FL STUDIO | Mixing Basics - Compression

[Music] welcome in this series we'll introduce you to basic mixing terms and techniques to set you on the right track for your future music production we'll show you how we went from this this [Music] check the video info for an index if you want to skip parts today compression and other dynamics processing how when and why is it useful compression is an automated volume control when the input level exceeds a set threshold the volume automatically decreases to keep the level within a desired range to achieve this a compressor has a threshold control makes sense but they may also include less obvious controls such as ratio knee attack and release controls each of these plays a part in how the automatic volume control moves in response to the signal crossing the threshold is it sluggish is it instantaneous does it start moving with a constant speed or does it accelerate and then decelerate each of these behaviors will have a different effect on the overall sound compression is a little counter-intuitive while it's about limiting maximum levels it can actually make quieter sounds easier to hear or give them more presence in the mix how so by lowering the transient peaks in a sound this gives us headroom to turn up the main body and it's this part of the sound where most of the audio information is in this video we will demonstrate using compression with fruity limiter and maximus while fruity limiter's name suggests it's only a limiter which is an extreme form of compression it actually has two tabs one for compression and one for limiting the limiter section will prevent the output level from going over a certain value commonly referred to as the ceiling this is a hard stop limit like hitting a brick wall to use fruity limiter as a compressor turn the attack on the limiter tab to zero milliseconds as that introduces plug-in latency it is a necessary processing delay which we'll explain later in the video then switch to the compressor tab threshold as we previously discussed is the level at which the compressor starts clamping down on the rate at which the level is allowed to increase that is the point at which it starts to reduce the gain to control the level knee is the transition from low compression to full compression you can roll over gently aka soft knee or do it sharply aka hard knee ratio is the amount of compression for every unit the volume increases past the threshold what percentage reduction is applied two to one for example would be fifty percent four to one is twenty five percent so how far does that volume knob go fruity limiter visualizes threshold knee and ratio and the transfer curve diagram a transfer curve is commonly used to show what a compressor will do to the audio signal the white line represents the change in level aka gain reduction fruity limiter is applying to the audio in fruity limiter threshold sets the point at which the output level will be changed ratios that's how heavily attenuated or boosted it will be yes boosted in fruity limiter turning the ratio knob to the left turns the ratio around and in turn turns the plugin into an expander [Music] as you can hear instead of reducing the level once the threshold value is crossed an expander will increase the level if you turn the ratio up past 10 to 1 some engineers will call this type of compression limiting even though it technically still allows the signal to go over the threshold due to the time variables in today's terms we generally only refer to signal processors that do not allow any signal to go over the threshold at all as limiters they are basically executing compression with a ratio of infinite to one meaning that the gain is reduced equally to the increase in level above the threshold everything that goes over the threshold is instantly deducted from the volume as discussed earlier knee decides how smooth the crossover between original level and full compression is you can see how it runs the corner in the transfer curve this can make compression sound more subtle or more pronounced attack is how long it takes the signal to achieve full compression when the signal crosses over the threshold value from below long values will let transients through the threshold unprocessed [Music] and release is the time it takes the compressor to go back to the unaltered level or unity gain after the signal crosses the threshold in the downwards direction short values will introduce distortion sustain is an overall smoothing function for the gain reduction envelope it sounds similar to increasing both attack and release at the same time think of it like inertia [Music] finally there are eight curve presets for attack and release which almost function like smoothing for the respective parts of the gain reduction envelope [Music] gain staging is the concept of keeping your levels as consistent as possible throughout an effects chain and throughout the whole project this is done because compressors and other plugins that change the level depend heavily on the input level increase or decrease the input level via eq distortion or gain plugins and the compression may end up sounding vastly different than it did before as this is essentially the same thing as turning up or down the threshold control in addition to the other effects the plugins have on the sound this is even more pronounced if you're not using compression but distortion let's look at fruity wave shaper as you can see this plugin also has a transfer curve but it has no attack or release parameter making the output level instantly snap to the transfer curve instead of smoothing the change out over time equals distortion i will adjust only the input level here notice how the level stops changing as i turn it up but the sound clearly changes in tone on a more subtle scale this happens in compressor plugins too so in order to maintain a constant compression sound it's good practice to always watch how hot your signal is going into the compressor in practice that means if you're changing anything before the compressor make sure that after your change the level going into the compressor matches what it was before you changed anything as closely as possible one of the most common uses of compressors is to change the dynamic behavior of individual drum sounds when using longer attack values high ratios and short release values a compressor can act as an additional volume envelope on a single sound to demonstrate let's look at the kick in our example [Music] if we compare before and after we can hear that the transient of the kick is now much more pronounced in comparison to the tail which hasn't changed much this type of compression on drum sounds often benefits from a little saturation as well so i'm going to use the saturation knob to clip off the kick's transient at zero decibels and then boost into it while also lowering the output gain to keep it consistent [Music] there we are this is now at the same decibel level as before but with much increased loudness while accepting some distortion as a trade-off oftentimes engineers will distort the drums on purpose in addition to compression like this further adding to the perceived loudness of the signals so i'll add fruity blood overdrive on the kick and dial in some heavy saturation [Music] compressing instruments and other very dynamic tonal sounds can help improve their consistency in your mix we'll show this on the brass sounds here let's dial in something reasonable tonal sounds are far less forgiving with short attack and release times than drum sounds and distortion or pumping artifacts will be far more apparent this is why we'll choose longer times here [Music] when compressed the brass holds its position in the mix without compression certain nodes get drowned out by the clavinet bus compression compressing a group of sounds at the same time on both tracks serves as what is often called the mix glue when used this way it can make a mix feel more together and make it less likely that a spiky instrument somewhere suddenly introduces clipping in the master for this i'll add a maximus to my tonal bus to be able to compress three individual frequency bands at the same time low mid and high those are then summed in a master band to compress the whole signal maximus differs from traditional compressors in that its transfer curve is fully customizable you can make each band a compressor expander gate upwards compressor and ducker like most envelope editors in fl studio you can right click to add points and right click points and then select delete to remove them we'll be using them as a compressor though maximus has a lot of the same controls we've seen on fruity limiter the attack parameter in the master band however acts as a lookahead delay for the master band and will add plug-in latency just like fruity limiters attack in the limiter tab lookahead delay is a necessary processing delay for a limiter to do its job properly in order to turn a signal down instantly when it crosses the threshold a slight delay is added to the audio this essentially allows the limiter to react to the non-delayed input audio smoothly and turn the signal down before it crosses the threshold in addition to fruity limiter's controls there is an lmh delay knob that acts as a separate lookahead delay for the split band compressors this is independent of the attack in the master band and only affects low mid and high bands the crossover controls decide where in the frequency spectrum the splits between low mid and high occur and how steep the filters are [Music] [Applause] [Music] and then there is release two this is an additional release time variable that reacts differently to the normal release time the standard release will curve in one direction as soon as the signal passes the threshold on the way down release two curves when the threshold is passed and again in the other direction when the signal approaches unaltered level aka unity gain this is what's called a non-linear behavior this type of release curve can be more transparent in certain cases of extreme compression let's dial in moderate compression on all three bands and the master band and switch maximus to linear phase mode to avoid any phasing artifacts since i'm already using lookahead delay i'm not too worried about the extra latency that adds to the track [Music] when compressed the mids jump forward slightly and the low end is more controlled side chain compression or side chaining is a technique that is used in a lot of music from the 80s and onwards it is used to make a compressor or the dynamics processor on one sound react to the changes in level of another sound rather than the first sound it is most commonly used to dock instruments like the bass with the drums in my example i've set up a side chain source track that carries all the signals which are supposed to doug other signals on this track which is not routed to the master so we aren't hearing it i'm using two fruity limiters i'm processing all incoming sounds into clicks this is where i'll route my kick and snare track in addition to the boss track let's listen to what it does for science ok enough let's unwrite it from the master again with this truck selected i will now shift-click the routing arrows of all the tracks i want to duck in time with my kick and snare shift-clicking or routing arrow creates a sidechain send instantly now in the base and tonal buses allow dedicated fruity limiter plugins to sign compress them with i'll right click the sidechain selector and select the sidechain track now these compressors react to the kick and snare not the bass and tonal bus signals let's make it obvious [Music] if i mute the drums you can really hear the docking which is space carved out in the mix for the drums to punch through [Music] i've gone through every track and applied these techniques now let's see where we started and what we ended up with [Music] with compression you're introducing a whole new level of dynamic and spectral control into your mix and that's it for this video we hope this one helps you get your overall dynamics under control more easily and make more consistent quality mixes more quickly as always remember to check the video information for any manual or video links and the example projects used in this video

Channel: FL STUDIO by Image-Line Software

Views: 29,999

Rating: 4.9613991 out of 5

Keywords: FL Studio, Image-Line Software, Image Line, Fruity Loops, DAW, flstudio, official, tutorial, Music Software, Music Production, Mixing Music, Compression, Ratio, Knee, Expansion, Mixing Beats, Limiting, Fruity Limiter, Maximus

Id: gJUmUd4FfeM

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2021