Hey guys Welcome to the compression tutorial In this video, I'm gonna teach you what compression is what it's used for how it works And the effect that it can have you on your sounds if used properly Compression is a very valuable tool that can help you accomplish many different things For example It can help you make sounds preceivably louder, or stand out more in the mix It can help you sort of smooth out the dynamics, and give your sounds a more balanced presence and we're gonna talk about what that means in just a second and it can also help "gel" different sounds together and make them sound more cohesive For example, like a kick drum and a bassline Or even an entire track in the mixdown or mastering process Now, before we get into it, there's one concept you absolutely need to know before you can understand compression and that is Dynamic Range Dynamic Range is the difference between the loudest and the quietest part of a sound Let me show you what I mean I'm gonna bring up the clap that FL Studio gives you in the default template *clap* and just by looking at this waveform I can tell that a sound like this has a HIGH dynamic range and the reason I can tell is because the loudest part of the sound right here, the transient is a lot different from the quietest part of the sound which is somewhere way down here So a sound like this that sort of BANGS in and then fades out over time is said to have a "high" dynamic range In contrast, if we look at this kick drum *kick* We can tell that it has a low or at least lower dynamic range than the clap And the reason we can tell is because the highest point or the loudest point of this sound, right here is pretty close to a majority of the rest of the sound which is the sub "body" of this kick right here there's a little dip here and a dip kinda towards the end but a majority of this sample is fairly close to the loudest point of the sound so a sample like this is said to have a "low" or "lower" dynamic range Now that we understand that Hopefully If not, let me know in the comments below We can go ahead and define compression What is compression? Compression is The process of changing or lowering the dynamic range of a sound Looking back at our clap sample If you can picture the dynamic range of this sample being lower Either by these peaks Right up here and these right here being dropped down to about this level here OR by this mid section and towards the end being raised up to match close to what these peaks are then you just pictured a compressed version of this sample and that's what we're gonna do next So, for this example I'm gonna program in a couple of claps so we have some audio to work with and, on the mixer track for the clap I'm gonna load up my favorite compressor and that is the Fruity Limiter Now don't be confused by the name the Fruity Limiter has a compressor built in and that's accessed from this "comp" tab The reason why I like this compressor so much is mainly because of the visual feedback that it offers and I know that y'know, audio engineering is supposed to be based on your ears and based on sound but the visual feedback that you get from something like this plugin can drastically help with honing in on roughly the right values that you'll want and then from there your ears can kind of take over and fine tune those values and also it really helps me explain and show you guys this compressor stuff when you can actually see what it's doing So I mentioned honing in on values What did I mean by that? Well, first of all Don't be scared by all the knobs on this compressor We're only going to worry about three of them for now And those three are: Threshold Ratio and Gain The most fundamental controls on any compressor Alright I'm gonna get rid of some of this stuff that we don't need like the Mixer and the Channel Rack and I'm gonna increase the resolution on this compressor and just make the window a little bigger so we can see what's going on Now I'm gonna play this sample then I'm gonna compress it then I'm gonna tell you what I did OK W T F did I just do? The first thing I did was play the sample back No compression no effects nothing Just played it through the compressor and we could see the waveform and the waveform that we're seeing is essentially the waveform we looked at earlier the only difference is between this waveform and this one is that this waveform is basically both of the bottom and the top half combined so if you picture if you can imagine this bottom half of the waveform kind of folded up on top of the top half that's what we're seeing here it's just a simpler view to look at the same thing Now What I did next was drop the Threshold increase the Ratio and then increase the Gain Let's talk through each of those So What's the threshold? The threshold is this blue line you see going across here and right now it's sitting at -21.9dB if you look up in the top left So The threshold is basically the level that you tell the compressor to start compressing at so, if your threshold isn't low enough or your sample isn't loud enough to meet the threshold you're not gonna get any compression the compressor's just gonna sit there waiting for the threshold to be crossed once you have a low enough threshold or a sample that's loud enough to pass that threshold value in decibels you'll start getting compression IF you have a ratio set that is not 1:1 by default a ratio is 1:1 so when I moved this up I moved it up to 2:1 and what that means is for every 2 decibels that crosses the threshold that we set over here give me 1 decibel back in return So, the higher the ratio the more compression is gonna take place so if I set the ratio to 5:1 for every 5 decibels that crosses the threshold I only get 1 decibel back so that's a more extreme version of compression than the 2:1 ratio so, the moment I started increasing the ratio to 2:1 we started hearing compression and for every part of this sample that crossed the threshold which are these peaks right here which are the ones I was targeting by setting the correct threshold they started getting only 1 decibel in return for every 2 that they were crossing the threshold level and that is why the volume started decreasing as I increased the ratio Now, how is compression supposed to make stuff "louder" or more present in the mix? Well Down here If you picture Your thumb and your index finger squeezing this first bit of the sound to kind of match the level of this middle that's essentially what we did with the ratio and the threshold Now in order to make this loud again we need to bring the whole sample's level back up to what it was in the beginning and that's what I did with this Gain knob and that's called "Make-up gain" You "make up" the lost gain from the compression that you applied to the parts that crossed the threshold and so now with the compressed version of this sample this middle chunk is gonna come through the mix a lot more than it did before because now this middle chunk is closer to the volume of this first bit and that is how you make stuff louder with compression and from here what we can do is we can hit this button in the bottom right to flip with the "B" state and that will reset the compressor to a default state and so now when I play it back I can see what it sounds like without compression and then when I hit this button again I can hear it with compression so you can hear the effect let's take a listen here's the uncompressed version and there's the compressed version So That's a handy way to kind of tell what kind of an effect all your tweaking did is to have an A/B compare and so finally what I'm gonna do is show you the difference visually between the original clap and the compressed clap so, here we have the original and here is the compressed version well, thanks for watching guys hopefully this video helped you understand compression a little bit better if you have any questions or there's something that's still unclear to you please let me know below I'll be happy to help If you have any suggestions for future tutorials you'd like to see please leave that feedback as well otherwise if you found this video helpful please give it a like and consider subscribing 'cause there'll be much more awesome tutorials to come thanks for watching and catch you in the next video
This was great, very clear - thanks
I get what it does....I just don't get how to use it practically. I haven't watched yet but I'll get back to you.
Getting back to you now, it was a good video and explained a lot, I feel like I still don't get the basics of using it though. And I barely heard the difference of A/B on the clap. All I heard was a lot less of an attack, was that it? Why wouldn't you just turn up a track if you wanna get louder? Is it because this way tames the peaks so they don't jump out when you turn it all up? If you have a bunch of layers of instruments, is it a good idea to compress them all because you gain more headroom that way if they don't all have random peaks staking on top of eachother? What about compressing them separately versus feeding them all into a submix and compressing there?
Also, when recording vocals is it normal to have to heavily compress/gain them to hear them clearly? Like is the raw supposed to be really quiet? That's a problem I have....perhaps I should normalize them beforehand?
Very clear and concise. You've got a knack at instruction. I'd love to see you do something similar for side-chaining compression. Could be a great follow-up video.
You can also use compressor for de-essing, wink wink. Nice vid, thanks.
It was well done. Maybe you could go a little more in depth and explain saturation and attack/release :)
One of the best videos on compression. And I've seen a few.
Bro did you make this video? Well done, clear and to the point. Do more videos!
This previous WATMM link is also great for explaining compression