vox, drums, GTRs, whatever, do some shaping then work back to the individual tracks to have one stand up and shout, right?

the only way i can seem to get my head around a mix this big is to have one fader for "drums", "mvox", "bvox", etc... then set up layers with buss processors.. like TG2 for the "A" (pretty top end) buss, germ for the "mids", something spanky and SSL for the drum buss, and something soft and pillowy for stuff that needs depth... sometimes fx returns go here.

but i really have no idea of ppl's methodolgies when dealing with big mixes like this... perhaps this deserves a new thread. thoughts?

these types of working methods fascinate me.. cuz guys will come up with "crazy" (good) ideas

[engmix]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

as long as we're talking about L1 abuse..

try the MC2000 multiband thing... i dig it a lot more than compressorbank, mostly because you can spank just the mids and keep the extreme top less mangled.. its fun to dial in the detector to different freqs.. to me, i can get a lot of color out of it, at least for digital. and i usually despise multi-band stuff.. on this compressor, it's more like a crazy dynamic EQ.

and you can really SPANK the crap out of it... fun on a drum buss

i'll be honest, i'm MUCH more inclined to abuse something like this before i abuse L1. like James says, you get pulled into a loudness arms race.. but with the MC at least you can tailor the crossover to put peaks at different freqs, for some variation in ear candy... instead of L1 homogenizing everything into white noise.

it would take longer, but i'm certain you'd get better results

really glad someone pointed out the mc. it's an amazingly flexible plugin, and is used heavily on my mixes as well. especially on vocals, where singers are moving in and off the mic.

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

when you work on big mixes like this, you're subgrouping instruments and starting there, right? so group all the vox, drums, GTRs, whatever, do some shaping then work back to the individual tracks to have one stand up and shout, right?

Sometimes there is a lot of grouping going. For instance: you have 4-5 mics up on a guitar rig, and you're doing 4 takes of rhythm guitar. You end up with 16-20 tracks right there, going into their respective guitar take group.

When you start looking at additional sound FX, keyboard parts, etc... it can get to be very large indeed on some sessions. I've mixed electronic songs with 10 bass synths and 15 other synth parts, and that's just the keyboards! Then add in 3 high hats, 4 snares, 2 kicks, some toms and it can get to be a huge session.

The key to running big sessions is organization, labelling and management. I never get lost in big sessions because I do them ALL the same as far as administering them goes, track order, what color I make the tracks, how I label them and so forth. I have my own little system.

[Dean Roddey]

I also try to use as much automation as I can, but I'm not doing it for money and can take however long it needs.

I've been experimenting here lately, since I've gotten a Great River and P-1 pre-amp, with using them during track as very naturalistic sounding compressors without any compressor. If you drive the GR input transformer hard on DI'd instruments it provides really nice saturation that really does seem to provide a natural sort of mild compression. And the same seems true of the P-1, if you use the pad switch and drive the output transformer harder.

Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I almost never need to worry about clipping when using them like this for guitar/bass DI, despite getting good signals and playing pretty hard, so it seems like that saturation must be creating some amount of natural limiting/compression effect. But it's really subtle, and I guess more like what tape would create? But anyway, I certainly find myself not requiring compression so much when using them that way.

Anyway, that, plus automation, some compression where desired to punch things up or limiting to bring up the body. Maybe an auto-gain compressor on a guitar part if it needs to be smoother than I can manage to play it. Vocals maybe some, though I try to automate them as much as possible. Mostly I've been striving for that discipline of as little processing as possible. But, there again, I'm not doing it for money, so I don't need to sound as loud as the next guy and can afford to do dynamic stuff.

I need to do compression and limiting on the drums in the mix since I don't record them, I use BFD. Compression on the room and overheads (one of the Waves SSL channels usually), more on the rooms with a longer release to keep the 'roominess' down a bit, not a lot in either case. A fair amount on the tom directs bus (often RenComp in Opto mode for punch.) Maybe on the snare and drum buses if necessary, but since it's MIDI I can do a lot of tweaking in the MIDI data by hand. BFD offers 127 layer drum kits that can be made to sound quite realistic if you take the time. Parallel comp if they aren't already heavy enough.

[robot gigante]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

The key to running big sessions is organization, labelling and management. I never get lost in big sessions because I do them ALL the same as far as administering them goes, track order, what color I make the tracks, how I label them and so forth. I have my own little system.

Same here. Means I have to spend a little more time moving tracks around, routing, labeling, bussing and all that, but it saves a whole lot more time in the long run. Templates are great for that.