All Cubase Stock Compressors explained- Choose the right tone! 💣💣💣#cubase #compressor

check without the punch and then with [Music] its this should be called the punch hello guys and welcome back hope you're doing great hope you're doing amazing dump here and on this video we're going to talk all about the Cubase stock compressors quite a few of you have been asking me about the Cubase stock compressors and what's my opinion about them and what's the difference between each compressor because we have quite a few flavors inside Cubase and I'm going to tell you from the set goal that the Cubase compressors are really really capable of some incredible sounds they have different colors which means you have a lot of different types of compression to play with and if you ask me they could easily be third-party plugins they are that good so in this video I'm going to take you through every single compressor that we have in Cubase why I use them how are using what material I like to run through them some tricks and tips about each plug in each compressor and how you can use it successfully I'm going to run them through vocals through bass through drums and I'm going to show you which one I use for what so I hope you're ready I hope you're pumped let's jump into Cubase and let's listen to these compressors in action so in order to make this video easy for you guys to follow I'm going to take one compressor at a time and I'm going to run it through the material that I I tend to use it for so the first compressor I'm gonna try is the tube compressor and this compressor is really nice really warm it's an la-2a style compressor so just to take away all the mixer behind these compressors for me the tube compressor sounds like an la-2a t' has the characteristics that define the la-2a sound and what are those it's a very smooth very creamy compressor it adds nice harmonics to the sound it's not very fast but it's actually very pleasing to the ear especially when you run it with material like vocals bass all these things it gives a nice character and it can add to your sound so this is the first compressor and and I'm starting with this compressor just because it's it's one of the compressors that I reach out quite a lot so in this case I'm going to run it through these vocals and the first tip I want to give you about this compressor when you use it you will notice that or you might not notice actually that the mix is at 50% by default and the first thing I always do is I go a hundred percent so that I can hear the entire effect of the compressor straight away because sometimes when if we're starting using this plug-in I was like he doesn't do as much as I would expect it to do the reason is because it's on 50% and there's a good reason for that it's a great compressor if you want to run it as parallel but let's stop talking and let's run some material through it so I'm going to go all the way up to a hundred percent and I'm going to run this vocal let's see oh please be yeah so very smooth as you can see it's not very fast it kind of moves with a volcko in a very gentle way but this gives the vocal a nice beautiful tone you know that's what I'm looking for when I'm using compressors with my material I'm looking for tone I tend to automate things I tend to use the pencil to automate things in Cubase before I get too into any compression because this always gives you more natural result the way this compressor works is it doesn't work like threshold and ratio kind of compressor the more you drive it the more compression you're going to get now a very interesting thing about this compressor is that you have this drive control that can add nice warmth to your sound so let's try it and see how it sounds I'm saying it's time we see how the sound almost breaks this to my ears it reminds me of a nice tube compressor which is at the verge of breaking but it's not really breaking yet but it gives you this beautiful gentle saturation to your vocals which is invaluable in the context of a mix it gives it a little bit of push it's a nice pillow so that your vocals don't get lost in the mix so let's try a little bit more I'm going to compress even more oh please oh please speak and see I'm compensating with the output and you can tell that even though the level is the same the color is not the same anymore check it out oh please be hi yeah now if you want to make the compressor react a little bit faster you can just make the release a little bit faster like this and just add a little bit of open the attack a little bit and with a character we can change the tonal characteristics of the compressor let's try that oh please behind yeah I'm singing so that's without whateleys oh please behind yeah so beautiful warm creamy compression style and now if you want you can change the ratio from low to high if you ask me this is almost like the peak reduction on inlay an la-2a where you have the compression circuit and then you have the limiter circuit so that's what this ratio emulates okay so let's go with a high and see how that sounds see how much of a change it makes this almost makes it like a limiter that gives you this really snappy attack at the beginning check it out let's let's go a little bit less with the inputs please oh please behind ya it makes the vocal really compact really really compact so as you can hear tones of character this is a definitely a character compressor this is not like a clinical or clean compressor but it does sound really really beautiful so this is one of the compressors that I would use for bass definitely for bass and I love the la-2a on the bass personally the actual Union so that's one of the reasons why I always reach out for the tube compressor to process my bass so I have a bass here let's listen to it without the compressor so this is very uneven for my taste so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to turn it on and I'm gonna go all the way up with a mix and let's see what we can get out of this faster release so we can let it breathe character let's go for the high ratio okay and now there's another cool thing that you can do with this you can even add a sidechain filter now what a sidechain filter is is basically it allows the compressor to focus on a specific set of frequencies for example I can focus maybe on the mid-range or maybe I want to focus on the low end or the non-that top-end so I can have a low-pass filter or a high-pass filter so let's go for the bad pass and now we're going to have the compressor gets triggered by the mid-range that we set right here so let's try it so if you have a peak knows that it's really annoying on your bass you can just pinpoint it here change the Q factor to change the Q how narrow the filter will be and then just get rid of it like that see maybe I don't like this [Music] see see how much you can change the sound like this now let's go low pass so low pass basically focuses on the low frequencies okay and then if I go high pass see now the compressor burly compresses anything because the high frequencies don't have so much energy so if you want to make your bass sound or your vocals a little bit less harsh or if you have sibilants on all these things just go on the high-pass filter and then the compressor only compresses the high frequencies check it out and then when I close it low-pass see how compact it makes the sound so if you've ever been wondering what this SC thing is right there on the cheap compressor that's what it is it's actually a very versatile compressor and if you play with the filters you can also leave the mid-range breathe a little bit but you can you compress the low end which is what you really want to be compact and to be assertive and not fluctuate up and down when you have a bass so that's what I'm doing here see without it boom it goes up and down but then it grabs but the mid-range is still open because we've used the sidechain filter so this is the tube compressor let's move on to the next one because the next one is also very good and here it is this is the vintage compressor so a little bit of background this is an 1176 style compressor if you're familiar with in 1176 you'll be right at home you have your input where you basically drive the compressor and you get more gain reduction you have the output so that you can compensate and then we have the attack and the release and we also have the ratio so we have 2 4 8 20 it can be a very drastic very powerful compressor but there's another thing on the Cubase version that makes it really special and this is this punch button right here that allows the transients to go through resulting in a very compressed but at the same time very dynamic and punchy sound so I'm going to play these drums here I'm going to play them live just for the fun of it and let's see [Music] okay that's without the compressor so now let's add the vintage compressor and I'm trying to retain the same level okay now this is a very classic very typical 1176 style compression so it's very punchy [Music] okay and I've added the punch straight away check without the punch and then with its this should be called the punch it's so punchy it's really nice and then of course we have the release where we can make it really fast so it pumps even more and then if I want I can simply remove the punch compress super drastically and now I can mix between the compressed signal and the uncompressed signal so I can retain dynamics but I can still get these really nice and big drum sound and this is basically new york-style compression parallel compression right so everything in one plug-in let's Right see how much it's compressing let's see [Music] okay without it with you know super powerful super punchy might go to Cubase compressor for drums hands down no question about it now I still like to use this compressor for vocals so we'll if we go back to our vocal here and it gives me a different flavor compared to the tube compressor now why would I use this I would use it for like rock vocals for hip hop vocals for vocals that are fast that needed fast attack and a fast compressor because the tube is a little bit more creamy more you know sparkly beautiful this is aggressive you know this is aggression so for hip-hop for rap all these things let's write with this vocal and see the flavours that we can get out of it oh please be checkout pay attention to the attacks oh please behind so with the tube compressor and the vintage compressor you have the most iconic compressors inside Cubase without spending a dime so I hope you have a better understanding of the victus compressor let's move on to the last compressor that I'm gonna talk about on this video and this is the stock Cubase compressor which is simply called compressor and I'll tell you straight away why you should use this plugin this compressor it's a very clean compressor it doesn't have a lot of character but it gets the job done it's almost like a digital console compressor like it reminds me a little bit of the Oxford console compressor it has a very effective reduction and it can help you tame dynamics of the sound you know the synth the vocal bass kick drum snare but it does it in a very transparent way and this is something that quite a few times you might want you might want the compressor to do its job to be transparent and not impart any characteristics or any saturation or any horrible character to the sound so this is a very good example and just to give you another idea I would totally go and try and use the VST dynamics plug-in for vocals for processing vocals because it's a very easy solution when you want to get into the sound that you want for example for this vocal I can start school maybe I want to add a gate to get rid of some ambient noise or maybe some hum so we go like this and then you just turn the threshold up and down until you get to a point where you have just the noise cut off but not actual vocals you know okay so let's try this see this oh please be high yeah let's go see so I would be very careful with gates because with gates it's very easy to have these really choppy breath sounds and all these things I wouldn't use a gate to get rid of breaths I would honestly do it manually and there's a very cool video with andö where he shows you a macro on how to get rid of Bret's very easily in cubase and the next thing is the compressor of course let's try the compressor I'm saying it oh oh please be hi-c it does its job it tames that focal it tames a dynamic so they don't jump out at you like oh it's like a loud phrase but it doesn't have a very specific character you don't really hear it which is great if you ask me and sometimes you don't want to hear the compression oh oh please be high yeah so very transparent sound very cool but now I'm going to tell you the main and biggest reason I use the compressor plug-in in Cubase and that is sidechain it's just brilliant for side chain it's so easy to set up you said and forget in actual fact when I load the plug-in inside Cubase I already have my sidechain preset as a default preset because I know that 90% of the time I'm going to use this compressor for sidechaining so let's see how I use it I'm I have this drum loop right here and I have retro Logan sense and let's bring up the compressor plugin so we have a nice warm lodge pad with retrologue but maybe I want to get a little bit of movement by side-chaining this with this kick drum so how do you do it it's actually very easy in Cubase so let's have a listen okay and now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to bring up my compressor so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to click on this icon right here and I'm going to add a sidechain input in this case I'm going to use this kick drum and I'm gonna go 0 okay and now I can close this and activate sidechain and now I'm going to sidechain this pad to this kick drum but listen [Music] and depending on what kind of feel I want to get I just play with the release and threshold so if I want to get like a very square you know see this kick drum if I go all the way down with a threshold it's going to basically compress pretty much the same it won't take into account these drops in volume for the kick drum so if you want to retain this just go a little bit higher with threshold if you want to have like a longer release just up the release let it breathe let the music guide you you know this is all about listening it's not about numbers ok so let's play I'm gonna play a little bit with the release so you can hear the difference in the sound [Applause] see I like this if I go hold you just lasts I like this let's try so I would go with you know with a threshold a little bit higher up if I was going to sidechain a bass to the kick drum and I just want the reduction in volume so that they don't eat too much space in the mix but this is a little bit more creative this actually adds groove to a static pad okay so I'm gonna go a little bit more drastic with this you know change the attack a little bit so see how many different sounds I can get out of the stock compressor plugin when it comes to sidechain it's really powerful and I use it all the time it's just you know if you took it away from Cubase I would be really missing this plug-in so don't underestimate and don't forget the humble compressor plugin because it's actually very very good so I hope you enjoyed this video guys I hope you have a good understanding now of the compressors that we have inside Cubase like I said they're really powerful you really need to take a look and appreciate the sounds that they can give you and the different colors that you can get out of each plug-in so I hope this gives you a little bit of food for fall to play with these compressors and get creative I hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it a thumbs up you know that it really really helps me create more videos for you guys and if you're new to the channel maybe you want to consider subscribing thank you so much guys compress away and have loads of fun

Channel: Dom Sigalas

Views: 37,524

Keywords: cubase compressor, cubase compressors tutorials, cubase compressors explained, cubase stock compressors, cubase stock plugins, cubase, compressor, steinberg cubase, cubase vintage compressor, cubase tube compressor, how to sidechain in cubase, sidechain compressor in cubase, cubase 10, cubase 10.5 tutorial, dom sigalas, cubase tutorial, the compressors in cubase, how to use a compressor, how to compress vocals, how to compress drums, compressor plugins in cubase

Id: A5hUdzUTUaQ

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020