Compression-before and after

[aln]

May I suggest a before and after on the effects of compression? Sometimes it works for the betterment of the music, most often not. It is an topic I am most interested in.

PS-How about some pictures of your studio.

Regards
Aln

[Bruce B]

Hi Aln... first the easy part.

[Bruce B]

The way we use compressors is for color/texture. We do not try to use them to make things louder unless asked.
There are 5 parts of a compressor.

1. Threshold - at what point do you want the compresser to start working

2. Attack - How quickly do you want the compresser to start working.

3. Release - At what point do you want the compresser to stop working.

4. Ratio - How much over the threshold do you want gain reduction. Ratio of 6:1 will allow 6dB over threshold of input signal to be reduced to 1dB over threshold or 5dB of gain reduction.

5. Gain - Since you have 5dB of gain reduction in the above scenario, you want to add that back by using "make-up gain".

Some of the other things a compressor can do are limiting, side-chain, multiband and others I can talk about later.

So much has been said about the loudness wars and compressors have gotten a bad rap. Compressors can be good. I use a compressor on almost every album. Theres nothing like running a signal through some iron to give it some color. This is how I like to use compresssion.
Now if a client wants me to make something louder, I do not use over a 2:1 ratio at anytime. If I need more loudness, I use 2 compressors at 2:1
I have found if I use a compressor at more than 2:1 over a whole track, it starts to sound bad and you will get that "pumping" or that up/down volume change that you hear in most clubs.

I'll write more later......

[Steve Williams]

Great stuff Bruce

BTW not too shabby a collection of R2R's either

[firedog]

De-Compression.

Came across a sound professional who took his CD of McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" and did what he called "reverse compression". He gave me a copy. The original was so compressed it hurt my head after about 30 seconds. Acc'd to one tool I have, it had a Dynamic range of about 6db.

The "decompressed" version sounded a bit flat, but was much better to my ears. I could actually sit and listen to the album. Acc'd to the same tool, the dynamic range of the altered file was about doubled.

I'm not an engineer. What do you think he did to his copy of the files to get that result?

[FrantzM]

De-Compression.

Came across a sound professional who took his CD of McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" and did what he called "reverse compression". He gave me a copy. The original was so compressed it hurt my head after about 30 seconds. Acc'd to one tool I have, it had a Dynamic range of about 6db.

The "decompressed" version sounded a bit flat, but was much better to my ears. I could actually sit and listen to the album. Acc'd to the same tool, the dynamic range of the altered file was about doubled.

I'm not an engineer. What do you think he did to his copy of the files to get that result?

I would be interested in such a software.. Heck! I would care for the software equivalent of the Phase Linear Autocorrelation stuff. Some RnB, Rock and and Pop re-issues are atrocious and most of what comes out today from the hit factories are the same: No dynamics and loud ... is there such a software? I know that once compressed the original is lost but if I can make it more listenable that would be OK .. Free would be preferred