Mix Buss Compression (The Right Way) - RecordingRevolution.com

hey friend Graham here from recording Revolution dot-com today let me show you how to glue your tracks together glue your mix together using what we call mix buss compression simply putting a compressor on your mix bus which is the same as your master fader and running your whole mix through it you can get a little more glue a little more polish and a little more excitement out of your mix a subtle but beautiful effect that's very common by Pro mix engineers all the time it's how I grew up learning how to mix and it's something I still continue to do to this day so you can do this with any compressor my favorite is the waves ssl master buss compressor and this mimics the compression on an ssl console an ssl 9000 it's they were brilliant to put a compressor on the console at the very end of the whole section of channel so you everything gets dumped into this and you can turn it in or out so it can be off if you don't want it in but if you want it in the circuit you hit that button on the console by default this has already turned on because really in Pro Tools and da W land we use bypass buttons up here for the actual plugins so what you want to do and the goal of this is to creat a little more punch like I said glue your tracks together a little bit this isn't going to be a massive change so if you're looking for a massive magical change you're in the wrong place no mixing tricks should really give you massive magical change they should all give you good nice subtle changes that add up together and this is one of them what I want to do is show you how to do it right and how to do it wrong first thing that most people do that I think is the backwards way to do it that's the wrong way to do it is add it at the end you actually want to mix through this from the beginning so if I've got a mix here and I've already got you know the tracks kind of balanced but no plugins yet that's the time you want to bring this in so you want to insert your favorite compressor on your master fader where your whole mix is going through and in this case I put the waves as a cell master buss compressor here now by default it's going to look something like this and you can tell if you look closely here that this compressor already adds 3 dB you've gained and its default position it's it's awful that means it's just gonna make your mix ladder so you don't want that you want that to be zero and then also you're gonna have to just mess with these settings because these settings by default are not gonna be good in my opinion for what you want what you want to do is start with the ratio put it at a two to one ratio to start unless you're using mixing really aggressive music really really heavy rock really really heavy rap or hip-hop start with two to one otherwise go to four to one if you have a little bit more aggressive music I got pretty chill music here take a listen [Music] [Music] my heart's with those records okay chill music so I'm going to keep it a 2 to 1 second we want to look at the attack one thing that we need to do is get a nice slow attack okay and I say 10 milliseconds or slower 30 can be fine but 10 is usually fast enough to catch the peaks and be usable but slow enough to let most of the peaks still come through so you're not clamping down on the audio and killing your dynamics second you want to do is you want to release as quickly as possible you don't want to keep this clamp too down that the next transients can't come through you want to open this compressor back up as quickly as possible so I always set it to a fastest release that the compressor will give me once those are in place two to one ratio slow attack fast release I start to look at the gain reduction meter and dial the threshold knob up or down accordingly until I start to see on the loudest part of the song meaning usually the hook of the chorus you know 1 2 dB maybe 3 of gain reduction on the biggest hits usually the kick and the snare or the bass hits take a look well let's turn it on first [Music] [Music] that's actually perfect I like where that needle is I wouldn't want any more compression than that the final step is then we take the make up gain and we turn it back up because that's the point of compression you're using the compressor to turn down the loud Peaks usually the kick and the snare and the bass just by a little bit and only when they hit and then we're gonna bring up the rest of the mix a little bit to match it since we're doing on average probably one DB of gain reduction I'll probably bring the make up gain up one DB and we'll try to turn the bypass on and off and make sure not making the whole mix louder peak volume wise but just a little more loud average volume because you are bringing up the low level stuff which makes a little bit more exciting [Music] [Music] my [Music] a little bit louder I'll dial it back alright so here we go take a listen before [Music] [Music] [Music] in an old battle turned up loud it's when I felt all it's where I started [Music] these six strings and [Music] really nice real subtle you're getting a little more kick drum thump and it's just gluing what it's doing when I say glue it's taking the peaks you know the the dynamic range of the mix and reducing it just ever so slightly so it's taking the loudest moments and making them a little bit quieter you should the kick and the snare hits like I said and then bringing up everything else in the mix a little closer to it and it's just a nice squeezing of the mix where it won't really reduce any of the dynamics in a negative way it just sort of pushes everything more up front again here's without for a little bit [Music] [Music] [Music] very subtle but very nice now where people go wrong with mix buss compression is either too fast of an attack and too low a threshold [Music] so it's making it quieter so they would probably turn up the make up gain to match so here it is before nice and natural [Music] compressed it was too much play those rocket sounds [Music] it made the drums too small it like you lose the excitement of the mix and that's like Nottoli not even awfully done if you had a higher ratio slower release right then you were my first my heart's with this record it's that's where it's lost its punch without any compression it's better to play you can hear it like squeezing the audio every time the kick and the snare comes it makes the mix smaller and smaller that's doing it wrong that's not we want we want that nice slow attack that fast release we want a lower ratio for the one's not bad that's not really the culprit it's usually the attack releasing the threshold and we want to make it a little more natural I'll go a little more noticeable for you but still usable but mix of a mix plus compression my heart's with this record get where I came it's where I started [Music] six strings and [Music] yeah there inna it's very very nice kick-drum comes up excitement comes up it's about the same peak volume that's how you want to use mix buss compression and you want to set this up at the beginning of the mix because you're gonna hear it now on everything else and it will affect your mixing decisions and then in a good way you won't need as much vocal compression or as much kick drum compression or as much parallel drum compression or whatever you end up using because it's already getting compressed a little bit and that is the point is it affects your mixing decisions in a strategic way if you were to add this at the end of a mix sure you can enhance it a little bit but it kind of defeats the purpose you've done all this work and then you trying to add another compressor doing this here actually can reduce how much compression you need on the individual tracks and it effects everything you do and it sort of informs your mixing decisions and you get the benefit of that glue from moment one so there it is mix buss compression how to glue it together with a compressor you can use any compressor you like stock compressors it doesn't matter this one's just kind of known for that mix buss compression sound and it's one of my favorites and I've used it for years and years and years because I've used the real thing and I know what it's supposed to do and I like it but start with your compressor that you have on hand and follow those same settings or in the ballpark and you will be in good shape now if you want more compression techniques and compression tips and tricks I've got a whole compression cheat sheet for you it's my seven step checklist or cheat sheet on how to use compression in your mixes whether it's here on the mix bus or on individual tracks it's gonna break down everything for you what a compressor is how to think about compression and more depth how to simplify compression for you and give you some steps that I follow every time I reach for a compressor in my mix again it's a seven step framework and it's a free simple PDF you will read it really quickly and then just keep it reference it whenever you're using compression it's just my gift to you to kind of help you out as a little companion to this video you can grab it for free at compression 7 dot-com compression number 7 calm I'll put the link here in the video and in the description box below thanks for downloading it thanks for watching as always I'll see you on another video real soon

Channel: recordingrevolution

Views: 223,016

Keywords: mix buss compression, master buss compression, ssl master buss compressor, waves ssl g-comp, waves ssl master buss compressor, mix bus compression, mix bus compressor, mixing through compression, put a compressor on your master fader, two buss compression, 2 bus compression, home studio, recording revolution, recordingrevolution

Id: TIYNgEysfDU

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 10 2019