I am having difficulty understanding compression and threshold. Setting 1 compressor with a specific threshold level only affects a value that exceeds the threshold. I feel for every transient there should be a designated compressor this would require splitting up the audio sample and applying compression to each peak value. I do not feel using a single compressor is compressing a signal properly if only the initial transient is being compressed. I feel each peak should have the same compression as the initial transient.
Transient Compression
- Thread starter EXM
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Adrian-MarQ
New member
There is nothing wrong with using multiple compressors. I personally use 1 compressor to reduce peaks and another to further even out a vocal track.
The non-multiband compressor is essentially a single band compressor, what this means is that it acts in the same way on the transients across the whole frequency range. If in peak reduction mode you have some loud transients being played that make the signal exceed the threshold, the frequencies of those transients - let's say it is mostly a bass tone in the piano - then mostly those frequencies are in the transient that is affected by the signal reduction. What this essentially means is that you should imagine the moment of the peak reduction as a series of average looking still images of the frequencies of the sound source at those moments, with a horizontal line (threshold) cutting through it, everything above it is being compressed. So if you for instance want a rounder low mid range, it might not be smart to just feed the signal into a compressor, instead you need to study how the compressor is going to react on the input content, by understanding the input content. Chances are it will actually hit on other frequencies instead, at which point you would be forced to lower the threshold until it starts to hit the low mid frequencies too. At that point you might have already killed the sound source by the compression on the other frequencies in the frequency range.
Due to this you often want to control this further, either by filtering/controlling the frequency response before the single band compressor or by using a multiband compressor instead. So let's say you want a slightly softer and fuller kick drum and you happen to have a kick drum that is quite sticky/hollow. This could yield a pretty crazy compressor configuration until it touches on the frequencies it needs to touch. Therefore you need to prepare the incoming signal somehow first or even better go back to re-recording the right frequencies, so that you can make the compressor hit particularly the low mid frequencies on a low ratio + soft knee type of configuration.
When you use the compressor, it is not the threshold you look at, you look at the signal attenuation meter and listen at the impact of it at the same time. You adjust the threshold until you get the signal attenuation and sound you are going for.
Please also note that you always have the option of splitting up the frequency bands of a sound source into multiple volume faders in parallel with the original track, then target the individual bands with compressors individually on those bands. Be moderate and precise about this due to the added phase inaccuracies that you get from it. Become good at knowing in what frequency range various types of sounds sound great with various types of compressor configurations applied. When mixes have the compression very concentrated on certain frequency bands, it means that those frequencies have been congested to the point that they are now flat. This is why in mastering you work with both input track/bus compressors but also expanders on the mix bus, you want to undo some of that congestion and also just tune the dynamics until it is in balance across the whole frequency range. This is what makes a mix musical sounding, especially when you succeed well with the mid range. This process is controlled by the monitoring process.
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M
Mossmade Beatz
Guest
You can chain multiple compressors in a row to reduce the effect of just absolutely smashing a signal.
Instead of using one with 6db gain reduction, try split it other 2 or 3, definitely sounds less compressed IMO. You have to get the attack and release settings to work with the track though. If they're not set 'correctly', you can lose punch and things can get lost in the mix.
Read into parallel compression, keeps natural transients.
To do what you seem to be asking in your post, you would have to chop audio onto different tracks and then apply a different compression to each peak, which I can't really understand why you would want to do.
Instead of using one with 6db gain reduction, try split it other 2 or 3, definitely sounds less compressed IMO. You have to get the attack and release settings to work with the track though. If they're not set 'correctly', you can lose punch and things can get lost in the mix.
Read into parallel compression, keeps natural transients.
To do what you seem to be asking in your post, you would have to chop audio onto different tracks and then apply a different compression to each peak, which I can't really understand why you would want to do.
Exactly, IMO the only reason to compress a signal is to eliminate peaks in the mastering process. Why would i want to change the "true" sound of the instrument. If I want a specific range louder I would eq/filter out certain frequencies and use the same concept as parallel compression, or just eq the instrument itself, or honestly just duplicate the channel and group the 2 tracks together with a master volume, or use a transient shaper. I don't understand why a person would compress into the actual signal that just doesn't make sense to me the instrument loses dynamics. If I was using side chaining then yes that is different I would cut into the signal. My reasoning behind stating cutting each transient and applying specific compression is because I can't guarantee each transient is not going to exceed where it should. Each transient has a different level where the threshold would be set differently for each transient. The transients that are the same level could be on the same track as the threshold would be set the same. IMO compressing each transient is more accurate then a multi band compressor but a multi band compressor would be much more time efficient.
I have not experienced greatly into using multi band dynamics I can't grasp the reasoning why I would use a compressor for anything more than a limiter in the mixing stage. I just did some experimentation with setting a ratio of 1:Inf on each band of the multi band where the signal was not being compressed by the limiter. There to stop peaks. The sound was much fuller I did not know Multi band compressor made that much of an impact on the sound. The sound was not flat like the original but had depth (volume).
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If I am going to use parallel compression why use a compressor at all then? To create distortion? This just doesn't make sense to me to compress a signal and destroy harmonics. A limiter would be required to be set to the original instrument anyway.
The reason I want to do that is so that there are not peaks only at a given threshold. If I were to use a limiter I would set the threshold just barely above the Peak transient. All the other transients that are now lower than threshold could jump from there level to the threshold thats still a peak its just not a huge peak that is noticeable. This will affect the sound as there will be peaks in the signal. If a limiter was set just above every transient I feel this would bring the most "true" sound.
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Your insight has shown me much more capability. I thank you, all my mixes have been so flat at the final product as I now understand why. I feel if I am splicing up each transient and applying a limiter this would never be an issue.
Previously I was only using single band compression.... Big mistake
Randy Krouth
New member
I did some testing with my multi band dynamics in Ableton. What i did was set the above and below ratio to 1:inf adjusted to right above the peaks then lowered the ratio to the desired effect on the above. Turned off soft knee. I did leave the below at 1:inf does this sound about right?!