What Is An Audio Compressor Ratio? The attack and release controls shape how the compressor reacts. Quite often you will find that vocals get lost in your mix. Collaborate. I used to have this problem a lot. Set a sidechain compressor on the overhead mics which will be triggered by the snare microphone and then every time there is a hit on the snare the overhead mics will be compressed at that point and you should just get less snare drum on the overhead mic track. Don’t start compressing until you’ve sorted your volume balancing first. Its confession time again…I used to try and solve this by cranking up the entire track and then it would solve the problem in some areas but then in areas where the singing was louder like the start of a chorus there would be a peak and the sound would become distorted. Share ideas. Use the make-up gain and output control to sit the signal back into the mix without adding any unnecessary noise. Move your threshold up and down until the loudest parts of the signal are triggering the compressor. There are two types of knee, a soft knee and hard knee. So a hard knee is more dramatic than a soft knee. It may not surprise you that expansion is the opposite of compression. To get this compression allows you to even out the dynamic range and then increase the overall volume of the track without having distorted or unwanted louder sections. Some people will say that using presets is not very professional, but if you are new to compression it is a good way to learn. Adjust them together and see how they affect the output. A second situation when it may be useful is to get rid of unwanted sounds on certain microphones. The release control can really affect the sound of the compressor. For every rule about setting up compressors, there’s someone who has broken the rules and made a great sounding record, so experiment. This allows you to blend between a compressed and uncompressed track whilst mixing, in theory giving you the best of both worlds. You want to even this out but without losing the expression and tone within the track. A softer knee is usually better on vocals as it still gives you a bit of dynamic range as the compressor more gradually comes in after the threshold is reached rather than straight away. Below the compression threshold the ratio will still remain at 1:1 so it depends how loud the sound is coming in and where you have the threshold set. Bass guitars sound good at 4:1, drums at 2:1, vocals also at 2:1 and electric guitars anywhere from 2:1 to 6:1. Tonal inconsistency in vocals is a common place where multi-band compression is used. Insert the compressor on the channel you want to compress. Consistency is key. For example, if the compression ratio is set for 6:1, the input signal will have to cross the threshold by 6 dB for the output level to increase by 1dB. Musician's HQ also participates in affiliate programs with Plugin Boutique. Basically, compression reduces the dynamic range of your recording by bringing down the level of the loudest parts, meaning the loud and quiet parts are now closer together in volume and the natural volume variations are less obvious. Well, there’s nothing wrong with music having a strong dynamic range. Field Effect Compressors use transistors to emulate a valve sound with more reliability, but with a higher signal to noise ratio. Not only that, but the speed at which it is done can be altered and loads of other things too. If you add one of these in it will give you a starting point and you can tweak from there. as compression often attenuates the signal significantly. Compression reduces this range by attenuating the louder signals and boosting the quieter signals. Now I have a confession to make, compression is one of those things that I put off learning about for a long time. As I mentioned with vocals before I can’t give you a starting value for threshold or gain because that will depend on your particular track, however, I can give you a few starting points. They are less colored and suffer from very few side effects like distortion, which make them ideal for lots of different tasks. Many drummers only want the snare sound to come through the close snare mic and not to get picked up in the overhead mics. Compression performs better after any wah pedals, but try it both before and after a volume pedal. The attack is usually measured in milliseconds, giving you an idea of how quick it is (we aren’t talking in seconds here). This is another way to bring out certain elements of a track on top of techniques such as altering EQ. Why use compression? Output - allows you to boost or attenuate the level of the signal output from the compressor. If you use synths regularly you will be familiar with the terms attack and decay/ release. How to achieve balanced audio compression for superior mixing. Most compressors in most DAWs will look similar to this and will have most of the same knobs and settings. So increase your input level by 2db and you will get a 2db increase in your output level. What Does Audio Compression Do? © Musician's HQ 2020 all content used on this site are owned or licensed by MusiciansHQ.com for use on this site only, any unauthorized use is prohibited. Be warned, multi-band compression tends to get overused by many people, don’t get carried away and throw it on all your tracks automatically. When you are starting out with compression use it with caution and sparingly. With any compression, some audio quality loss is inevitable. To get the full benefit of this you need to use a fast attack time to get nice consistency in the track accompanied by a boost to the bass and treble (depending on what it is you are trying to bring out in the mix). You may also be one of those people, finally plucking up the courage to read about the subject, if so, welcome! I've been making and recording music at home for around 15 years. Setting this value very short is called ‘pumping’ causing a very artificial sound. Compression is the process of reducing the dynamic range between the loudest and quietest parts of an audio signal. Often on a snare or other drum track, you will want that transient to come through to add punch to the track and so a slower attack time may be useful. Release - how soon after the signal dips below the threshold the compressor stops. Some people just like the physical nature of being able to twist and turn the knobs until it sounds just right. I use a fast attack most of the time, as I want the compressor to kick in immediately. When a signal rises past the ‘threshold’ value the compressor kicks in. A softer knee (like below) makes the transition from no compression to compression more subtle. I use a fast attack most of the time, as I want the compressor to kick in immediately. So start by setting the threshold just below the loudest part of the vocal track. The controls you are given to set up a compressor are usually: Compressors come in various different flavors. Here is the same drum loop processed with the standard Apple Logic compressor with a variety of settings. This sound is really getting crushed. In terms of the knee. In most applications, it does this by turning down the loud parts of a signal. Drum compression can be very complex and can be used in many different ways depending on the type of drum or other factors such as are you using live drums or programmed. This is the classic drum pumping sound. As you can see every time the track (grey bottom graph) goes over the threshold (orange line) the gain is reduced at that point (top graph, yellow line). A 1:1 ratio. This results in an overall louder perceived volume. This allows you to apply different amounts or types of compression to certain frequency ranges of that particular track. A square wave sound is basically already compressed. So in very basic terms, imagine compression as if someone has control of the gain knob and can turn it up whenever the sound gets too quiet or down whenever it gets too loud. So if you have a 4:1 compression ratio a 4db input level will result in a 1db increase at the output. I would then go through manually tweaking these peaks. Well on a track with a big dynamic range you may put a faster attack higher ratio compressor first to tame any big peaks and give you consistency and control. Another advantage when recording is you can prevent clipping. But there are alternatives. This will mean you can only listen and... Are you writing an album? So with this theory in mind, a general rule of thumb put a fast compressor before slower compressors and higher ratio compressors before lower ratio ones. The decay or release is how quickly the compressor stops attenuating the sound once the signal level falls below the threshold. The dBx 160 is a VCA compressor. Plug-in compressors often have this feature. So…. The dynamic range of a track is the range between the noise floor (background noise) to the loudest possible signal created without the sound distorting. In this case, try increasing the attack value to allow some more of those peaks to sneak through before the compressor is allowed to kick in. To sound great on its own a big subject, if so, for example you. Reduced in volume Single Studio Monitor identical to the increase you will not know how compressor. Not know how the compressor applies when the signal has to be before compression is a big subject, from... To making the mixing process exponentially easier the main benefits of parallel compression is the process of the. Time to catch all the terminology means but how does that actually to... 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