I need tips on Compression and Limiting

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D-Funkdafied

Guest
I seem to overdo the compression on my projects.
I add a compressor to individual sounds if needed and then I add mastering suite and another mastering suite with compression...
What am I doing wrong, need tips on making my beats sound less squashed!!
 
Two mastering suites, one song=no good.
Compressing your stereo out is not the greatest idea, but can work well sometimes. As long as youre at or below 1-2db reduction.
If nothing else, back off the comps on all your instrument tracks. Ratio and threshold. That should help your track breathe at least a little bit.
 
If you are saying you want your beats less squashed then just ease of the compression... You said it yourself.

I personally don't use a compressor on the master but if you do it has to be very light.
 
Are you not looking for buss compression over the whole mix (Output 1-2) at a low ratio with a long release time to provide some light comp that wont squash your mix. Or Maybe it is a multipressor you need as you want to compress the mids or low freqs without affecting the highs to keep the mix sounding "light and airy". OR perhaps no compression but just adding a brick wall limiter to your mix to stop your peak signals getting past your pre-defined level.....?
 
I think you should learn what a compressor does and the way it works, you shouldn't compress everything. Just add a limiter to your master fader and a slight EQ cutting out the super sub bass lows from 30-35Hz and the super high Frequencies you wont need in the 12k range. Don't need much on your processing on your master fader.. a little compression and eq can do wonders on single track processing.
 
I find it's best to put very limited compression on the master track (like as said above, not more than 1-2 db of reduction) and still leave plenty of headroom when rendering out a mix. Then leave the master compression/limiting to a mastering engineer. Your initial mix doesn't need to sound like its busting out of the speakers, it should just sound good with balanced levels and plenty of room for the mastering engineer to compress your mix. (Mastering engineers tend to get annoyed when the mix is already compressed too much).
 
If you don't understand compression very well then do NOT put a compressor on your mix buss... otherwise you'll do what you just said and squash the life out of your mix.
 
sounds like you're adding way too much compression to the track to be honet so maybe just back off - i wouldn't compress every instrument and then the whole thing as well as it prob would give the squashed effect you describe
 
some prefer to compress indvidual track but be careful not to over do it other wise it will sound all squashed up in the final mix. try to use a multi band compresser instead. This way you can only compress a certain frequency lets say in the drum mix you can compress the low frequencies a bit to add that bass drum punch. For me I use limiting in the final chain around -2 to -3 db to get headroom when mastering
 
Thanks for all the help. I will keep the new info in mind.
I spent a long time mixing and doing different things in the mix for this track. Let me know what you think.

 
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^^The compressors are mixing, not you. The strings sound very synthetic. Clearly not ok for my taste.
 
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