How to Use a Compressor: 10 Top Tips to Try TODAY | musicianonamission.com - Mix School #1

hello I'm Rob mazes founder and teacher over at home studio Center calm which is the place where people go to get better at home recording and today I want to talk to you about compression and I think for a lot of people compressors can be really daunting but they don't have to be and the first step to really feeling comfortable with compression and become an amazing applying compression to your recordings is to fully understand first of all what all the different parameters are I'm sure you've opened up a compressor before seeing the ratio the fresh hold and then other things like a tack time and release time and knee and thought what the hell is all of this well soon as you understand these key five parameters you'll have a much better understanding of compression in general and then you'll be able to use compression with a lot more confidence and a lot more effectively so over the next few minutes I'm going to explain really simply and clearly what those parameters are after that I'm going to tell you how you should approach compression and two key ways or techniques of using compression rather than just blindly changing the settings there are two different approaches that I'm going to teach you and then after that I'm going to give you ten top tips by the end of this video you'll be able to use compression with purpose to improve your mixes and make your instruments and vocals sound even better so first of all let's talk about what a compressor actually does and the clues in the name it compresses the audio and a lot of people associate compression with increasing the volume and that's because what the compressor does is reduces the volume compresses the volume of the loudest peaks of your audio which then allows you to bring the overall volume up but you don't have to do that that's normally a mastering generally the best practice when you're applying compression to an instrument or vocal within your mix is to only bring the gain up enough to match the input but more on that in a second so the compressor all it does is reduces the volume at certain points using a compressor is essentially the same as telling your da W to reduce the volume of a track as soon as it gets above a certain level to avoid it peaking and sticking out of the mix too much it's exactly the same as that but of course we have a lot more control which is what I'm going to talk to you about over the next few minutes the five key parameters because we not only tell the compressor to reduce the volume when it hits a certain level but we also tell it how quickly to reduce the volume how long to take to release the gain reduction once the volume returns to a normal level of course how much to reduce the volume by when to engage and reduce the volume and finally how much to boost the output to match the original signal and those parameters are ratio threshold attack time release time and make up gain so now I'm going to jump into Pro Tools and first of all I'm going to talk to you about threshold ratio and gain so first up is threshold this is probably the most important parameter because this decides at what point the compressor engages so let's take a look at this graph here if we say that this is our incoming audio and then this line here is our threshold and this is saying when the audio reaches if I say it to minus 20 when the audio reaches minus 20 engage the compressor or when it reaches minus 40 engage the compressor so anything above the threshold will get squashed will get compressed so this means if your fresh hold is too high nothing at all will get compressed because it's not engaging where is this the thresholds too low the audio is being compressed the whole time so it's essentially the same as just reducing the volume of the track so we want to have it at that sweet spot where it's only catching the highest peaks and then we can dial in from there how much of those Peaks we want to compress and if you're in that digital sweet spot of averaging around minus 18 DB FS generally a good starting point for thresholds around minus 24 this is going to catch that top six decibels of peak and reduce them next up we've got the ratio and if I tweak the ratio here you can see on our graph that line going up and down and the ratio determines how much the audio is reduced in volume once it hits our threshold so let's move that low so we can see more of the graph and with one-to-one of course it hits the threshold and it's not reduced so it just keeps going in the same direction that it would it stays at the same level but if we reduce it to say for example three to one for every three decibels the audio goes over the threshold the compressor will let out one so if the track went nine decibels over the threshold the output would only be three decibels over the threshold or we'd get six decibels of reduction so think of that first number and use that as the multiple so if you want it to be four times quieter use a ratio fourth one if you want to be half the volume you'd use two-to-one divide it by two and when you get out to higher ratios of ten to one that's when it gets really compressed because as soon as it hits that fresh hold its reduced by a factor of ten so for every ten decibels it goes the threshold it would only let out one decibel so this is really important and the threshold and the ratio are our kind of key parameters that's us telling the d aw when it gets to this volume to reduce it and how much to reduce it by but then of course if we're reducing the volume by compressing the loudest bits the tracks going to be quieter our output is going to be quieter than our input and that's why we have gain and this is sometimes called make up gain or output gain but it's just gain really all it's doing is increasing the volume of the output so if we get in on average around three decibels of gain reduction we'd want to bring the gain up to around three decibels and if we go in with the kind of standard 24 around minus 24 threshold we're going to have you know aim for maybe like 6 decibels of gain reduction and because of that we'd add our gain by 5 so a really good starting point for output gain is around 5 decibels that's going to get you in the right ballpark figure but just have a look at your input meter and your output meter and try and match the output to the input it's obviously not going to be the same because the average volume is going to be different so it's never going to be exactly the same but you want it to be in a round the same area you want your output game to again be averaging around minus 18 and peaking around minus 6 because that's our digital sweet spot now let's talk about attack time because this parameter and release time are just as important as ratio and threshold and gain in deciding the sound of your compression so we've got our audio and our compressor set up now to catch the loudest peak so soon as the volume of our track hits that fresh hold here it reduces the ratio but it doesn't do it instantly and this is what the attack time is it's how long it takes for the compressor to get from zero gain reduction to however much gain reduction you've dialed in with your ratio so in one sentence attack time is how quickly the compressor engages and reduces the volume of the incoming audio so if the attack time is set to 10 milliseconds and our audio hits that fresh hold it will take 10 milliseconds for the compressor to go from zero to fully engage again depending on our ratio and as I'm sure you can imagine this makes a huge difference and the main reason we use attack time is to decide how much of the transient the attack of the note slips through the compressor before it kicks in now when we're talking about milliseconds we're obviously talking on a very very small level kind of micro level so one or two milliseconds sounds like very very little but when you take a guitar and you've got your plectrum in one hand and the string in the other and you attack the guitar the sound of the plectrum hitting the note and that note beginning is going to be our transient now of course that's instant so if our compressor was set to look ahead and it was zero milliseconds it could predict that and reduce the volume but what we actually do is we set it to 10 milliseconds or thereabout so that when the attack of the string happens that slips through the compressor before it reduces the sustain the rest of the note so the attack time that we choose you can think of it as how much of the attack and the transient that we're letting slip through the compressor the attack time that you choose relies a lot on the song the instrument there of course no presets for each instrument you just need to experiment but as a general guideline it's better to have a slower attack time than it is to have a faster attack time so your attack time should be nearer 40 milliseconds then it should be 2 4 milliseconds and this means that the transients slips through but then the rest of the note is compressed and this is how we make an more natural sound otherwise if the attack time is too fast it sounds overly compressed and unnatural sometimes you might want a fast attack if the plectrum or the attack of the guitar is too much and it's too aggressive and you want to reduce that a bit you could use a quicker attack time so that it catches those transients and reduces them in volume as well but in most cases a slower attack time nearer forty milliseconds will sound a lot more natural and musical with vocals it does work slightly differently and we want to use a quicker attack time because slow attack time sound unnatural and odd so with vocals and voice you want to keep it between 2 and 10 milliseconds and then the other time-based parameter that we have is release time this is sometimes referred to as okay and this is essentially the opposite of attack time it's how long the compressor takes to disengage now release time is just as important as a tack time yet is so often overlooked and if the release time is too quick the compression will sound really unnatural in our musical but if the release time is too slow the compressors always engaged because it takes so long to release and this again sounds overly compressed and it just means that the compressors always engage you have no dynamic variation the best way to adjust your release time is to tweak it and change the setting until it sounds natural and breathes with the rhythm the tempo of the song now you can use the meters as well to watch that it goes back to zero between bars and between snare hits for example and as long as the compressor is breathing with the song and it's not staying compressed and it's not going back before the notes finished that's when you know you've got it right as with attack time it's better to be slow than it is fast and you want to be nearer 60 milliseconds than 6 milliseconds now that you know what attack and release time are let's take a quick look at a graph that will give you a graphic representation of how they work on the y-axis here we can see level and this is probably in DB so we can see the audio is starting at zero and then across the x-axis we've got time so as soon as that dotted red line goes above the threshold to +9 decibels of C the compressor is engaging and in this gray area we can see the attack phase and you can see it takes the whole attack phase for the compressor to reduce the audio from plus 9/2 plus 6 decibels and then we move towards the release phase and as soon as the audio drop back below the threshold the compressor is still applying 6 sorry 3 decibels of reduction so when the audio initially drops down to zero you can still at sea a still at minus 3 but it takes the whole release phase which is our release time for that dotted red line which is the output level to go back to zero decibels which is where the compressor Stockton gauging and the compression is no longer reducing the gain of the output audio so there you go there the five key parameters so now I'm going to show you the two main approaches that you can use one involves using the fresh hold to make sure you can really hear the exact difference that you're making with the compressor and the other way is to start off with a really high ratio and it has a similar effect it just lets you dial in your attack time and your release time before moving back your ratio of fresh hold to normal settings so let's go into that let's jump into Pro Tools and I'll show you how to do those two approaches now let's go over the two ways two techniques that I'd recommend for applying compression to vocals instruments absolutely everything first of all I'd go to what I think roughly would work so for an instrument that'd be 40 attack 60 release it could be very different generally on bass I'll go faster but kind of go to the right ballpark it's okay to use presets to get you in the right kind of area that's absolutely fine just don't put on a preset and then leave it but the first thing I do is I'd go to roughly the right setting so we're doing a vocal here so I've got six attack and 60 release approach number one is to bring the threshold down really low and what this means is that the compressor is constantly engage and then I can tweak my attack time on my release time and the ratio until I've kind of got a sound that I'm happy with obviously it's going to sound really over compressed and really OTT but then when I bring the threshold back up I'll already know how it's going to sound and you don't want to do this too much it's kind of like mixing in solo but if you want to zoom in for a bit and kind of have a listen or you're struggling to just hear the subtle changes this is a really good way to do it so what I'm going to do now is on this vocal I'm going to bring the threshold really low so you can hear how compress it is and I'm going to tweak my attack time and release time and then I'm going to bring the threshold back up so first of all let's have a listen with that really low threshold of other things that I said hi later spammer here here really over compressed but this means that the compressor is fully engaged and it's working really hard so we can hear our changes to attack time so now I'm going to go through and just change the attack time release time a bit so you can hear really clearly how that affects the sound of the compressor of other things that I said hi later spammer here yay of other things that I said hard lay to rest by my head yet of other things that I said hard later rest by my head yeah so I'd keep doing that I'm not fully happy with that sound but just to show you you could tweak with that fresh hold and then when I bring it back up which I'm going to do next you already know how that compress is going to sound so let's have a listen now with the fresh hold back at a normal kind of level of other things that I said hi later spammer here yeah so now we're back to kind of a normal point and we know how our attack time and release time I'm going to sound so that's the first approach the second approach is to start with a really high ratio because this means that we can again clearly hear how the compressor is acting and engaging before dialing back our ratio so we'd start with a normal threshold so I'm going to leave that where it is and then we'd bring our ratio up really high I mean experiment with how high but let's bring the knee down as well I'm going to have it around fifty to one so this is really extreme but again this will let me clearly hear my changes to attack time release time so first of all I would tweak the threshold so let's do that I'm going to just adjust the threshold until I can see that is not squashing it too much and we get into movement on the game reduction but at the same time is the thresholds not to higher that the compressors not even being engaging so let's tweak that I'll start with really low so you'll see what it looks like when it's too low of other things that I said you can see there it's engaged with time and if it was too high of other things that I said hi ladle now you can hear that the compressors not engaging at all nothing's happening so I took that let's have a listen and I'll adjust this so I'm happy with it of all the things that I said hi later spammer here yay of other things that I share hi later so there we go and then I'd go through and still with a really high ratio adjust the attack time until I'm getting enough of the transients for you and because we're doing vocals it's slightly different but the next step would be to start with a low attack time and dial it back until you're happy with the amount of attack and transient slipping through and then the final thing to do would be to adjust the release until it's breathing with the track and working with rhythm and tempo the song as I said earlier and once you've done both of those things it's time to dial back your ratio until you have the right amount of compression and the right amount of gain reduction so that's a pH number 2 starting with a really high ratio and then bringing it back down tip number one start with an attack time of 40 milliseconds and a release time of 60 milliseconds now remember that these just guidelines is purely a starting point to get you in about the right area not too quick not too slow like I said earlier it's better to err on the slow side when it comes to attack time and in no way will these settings work for every instrument but start here experiment and use your ears to find the sweet spot tip number two is to start with an attack time of 6 milliseconds on vocals now I just said that to start with attack time of 40 but that's for instrument vocals are very different with instruments we want the transient to get through and generally the notes are longer with vocals and voice we have to use a much quicker attack time so that it doesn't make our speech and our lyrics and the formation of our words sound odd or unintelligible you can still use a release time of 60 milliseconds though for vocals if you're recording spoken word I'd go a lot quicker maybe around 12 milliseconds but generally for vocals some vocals a good starting point is 6 milliseconds on the attack and still 60 milliseconds on the release let me just quickly show you how different 40 milliseconds sounds to 6 milliseconds on a vocal so this is really quite extreme compression I've got the threshold really low ratio is quite high especially for vocals so it's going to sound over compress but what I want you to listen for and watch for on the gain reduction meter here is that a lot of the the words and the the lyrics actually slip through before the compressor has a chance to react and it doesn't sound like the vocals are particularly compressed and the only way it does sound that they're compress is in an unnatural way so let's have a listen of other things that I said hi later spammer here yeah now do it without the compressor so you can see that how it sounded normally and then I'll flick it back on just watch for this little bypassed button here when it's orange it's the original and when it's like that that's with the compressor run of other things that I said hi of other things that I said hi later spammer here so it's not really catching there but you can see it is reducing the gain but it's not working with the vocal it's not working with the timing and dynamics of the vocal where as soon as I change this to 6 listen how it's obviously still really over compressed because of the ratio and the threshold but listen how the compressor reacts in time with the vocal of other things that I said hi later spammer here snake in here is actually reacting in time it's catching the vocal and then of course I'd bring my fresh hold right off of my ratio right down of other things that I said aha later a spammer here and again it's nowhere near perfect we've got lots of tweaking to do on that but you can hear there the big difference between 40 milliseconds and 6 milliseconds tip number 3 is that you don't always need to use compression don't feel the need to apply it to an instrument on vocal just because you feel you should you should never do anything when it comes to mixing or recording just because you feel like you should nothing should ever be automatic only use compression when it needs it on vocals it's much better to use volume automation if you have a vocal that varies and dynamics quite a lot go through and program in writing some volume automation to get those levels and then just use subtle compression as the final kind of finish to your vocal tip number four is that lots of subtle changes soon add up a few decibels of reduction here and there on different instruments will soon create a much bigger picture and if you apply a small amount of compression to 1050 in different tracks that's going to add up to a much bigger change so try and apply a compression the same way that a writer would use a paintbrush you don't use huge blocks of color or compression use lots of little paint strokes of color or compression to build up a bigger picture and something else to try is to if you want to achieve heavy compression without it sounding too heavy and you torn it it's our natural is to actually use multiple compressors in series I'm using slightly different settings on each that's going to sound a lot more music or natural than using really heavy settings on one single compressor tip number five is to try a compress in the bass guitar and the kick together and this works in a lot of cases only if you think the song needs it I'm going to show you in a second how it sounds but this can really glue them together add a lot more low-end consistence and this trick doesn't always work it completely depends on the song but if you feel like the song could benefit from it give it a go so now let me give you a really quick demonstration of compressing the bass and kick together now this mix is knowing it done I didn't want to apply any EQ or anything else that might color the sound so this is literally just a tiny bit of leveling and then I've just sent the kick and the bass to a buss applied quite heavy compression to it just so you can clearly hear how it sounds so I'm going to start off without any compression on the kick and base and this is just no compression tool on anything just a bit of levelling and then I'm going to engage this compressor here which is quite extreme settings again no in there perfect but I've made it obvious said you can hear the difference and all your hair is the bass and the kick kind of glue together really well lose a bit of the bottom end on the kick and it still need lots of tweaking but have a listen you now with the compressor on now it doesn't really suit this song I prefer it without it but you can hear the difference that it makes it brings the kick in the the bass really tight in because it's compressing them together just kind of glues them gives them same dynamics and this is a good little trick you can try if you think the song will need it in this case it absolutely doesn't now you know how it sounds tip number six is to try parallel compression on drums I like to use it to achieve really subtle natural compression other people like to use it to achieve a really heavy effect but in either way it can be a really handy trick this is also called the New York compression technique which is what Bobby R sinky coined it but this is essentially just parallel compression which is where you send all of your drums to a stereo buss you apply really heavy compression to that bus bring the volume right down the slowly bring the volume up so we can just about here and this heavily compressed version of the drums is sitting just underneath the real sound of the drums and this means you still get the dynamics of the main drums they're uncompressed but you have this constant compressed buss underneath that is really natural and then if you want to go heavy with it you can boost the highs and the lows on that bus and bring it up a bit more and that'll bring in a heavier effect but for nice subtle compression try parallel compression I'll show you now how that sounds so here I've got no EQ nothing on the drums just a bit of leveling I've sent them to my main drum buss and then I've also got that drum buss ending to a compression bus which you can see here I've got really heavy compression I'm really squashed ratio really high fresh hold really low it's going to sound awful in its own let's have a listen to it on its own here of course it sounds awful but let's bring it in underneath those clean drums and what this does is it gives some compression to the drums to make them more dynamically consistent a bit more power stick out in the mix a bit more without it sounding unmusical unnatural because we're not compressing the actual drum bass all we're doing is adding this kind of secret layer of compression underneath so I'm going to play this now and I'm going to slowly bring up the compressed drum buss and then you'll be able to hear how that sounds so let's do that here I made it really obvious there so you can hear the difference but now I'm going to kind of set it to a reasonable level again I'm going to not be as subtle as usual so you can hear the difference and then our mutant um you it so that you can hear how that subtle under layer of compression makes a difference and then I mentioned that you can go extreme with it so what I could do is if I wanted to make it quite an extreme effect and just make the drums really punchy and exaggerated I could go in cut a lot of the mids give it hi shelf low shelf we don't wanna boost anything too ridiculous so let's give it a cut there as well and then so load it would sound like this of course we're not going to listen to it solo so in the mix again bring it up so you can hear the difference that makes so you can hear is really obvious really OTT there but just to show you how that you can be used to add a lot of punch to your drums but like I said I like to use it subtly as just an underlayer of compression tip number seven is to try using subtractive EQ before compression and boosts afterwards and this is just one way one approach of how to order your plugins lots of people have different opinions really you should experiment see what works best for the song try swapping the mound sometimes it can sound better if you boost before compression especially if you want to have that effects where the compressor exaggerate those frequencies even more but generally a good guideline is to apply your EQ cuts before the compression because these are the bits you don't want so you get rid of them so that you've got your the kind of sound that you want and then the compressor will only exaggerate that and then after the compressor you add in your boosts for color and to make some slight tonal changes and this is generally how I start I'll go subtractive EQ my low-pass filter any surgical week.you that I'm doing then compression and then some really subtle wired free DB boosts if I want to emphasize any nice parts of the instrument or vocal so just something to try tip number eight is to choose a compressor effect or plugin and stick with it the stock plug-in on any da W is fine in most cases in repro it's great in Pro Tools it's great and logic it's great I can't think of any da w's where the stock compressor isn't sufficient but if you have a particular reason to go for something else that's fine just try and stick to the same compressor because then you'll learn it really well you'll learn what works even though they'll have the same parameters they're all going to work slightly differently and sound slightly different so before you start using a different compressor every time pick one use it exclusively and get to know it it will have a huge impact a huge positive impact on your mixes tip number nine is to use the meters on your compressor because these are a really good way to evaluate if you're using too much or too little compression of course primarily you should use your ears and you should never rely solely on sight on looking at waveforms or meters they can be really handy and one way you can use the meter to see if you've got too much compression or if your release time is too slow is that the gain reduction meter should always kind of breathe with the music and every few seconds or every few beats it should be going back to zero or near enough if you find that it's overlapping between beats or sections and it's not really breathing with the music then either your fresh holds too low and you've got the compressor engaged too much which at that point it means your compressor is essentially just printing down the whole volume of the track if it's never returning to zero or it means your release time is too slow because it's not returning to zero between every few beats so watch the meters and use that gain reduction meter to judge if you're using too much compression tip number ten is to match the output gain to the input and later on if you do want to increase the volume you could increase the output gain a bit more but what you want to do is use the make up gain to simply bring up the track to the same level as it was going in because all of this reduction this gain reduction in this compression that we're applying of course brings the volume down and that's why only we talked about using the game to match the volume back up and a lot of people will boost the volume but this lowers your Headroom you don't really need to if you want to get more volume at your track you can do that and mastering you want to keep as much Headroom as you can the sweet spots are around -18 BBFS for your average peaking at around minus six so you want your incoming signal to be about that apply your compression use the output gain and use the meters until it's about the same as it is going in and then this means as well when you bypass it to hear the difference to hear if your compression is actually improving the track you won't get fooled your ears won't get tricked into thinking it's better simply because it's louder so match the output gain to the input and I did mention this earlier which one is to reiterate that and then one final bonus tip which isn't necessarily a tip but simply an elaboration on another parameter is to use the knee setting if you want to increase the musicality of the compression or make it sound more natural and what the knee does is instead of on that graph earlier we saw as soon as it hits the fresh hold here the ratio comes off at an angle what I need does is it makes it gradually taper off so that it doesn't instantly go from one to one zero gain reduction to four to one it will instead to taper nicely and as it goes just over the threshold it will go to one point five to one and then as it goes higher over the threshold it will go to two to one and F 3 to one and then four to one so it's kind of that's why it's called uniques it looks like a knee and this makes it sound a lot more natural a lot more musical sounds really great on vocals especially spoken word as well so turn up the knee if you want to give it a more musical natural sound now let me quickly show you how the knee setting affects the audio so here we've got a vocal and I'm going to start with the knee off and I'm going to slowly bring the knee up and you'll hear how it becomes more natural I'm going to make it quite extreme so you can hear the compression really obviously but you'll hear as that knee which is this one here comes up and you can see it reflected on the graph there as it comes up it starts to sound more not your musical so let's start with it zero of other things that I said hi later RESP I'm a head of other things that I said Hart Lane rest by my hair he of other things that I said Hart Lane rest by my hair of other things that I said hi Lane rest by my head here huge difference it sounds really natural a lot less obvious a lot less compression with the soft knee and that's even still with it quite extreme settings I've got the ratio quite higher threshold really low and so you can hear how much your difference that makes we're coming to the end of this video but before you go I just wanted to reiterate something that I've mentioned once or twice and I really want to emphasize and this is the fact that the rules are meant to be been and maybe even broken this video is giving you a really good overview of compression and giving you some good guidelines and starting points but it's important to remember that at the end of the day with audio if it sounds good it is good and what you should try to do is train your own ears try and listen to small differences until you can really notice subtle changes and then what you'll be able to do is trust your is experiment with longer and shorter release an attack times experiment with much subtler compression now before you go as well if you head on over to my website which is in the link below I've got a really great cheat sheet that you can use you can download for free and you can use next time you apply compression and if you ever want to go back over anything that I've talked about in this video it's got a brief summary of each of the parameters and there's ten top tips summarized for you as well so that's really handy head on over and that's our free other than that please subscribe on YouTube for more tutorials such as this on all kinds of areas of home recording mixing mastering there's going to be lots to come and please leave a comment below tell me what you think of this video perhaps tell me what you struggled most with compression is it attack time or release time or if you have any particular questions about anything that I've mentioned this video please leave a comment I will do my best to reply to every single one and also if you've liked this video and you found it helpful give it a quick thumbs up as well thanks for watching I'm amazing I teach a lot more over at home studio Center which is the place where people go to get better at home recording so until next time I will see you then

Channel: Musician on a Mission

Views: 120,008

Rating: 4.9627852 out of 5

Keywords: compression, compress, audio compression, ratio, threshold, attack time, release time, how to use a compressor, compression 101, recording revolution, pro audio files, sonicsenseproaudio, recordingrevolution, joe gilder, home studio, mixing, mastering, compressors, compressor, music production, mixing music, compress audio, vocal compression, parallel compression, new york compression technique, musician on a mission, rob mayzes, moam, musicianonamission, home recording

Id: 4zGWCSObMCs

Length: 38min 47sec (2327 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/RufiosBrotherKev]

Thanks for posting; good comprehensive video

[u/[deleted]]

Love it, thank you!

[u/Telefunkin]

Thank you for posting this! I'm training a group on engineering. This will be great to show them!

[u/thatto]

I thought I was in /r/diy for a sec.