Why and How to use Compression in REAPER

[Music] hi i'm kenny joya welcome to another one of my tutorials in this video i'm going to show you why and how to use compression in repair now this is the fourth video in a series we're doing that focuses on common effects we use in our productions and how to use them in reaper but i've made effects videos before the difference in this series is i don't want to just focus on how to use these effects but also why in this video we're going to focus on compression compression is the process of reducing a signal's dynamic range dynamic range is the difference between the loudest and quietest parts of an audio signal we need to reduce the dynamic range so that our instruments sound natural in a mix for example if our singer sings softly that vocal will get lost and overpowered in a dense mix but if our singer starts to belt out very powerful notes those would overpower our mix so compression fixes this by adjusting the quieter parts to be louder and the louder parts to be quieter basically reducing the dynamic range of the performance this can also be used as an effect to make instruments like drums really pump and sound more aggressive while also reducing their dynamic range so let's start with some drums i have a project right here with some drums we have a kick a snare a pair of overheads and a pair of room mics let's hear it let's start with the kick let's sew it let's go to the track effects and go to the reaper effects and let's choose the compressor rear comp which is a compressor that comes with reaper and it looks like this i'm going to turn on auto makeup gain so to keep the level even then we can adjust the threshold to decide how much gain we're reducing and we'll see that on this meter now i have the ratio set to four to one which means for every db that our signal goes above the threshold the gain is reduced by this ratio so if our signal was normally 4 db louder now it's only 1 db louder so that's how it reduces our dynamic range let's hear it before and after now we can also adjust the attack and release the attack setting decides how quickly the compressor reacts to the signal so if we make it slower the transients or the percussive sounds will be more likely to get through before they're compressed well if we make it really fast nothing will get through and the compressor will respond immediately the release setting is how quickly after the signal goes below the threshold that the compressor stops reacting or compressing this will be easier to hear when we compress the room mics a bit later but if we make the release really slow watch what happens on the meter the gain reduction stays on for a while but if we make the release really quick the gain reduction stops very quickly after the signal goes away let's hear our snare we'll tear the compressor to the snare rear comp turn on auto makeup gain [Music] adjust the attack and the release before [Music] and after let's hear it all together now typically i don't compress the overheads but i usually compress the rooms but instead of using the rear comp compressor for this i'm going to use a js plug-in called 1175 compressor which also comes with reaper again we'll use 4-1 and adjust the threshold and the make-up gain together [Music] let's adjust the attack [Music] and the release [Music] [Music] let's hear it with the rest of the drums [Music] and let's hear it bypassed [Music] and back on now another thing we could do is we can compress all the drums together as a group let's make a new track move it up here let's name it and make it a folder so now all these tracks are in this drum folder so if we compress this track it's going to compress all the drums as a group let's use the 1175 again [Music] before and after check out how much we can make this pump maybe a bit less let's compare and let's bypass everything and hear the [Music] difference it's pretty dramatic what we can do with a compressor now let's hear it with some vocals i have a vocal track right here let's hear it [Music] notice this section is quieter than this one the same with this one and this one is quieter than this one so the volume levels are very inconsistent [Music] so let's compress the vocal to make it sound more even let's use rhea comp again with a fast attack and release and 4-1 compression let's bring up the makeup game before and after it evens out the volume of the performance so that's pretty much it that's why and how to use compression in reaper i hope you learned something hope you can use it and i'll see you next time thanks bingo boys let's go

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 8,825

Rating: 4.994771 out of 5

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Id: xwFigzGaWyI

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021