5 Compression Mistakes We All Make

hi everybody hope you're doing marvelously well in this video we're going to talk about five compression mistakes that we all [Music] make if you haven't already please subscribe hit the like button and of course if you hit the notification bell you'll be notified when we have another video plus of course you can go to producelegopro.com and sign up for the email list and get a whole bunch of free goodies so what we decided to do was do this in reverse order so we're going to start with five and lead to number one so stick around to the end because i think you'll enjoy it so in reverse order number five using too fast an attack time this one you've probably heard quite a few instances before and i think it's quite valid because if you use an extremely fast attack time you are going to mess with your transient especially with of course plug-in compressors which have attack times far faster than any piece of hardware could ever do now you can have look-ahead compressors etc which basically annihilate that transient immediately so unless you're specifically trying to grab something and control it probably like a drum kit you want to add like a huge amount of energy to a parallel bus for instance you might want to grab those transients and squash them in so it's just kind of this squashing kind of aggressive drum sound that can be done really really well with a very very short attack time however in most instances you don't want to do that you certainly don't want to feature a sound like that unless you're going for that quote-unquote what people consider to be overly compressed personally i like a little bit of transient coming through and if i then want to control that transient i'll put a limiter on it i'll reach for like an l1 or whatever limiter you like and then just take the the head of that little transient off and just control it i find myself quite often when i'm recording for instance if i'm recording with compression as i use two compressors in series the same thing in mixing i'll use one to compress allowing a bit of excitement as the transient comes through and then i'll use something more aggressively like something set to twenty to one so i may be in recording i'll use the dbx 160 and then i'll go into an 1176 set to 20 to one one at three to one one at twenty to one this is very very common with a lot of guys i remember talking to eric valentine for instance at namm or aes about four or five years ago we first started this and i talked about that combination and he said it's one he loves as well dave jordan loves it mike clink a lot of people like that combination of compression lightly going into limiting just catching peaks it's a really nice way of working i can demonstrate that quickly for you here here's an acoustic guitar and you're going to see me compress it pretty generically i'm not even adjusting the attack and release time i'm going where it's it starts at [Music] [Applause] it's a pretty aggressive acoustic sound the release time is set somewhere in the middle again it's just defaulting i'm not trying anything clever yet bypass it [Music] bring it on so it's letting a little bit of transient go through and then it's grabbing it so bringing up some energy of the overall guitar so it's making it sound just a little bit more exciting it might actually let the acoustic cut through in the mix a bit because you hear a little bit of that transient but let's just pretend it's a little excessive on the transient so what i'm going to do is i'm going to grab just a good old-fashioned l1 which is waves limiter and i'm just going to use it to catch the peaks so you're seeing where it says about six here that's where the peaks are jumping so if i pull this down to about minus six bypass it controlled so if i'm really want to control those transients i don't try and do it with the compressor i use it with limiting it's just the way my brain works and to be honest it works really really nicely stick to the end here for the number one tip because i think that's going to make a lot of sense out of this but using fast attacks is great if you're trying to like encompass the whole signal and like make it feel compressed from the get-go but i try to avoid that unless it's on like parallel sources like parallel drums maybe a parallel vocal that's coming up underneath because i'm just trying to add an even energy underneath if i really want to control those transients that's where i reach for a limiter just to shave off the top of that transient number four too slow of a release time this is an interesting one because i watched a video where somebody sort of blanketed this the reality is you want your release time to be fast enough so it gets out of the way of the next transient obviously but you don't want it to be so fast that it's not really working this is where it gets a little interesting we go back to our friend here the acoustic guitar like i said i went to a default setting on that release see if you can hear what's going [Music] on so we'll take a bar here with a couple of like extreme transients and i'm going to slow down the release time and let's see how it does it may hold on to it for just a little bit too long again it is also dependent on the threshold because if i don't have it catching this second hit here then it's kind of irrelevant i'm not worried about it but you see i've got this period of time here before the next transient comes up slow the release time down see what's happening here i mean you can hear it and if you want the visual aid you can see it there but it's not getting out of the way that second heavier transient here is basically being annihilated so we're losing the excitement so we'll speed it up again close but it's still grabbing a little hard somewhere around about there now what it's done is it's releasing fast enough that's allowing the next transient to come in what i highly recommend when learning how compression works find percussive things drum loops acoustic guitar parts things that have excessive transients it's the best way to learn how to use a compressor i learned purely and simply by taking a drum loop and realizing i could manipulate it to increase the transients and make it sound tighter so it's like or i could do the opposite and bring the attack time so short that it was annihilating everything and then it started to sound more roomy so it's incredible what you can do with a compressor so again i'm illustrating on an acoustic guitar which is a great example but you could also do it on a drum loop so hopefully that shows you why you want to make sure you have the right release time for the instrument that you're compressing number three compressing for the sake of it the reality is is like listen to your sources and are you just opening up a compressor and deciding to use it because you watched a video of somebody like me that is using a compressor if we look at this mix here this is a mix i've just did inside of the academy there are a lot of tracks that have no plugins on them because the recording was pretty good but even then eq eq eq a compressor a room mic an eq the point is it's like there's a lot of things on this drum sound for instance that have absolutely no compression on it it's not even bust to a compressor and this is the drum sound [Music] that's the point you don't always have to be looking to compress something you have to have an end a reason why if it's purely and simply just to control gain think about that do you need to control it why are you controlling it compressors are not only controlling volume and dynamics they're also providing you with different sounds as we're talking about the attack and release times if you let that transient just sneak through you've got a slow enough time you can make things more percussive if you do the opposite and make the attack time so fast you can grab it early and it's great for parallel compression underneath a whole drum mix to add just energy of the all the drums so my point is is like why are you reaching for a compressor are you using it for a particular reason or are you just opening it up and putting it on a track i see that happen so often if you literally want to just control gain you could do it with automation so question why do you need a compressor before using a compressor and then if you are going to use one use it for a purpose number two using presets now i don't use presets i've been using all of these plugins and hardware for time memorial i i know them inside out but i have experimented with presets i do love some presets on many different things when i'm starting to get to know a piece of equipment but if you are going to use the compressor as a beginner let's just say hmm let's have a look [Music] okay so let's go and grab a fancy compressor this is compressor bank by macdsp great great company and let's go and see what defaults they've got rcis presets they've got joe barisi it's great obviously they've got they've got some drum stuff here i guess they've got a drum bust they've got an easy rider gentle percussion heavy hits light touch um i think heavy hits might work because this is kenny iron off playing drums and he's thwacks it so not touching anything just let's see what it sounds like i haven't tried this before especially not in the video see what happens [Music] okay [Music] so it sounds like could be a drum parallel compressor i mean it's annihilating it super short attack you know and i love mac dsp but heavy hits just took me there well let's let's play with a threshold and see if we can do it get it to do less bring the output down [Music] slow the attack down all right i think i got it to sound better i think it sounds great now it's actually quite usable it's added a little bit more bite i slowed down the attack kept the release where it was a little less compression it was compressing ten to one now i've got it about five point eight to one and i adjusted the threshold point is is like i'm fishing for something there and i did all the work i would have done anyway if i'd open it up then the other thing is is even if you do find something really specific let's say you find a compressor that says ultimate snare sound i'm sure there's somebody that makes a compressor setting which says ultimate snare sound or best snare ever i've seen all these things we all have the question is the first thing you've got to do is make sure that you set up a threshold properly because you don't know how they've set it have they set it so it's hitting the compression really hard to give you some massive spankiness is it supposed to only be hit by two to three db is your source material recorded with a really really spanky really aggressive transient or is it the opposite and it's just a big blob of snare you get what i'm saying i like presets they are fun to play with they might give you an idea of something unusual like i didn't know what that was going to do until i opened it up that's fantastic however just because somebody as incredible as joe barissi and god bless him he's amazing doesn't mean that necessarily what he's created for you is going to be exactly right for what you're doing because he doesn't know source you're going to put through it and how it was recorded these are just really good great fun road maps that you can play with but ultimately learning your compressor understanding how attack and release works understanding how the threshold works understanding all of those fun things and where to apply them is going to be a thousand times better than using any preset just go to the presets when you want to have some fun and as promised the number one mistake that we do while using compression is this using compression that's it game over we're done thank you seriously i know i went earlier and i said make sure that you know why you're using your compressor the reality is is like that's a big part of it but the other part of it is like what sound are you trying to emulate when i think of all of the albums that i've worked on over the years and all the different mediums they've been recorded in and also all of the incredible people that i've worked with that have had 40 or 50 year careers and i've worked with many of them that have been doing this since the 60s the compressor is a tool now in the digital world that we reach for very very often and it was used a lot in those days too but they had a heck of a lot of other things helping that we don't always have access to let's start with the basics the microphone if you were recording in a top studio in london or new york or la making the albums that we all grew up listening to those albums were recorded look at the beatles with these big beautiful tube microphones and those big beautiful tube microphones added second and third harmonics they made everything sound thicker and weightier and sparklier and just made everything sound just a little bit better and they went into really beautiful mic preamps whether they be neves or apis or v72 telefunkens all of these you know either tube or solid state with big fat transformers and they all rounded off the transients yet again and added more harmonics some compressors you know like the diode bridge compressors for instance that we will be talking about soon added weight below 400 hertz as well like big fat blooming and all these harmonics down there then of course with all this compression going on on the way in they hit tape and the tape rounded off all of those transients so all of this stuff distortion saturation rounding off of transients extra harmonics all of this stuff and the compression part of it is a little piece of it there's other things going on i mean the mic itself the tape is so huge in that so maybe just maybe the compressor is not the be all on an endle maybe you need a few other things now i just did some something fun with that snare but let's just reach back for the snare for a second give it listen i like it but what about if we go along and grab something fun and of course it's the plugin we were talking about a week ago the odr one it's a guitar distortion pedal let's bring the drive down to zero keep the eq set in the middle bye parser bring it back on i've got more body on my snare i've got more bite on the top and best of all all of the transient has been rolled in so instead of my snare sounding small and going pink pink pink pink with this little fast transient now it's all rounded off by the saturation created by the distortion that's emulating all of these different processes we were talking about so putting a compressor on it even though it was fun let's go back to the compressor turn it off [Music] it's great got a little louder just output gain obviously got a little brighter had a little bit more snap yeah it's nice i liked it let's put the saturation back on it's just better it's just better it's doing all the things i want and if i want to brighten it with a little bit of eq maybe a little bit more maybe i could do that a little bit and get that brightness that i had on the other one but i got all of that body and the transients rolled off and the snare is going to be perceived to be louder without the use of compression because it's saturating all of those all that low end on all that high end so the question is do you need to use a compressor what is the sound you're trying to get that doesn't sound like a fully distorted snare drum it just sounds like a snare drum with more body and more bite and just more of everything and it's done by using saturation and you can use this plug-in you can use the free ones that come with your daw lo-fi for other pro tools users is amazing there's all of these different tools and compressors as amazing as they are shouldn't always be your first thought and if you're trying to get that sound that you want to emulate of those great great records we all grew up work worshiping quite frankly remember they went through so many stages of bouncing and transformers and tubes and all of that kind of good stuff and of course bounce between tape onto tape hitting it hard getting the transit rolled off then bouncing again to another half inch or quarter inch tape for the final mix then being mastered again i mean so many processes and we're trying to achieve all of that inside a box so compressors love them they're great they're fantastic but know when you need to use them and why you need to use them and remember there are other ways to achieve the results you want thank you ever so much for watching that was a lot of fun i really really enjoyed that please leave any comments and questions below please let us know what tips and tricks you have for using compressors and what mistakes you have made yourself have a marvelous time see you all again very very soon [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 131,118

Rating: 4.969687 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, Mixing Tips, Compression Mistakes, Cheat Sheet

Id: Cx90E_gKiog

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020