when do you know if you need to use compression?

  • Thread starter diversifiedbeat
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diversifiedbeat

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When do you know if you need to use alot of compression/ Should you use alot of compression if you are going to send your master of to a Mastering house? I just picked Audio logic platinum, and i use an Art Tube mic preamp(connected to my soundcard) to bring my audio/vocals in . So my question is before I drop my mix down to 2 tracks to my dat recorder, Should i go back and compress certain audiotracks to make them louder? Isn't this what the mastering engineer is going to do anyway? And is necessary to compress midi tracks before you transfer them into wave/audio tracks? Any and everybody tell me what you think!!! :D Until will politic again; PEACE AND PROSPERITY :monkey:
 
u need to use compression when the dynamic range of the track is too high. dynamic range is the highest part of the song in terms of output to the lowest part of the song. the smaller the range the better...
 
Compression can hurt the sound if it is applied too heavily. Or it can be a critical part of the sound. E.g. Mark Trumanti's guitar (from Creed) is heavily compressed.

Compression can also help clarify vocals and what not. Once you've done yoru final mix you should do a mastering run of just the stereo pair to remove the headroom and bring up the low range and do a final EQ as well.
 
diversifiedbeat,

not sure what you mean by
And is necessary to compress midi tracks before you transfer them into wave/audio tracks?
Click to expand...
How do you compress midi? Do you mean compress the audio that the midi is playing as you record it down?

Anyway, just a small point, the mastering engineer will get hold of a stereo mixdown, so s/he won't be dealing with individual audio tracks per se. This means you need to have everything as good as you can get it, they then add that final sheen. If your stuff sounds good anyway they'll make it sound better (don't ask me how it's just magic). I've heard pro mix engineers complain that they think that mastering is a waste of time, but record companies always pay for mastering - I guess they must be doing something right. I suppose with Logic and all that kind of stuff the difficulty comes when you have mastering/maximiser plugins across your master outs. In this case I would say (and dis is just my opinion) try to get everything sounding good on without using this plugin, leave actual mastering to the mastering engineer. There's loads of articles on compression at www.studiocovers.com/articles.htm.

Hope some of this helps,
KasioRoks.
 
When you cant get your mix loud enougth without your levels going mad, It could be just one sound in a mix that puts you output level above 0db, compresion evens out the dynamic range in you sounds and lets you make up a gain which gives your sound more punch.:monkey:
 
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