Lessons

Lesson Info

Compression Controls

Time labels and maximus and little manner so maximum in the limiter uh just focus on the limiters real quick so on the limit side she on the compression side I really got to carefully choose where I start with this because the terminology is a bit silly um on the compressor side attack and released it what you expected to do attack controls how long it takes for the president actually start to act on whatever your peak is and the value of that is something like you're compressing a snare or cake or something has a really sharp transient where you're presuming that sharp transit is actually thanking the transit all within the compresses, the pale and that can create cementing effects most notably pretty interesting effect would be the privacy there pretty much is that it's a snare with a lot of reverb that has a huge amount of compression on the tail after much of the transit that's big attack kind of thing is heidi that sort of sound? Um and then the release time is how long it takes f...

or the compression to go away after a peek has already been activated and I have a pretty good will tool here to show off these specific did it into this back at you know I'm not about to make it big room track I know something you were thinking it I know that I could I could feel it snaps out yeah so this demo was after something that scott from image line did on the same video about the limiter on the image land channel which is very informative good stuff so um here I've got I've got the limit side now the both sides have the ahead nah but they both do the same thing on the on the on both that's we don't need over there but I worry about that on the police side it also does more lists and things are super need to worry about that so here's a regular release here's a huge release small release some pretty self explanatory it shows it it takes a little longer than two decay and the value of having a faster releases that if I have like a lot of a lot of information going on after that one big peak one of those might not have actually been above the threshold and so there's not really a point to compress them because they're already below whatever you're doing that's why I don't necessarily want to have a gigantic release time if that's what you want there are kind of stylistic applications of using compressions with huge release times because you know get that compressed sound that's how you tell you that sounds way work impressive when you have a way longer released time um what the ahead does is a little different what's ahead is this is essentially two k which was a lot well here's are really short release really short everything but then if I jack up the ahead it does that it kind of holds for a second and that it engages the release time and that's all that does and the reason why I'm focusing on that is because when you see the word ahead on the compressor you tend to think that what that does is what's called look ahead delay and that's not what that that's that's what the attack does for some reason um ahead the attack all way up you see this weird is happening it's a little hard to tell from our audio but what's what's going on right now is that it's actually delaying the output of the sound to trigger when the attack is finished so it's sort of anticipating the head and it's fully compressed and then the hit happens and then the past time we're able to depose to stuff the released high with the head time engage and that's what attack does and it's because it's delayed it's essentially reading it sort of in the future sort of anticipating that said the hit and this has so we just think applications and interesting effects for some things like for example if you lies thiss compressors side chain and put to do ducking what this would dio is that this would actually cause ducking to trigger the car was the fucking to trigger ahead of the hit which has value and really hard mixing for stuff. I tend do that manually because that is the land get to delay everything else and that it's hard to sinking up by that's what that's going do with it, but that's for kind of deal and maximus, we have all these controls we have attack on the master which does that. And then the attack on the low and mid to high because of actions is a multi bank president which is to say that it compresses individual sections of the spectrum individually they all have attacked, but they attack like the compressor side of limiter does where it's just it reacts when the hit happens and that's that however it does have this not over here that says lf h delayed which stands for a little bit high delay because if you think about it, if you had individual delay times for individual bands and you could land them differently and you have separate bands of your frequencies not in phase with the rest of them and that's kind of if he could be cool for some down, as I have occasions, but for the most part for you general compressor usage, nothing then the police time they had time do what you expect and then on the master release time when they had time doing that in the attack is the delayed kind now you might notice a conspicuous lack of a threshold ratio now and maximus we've mentioned that in the lunar previously and we reference that happening in maximus but for the most part it doesn't exist to maximise maybe never what's up with that well maximus actually any pressure you but if you're familiar with the go zone or uh I don't really know any others but if you're familiar with them then you probably have seen the graph like this and this is just your input up a graph which measures input from the bottom in up on the top of the output of the top is according to of the graph which is this line here and then as we saw in the limiter we saw that way set the threshold something's already be and then we just have the ratio to what you know half of that two to one right there but we're doing it manually we have manual control over the transfer curve which with us is and this enables us to do some pretty ridiculous things even just doing that is something that you can kind of accomplished with the compressors but its not not not that easily that that's what that's for sure but then of course we could do even crazier things like this which is kind of like I'm led to believe ableto up down compressor it's basically that does is it makes the lower things come up and how everything's come down that's what that that's and I mean it was a pretty regularly uses but then you could even do wacky crap like this and what this does has everything to do with the graph the input alpa graph this crazy shape that we're just created here is saying that as the volume of what we have goes up ten minus eighteen or whatever it says it's very far away I can't read it it is it getting pulled up about two above zero t b and then as it gets louder gets brought back down again gets louder, gets right back up, back up back up back down as it gets pulled through this line to be forced to being it's different level as occurring to how loud it gets pushed into in the first place maybe never, but it is phyllis k with every kind of has not a huge amount of practical application for something this nets but it is very interesting and part of the reason why this is interesting is because of only mentioned earlier about the fact that if you get rid of all time variables, we're essentially doing wave taping and this interfaces you might recall is exactly what the uh wave shipper looks like just the way shaper has no time variables, steel indifference so you could think of maximus is bolted violation, which kind of and they could do extremely impressive and interesting distortion and even having a war control over because the time variables but let's talk about, uh, distortion. We have a couple questions from online do that you don't take this transition. Um the first one do you ever use limiter maximus on the master channel one mastering have finished mixed down. Would you ever do that? Yes. And that's far as my own tracks go, my master chain is an equalizer. And then maximus that's basically it I have limiters. I have a bunch of stuff on the master right now because I was demonstrating things, but if I don't, we confirm to starting the work our track, I put a limit on it just to keep it below zero b is lying about the starting whenever I listen to, but I'm pretty soon when I'm making a track, I will replace that with a vaccination that's usually how light display is from from mastering for everything, it does the job fairly well. And actually, for those of you who are unfamiliar, you can sort of hear that sounds like if you go in that call studio eleven project's, cool stuff and then there's a bunch of the tracks and you can see they all have maximus on them and uh, they're pretty old, but they're more or less sort of what I do with that kind of stuff. Um, deejay celeron wants to know in general should every channel, instrument or sound to be compressed. So remember what we said earlier about the idea of how some sounds are already compressed like its alway if if you sat us all even a song, we'll have a live show, what does this now? The bases are just kind of us always, and it sounds pretty neat those sounds are already compressed in the sense that they have no dynamic range because when we talk about compression and compressing that's what we're doing, we're controlling down for dynamic range. If there is no doubt in the range, then really the only thing that you could do something like that is distorted what you mean you could do that's fine time, if at all people use like tt, which stands for over the top, which is the compressor as kind of like a distortion tool for something because it gave you could do that like a president, but for the most part, whether or not you need to or wanted to start, something comes down to what you're doing or compress compress it comes down to what you're doing to it in terms of dynamic range and if you did is no damn it range then does not point to compress again. I made a kind of alluded to this when I was much thing the loudness wars before five out of five brought up sort of older genres of music, but for the most part electronic music has way less dynamic range in it to begin with is because of the instrumentation this is what we're using the sounds of her using have to so much last september range from a guitar, a piano, a person's voice which we do utilize will be compressed pretty heavily um thank you I bring up jazz bands a lot or even just like rock and roll back and roll everything in every every amount every part of it has just been incredible mind, dynamic range and controlling for that is a gigantic pain and everything and that's why traditional engineering schools and ideas of how to master things revolve around that difficulty it is difficult and there are lots of measurements ofthe plans lots of sort of do's and don'ts for those kinds of things which are all very good ideas born of a billion years of having done that since the dawn of technology that could do it and then we get to sort of this stuff is sort of electronic music which has no rules because we have control over everything we don't have tohave that have a grand but it doesn't necessarily mean it's worse there were there were studies that existed that said that like, you know, songs sound legitimately worse if there's less they have a great in a way that they could control foreign a scientific environment but I have a feeling that they were using songs that were designed to have dynamic range in that experiment, not necessarily comparing something like a black sabbath original recordings to skrillex song which is not comparable there's just two different universes but if you were to compare say, I mean this was the presidency before a scrapbook song with the feed me song where feed me songs have more dynamic range versus krilic songs which don't and again even that was not necessarily a perfect comparison because they were comparing it in reference to a hearing it live hearing at a big huge sounds on that kind of thing versus listening to it on speakers you're listening to and here but that kind of thing it's all about where you going with that, what you're using to make it what your head room is doing, what the damn it ranges and oh, I could just go away still settle under the idea of what you think sounds good and that is pretty much all that should matter for stuff that you're doing that was a long answer, but you know that's really good way have one more question from the same guy are you going to talk about multi band compressors? I played with one and it obliterated my sound and I was curious how the heck it is it effectively to improve the mix or I guess would you? Well, yes, like I mentioned briefly maximus is that it is a multi banker presser and, uh, we're gonna brief run down about why multi banker pressers exist on what what they're what they were kind of the purposes and sort of I mean, you can use it for this purpose if you really want to, but he can't just not rules the the kind of the point of older baker president, if you look at this multi band, the maximus has three bands has well been somewhat some have more than that, and with patch erinn inside, I felt you can actually create one because it is you want just split since by its get kind of complicated, but let's actually talk about this kind of an interesting this is related we'll talk about talk about ducking or as anyone else like to call it signed chaining by changing is how method by which you can duck it's not literally what that means such a thing is that you're putting his side and put into a compressor so that compressor reads that input is opposed to its original input and in parts that and put that secondary inputs activity onto your current input which results in ducking and we commonly use this for like kick drums and stuff where it's like kick its and everything kind of swells and breathes with it kind of thing and that's a silence of choice that we make you know in house music and also prematch every other kind of physical trauma base and dump stuff that kind of thing it's a very helpful mixing tool but also stylistic kind of effectively apply to it why do we do that? Do you think this has to do with of mixing mistakes that were made by lighthouse djs in the nineties? This has to do with the fact that and then a single banker presser if you look at sort of spectrum here but there's a gigantic hit and the base with kicks tend to live in a big old peak big indefinite goes hard about zero t b well the compressions going to do is it's going to bring it down but it's going to bring down everything else with it everything else and if it is just a very basie base cake kind of sound which a lot of houses that means that there's not enough higher or may have figured he's right to replace everything else and it's gonna be a very noticeable chunk taken out of everything that's gotta pump it's gonna duck and this is in effect that people don't like that I did the house out it, so start doing that purpose with ducking that kind of thing, but this is also a problem that was solved by multi maker president. They were probably around back then. I don't actually remember I don't know when the first one didn't express it was created, whatever the history of it, in that kind of thing, but that's the that's, the particular problem was that they had solvable to make a pressure is because, as you might guess, just by the fact they were looking at it in accidents. If there's a big, big old bump in the low end, the low and brings it down, and it leaves the bids the highest alone, it doesn't is impacted at all, and this means that this is a tool of it could use to create it much more transparent compression profile because weaken, bring like you know, when I when I when I'm when I make the cuts, will determine where the cuts are for the mission, the highs my decisions are are saying where's, the cake, where's this there and where the hats because the drums, especially in this kind of attract music, are going to be the loudest, most destructive elements in your necks, as they should be, um because if they're not allowed, if they're if they're mixed too well with everything where, like the head for both of your kick is right along with everything else knew since it's not going to hit hard enough for mastering to really a take it and make up salad the way you want tio, I guarantee it, but you look at you know, where the transience of the heart, the lowest fundamental tone and the snare lives kind of put the cut around where that is, but the cake is that kind of thing, and then you'll see in the lows in events that there's that there's an individual I speak for both of those the peak for the low end is when you take liv's picked peak for the snares, the bids is there and doesn't really peach the highs honestly, because higher frequencies don't require as much power to sound as loud as lower frequencies, which means that you could power them on all day was going to turn it down will still hear them, and they won't really have an impact in your bedroom cool stuff, especially if they're not damaged by peeks coming from the middle of laws because we're separating the compression on all of them, which is, you know, the whole point of boulder bank oppression. And then, you know, we take care of the peeking in the end lows and take care of peaking in the mids and with the highs alone and then you know, that's how we're going to we're going to add up to be again picking even in a different way but still pretty peaking and then we used that's what the master single banker presidents for on top of all of this to limited altogether below zero maybe, but then the damage is less because is not peaking as high as in what otherwise and now that apple where the peaks are more evenly distributed. So this means that when things were brought down, the not brought down to create the problems that were present in the nineties for the house teaches as you mentioned before, um so as if you want to really clean, you know, nice mix you could do that with the baker president or you can use it partially even harder and make even louder and damage everything forever in ways that you think sounds awesome because you're a hard core producer or could you use e q and a single bank compressor to do the same thing if you like automated peaks toe bands to take care of peace as it happened, which is basically where the compressor is already doing so like if you want to be like you being emanuel compressor so they had some of that question is yes, so I normally use, uh, limiter and kick and I use the side chain function to duck all my other sounds when the kicks coming in. Is there a way to do it on say, the multi band compressor just triggered the low frequencies if your kicks coming in? Well, interestingly enough, if you don't there's actually a few ways that you could do this if you don't, you know, even if you decide to change your linkedin anything, if you just push it too high that what a lot of happening is that the compression will bring it down for you and that brings that will bring everything down the peak the kick people be, you know, so much higher above zero tv and then your base level be where it is, but that when it brings down the kick pete to be ads already being, it will bring the base down with it, which is pretty much how that worked at and then you could just use the post leveling there, bring it down to a level that's possibly about because there would have been a lot louder pre and post game is for that kind of thing because I like I said, the ducking like in a compressor the whole side to any concept was kind of a result of that behavior so you kind of creating a little bit little version of an animal corridor in the low end.