51m0n

I like a touch of compression (no really I do, you'd never know though), on all the time. Other than that the rest is purely so I can make stupid noises innit

If only.....

[quote name='Al Heeley' timestamp='1329835433' post='1548143'] Thanks - I'm not a ferrari man, rather more second hand 3-series BMW really; I think all the electronic differences in method are lost on me for now. Can you suggest a relatively cheap (sub £50) entry-level compressor that is worth a play with, that might be ok for gigging? I don't want to spend £140 - £200 on s'thing that I'm not convinced works for me but £40 - £ 50 is worth a punt to dip my toe in, so to say. Is it false economy if all the cheap comps are really pants? Are there any half decent cheap models worth a go? Do you have to spend over £100 to get something decent? [/quote] I drive a third hand BMW 3 series Personally I think £50 really is on the low side, and a pedal is going to make life hard for yourself regarding metering. The Optostomp gets a lot of love as a fairly generic somewhat transparent optical squishing device, a lot of people like the EBS for what it can bring to the table. If it were me I'd look for a second hand Alesis rack comp and learn how to use a comrpessor, and what compression sounds (and doesnt sound) like using its far better metering to help me understand what I was doing. Any comp around £50 is going to be a false economy except as a teachin aid IMO, expect a pretty noisy circuit that to some degree badly effects your tone (ie with no compression set - ratio 1:1 and threshold set all the way up the damn thing adds noise and lessens some area of the frequency spectrum). Or it just has a pants sounding 'action' or is a one trick wonder. Eventually you will have to move it on. The most flexible circuit is a VCA, the lowest entry level is really over the £100 mark (more liek £150+) for something you would be happy with for good. Having said that if I wouldnt record with it I wouldnt use it live, some people have a different (lower) expectation on live kit though (cant see why personally but they do). One thing though, dbx did a desk top compressor (MC6) that Silveroxnik got one of off ebay for well under £50, it may well be that the form factor is so unpopular that people discount it out of hand, but for what ever reason it was seriously cheap, I set it up for him a couple of bass bashes ago and really like the sound of it, its a VCA has decent metering and doesnt wreck your tone. If you can find one for a silly price get it, it woudl certainly be a decent teaching aid and is good enough to last a while in a rig IMO.

[quote name='Al Heeley' timestamp='1329827263' post='1547922'] its the knobs and the lights really, especially the lights. But really, how can you say they all do different things? Surely they are sold as compressors so they all compress. If I spend good money on a compressor then when i took it home it sounded like a flanger or a whammy pedal I'd be most perturbed. [/quote] Different circuits, based upon different electronics to offer different solutions to the same problem. They all compress/limit but the way they do it can be very different. An opto compressor uses a light source/light receptor to indicate the volume of the signal, the speed at which the light source gains and loses brightness has a lot to do with the characteristic sound of that type of compressor. An led behaves very differently from an electro-luminescent panel so there are many variations in this type of solution alone. (Joe Meek compressors) A true tube compressor uses the change in the grid to cathode voltage to drive the gain riding (called a vari-mu circuit), different tubes have different behaviour here too. (La-2a, MB Compressore) A FET compressor can be very very fast, but because FET circuits cannot cope with high current they are prone to noise. (1176) The most benign circuit is often consider to be a straight forward VCA, it tends to be clean, can get pretty fast and is often very transaparent. However a lot of what a compressor can bring to the table are the side effects of the other solutions, so even a VCA is not really the be all and end all. (Compounder) Moreover the very nature of how and where in the circuit the compression is applied drastically changes the 'action' of the compressor. A feed-forward circuit uses the input signal to drive the volume regulation. A feedback design uses the result of the original signal after the voltage control to drive the volume regulation. The behaviour of the two systems is completely different. A cart horse will get you from A to B, sometimes you will find the journey is better taken in a Ferrari, or even a tank....

+1 on the e835, great mic, think of it as a differnet stand in for the ubiquitous sm57, where as the e845 has more eq built in and os closer to an sm58 in where its aiming. Both great value for money mics IME.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1329736239' post='1546429'] Compressors don't cut frequencies, are you sure it's not just a characteristic of the amp? (The RH450 has a low pass filter) As for the best compressor... This would probably do quite a good job [url="http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/tube-tech-smc-2bm-multiband-mastering-opto-compressor--65892"]http://www.dv247.com...mpressor--65892[/url] Only half joking tbh, I've recently started to wonder, why don't people use studio compressors instead of pedal based ones? Rackmount and away! [/quote] If the compressor's attack is too fast it will appear to be dark, since the transient will nolonger be as loud and therefore the perception is that the treble is turned down. Effectively this is the compressor dramatically changing the frequency response of the signal. And if you're ever looking for the most ridiculously expensive compressor of all time its usually considered to be the Fairchild 670 - it goes for upwards of $25k, and every year of use you'll need to swap out the 8 matched 6386 tubes with a matched NOS set, which on their own will set you back a couple of grand. Not one for live then

Crikey, they sound like a reasonable bunch working over the weekend to put that right. Nice one!

Take the batter skin of each drum. Full drum with a towel big enough to take up 3/4 of the drum Replace batter head and tune. Instance drums at 40%volume - drummer will hate you Seriously a kit set up like this (play with the amount of stuff in the drums, start with some tea towels and move up) can really save you. Really though the drummer ought to be able to keep it together. If you all just turn the heck down by 1/3, and the drummer uses lighter sticks and a lighter touch you probably shouldnt need to go down this route at all.

What did you go and stick yours in to then?

Seems to be a likely case of snot build up....

If I were to suggest a DI it woul dbe a [url="http://www.bssaudio.com/productpg.php?product_id=17"]BSS AR-133[/url] You can get them for less than a tonne and they are superb.

Oh man, wtf! Deep breath mate, deep breath, then go and kick something....

A compressor, if set up properly can do any of a lot of things for you (set up dependant), including, but not limited to:-[list] [*]Even out the apparent volume in a mix of different strings (better fixed with the instrumetns setup/string gauges IMO) [*]Even out the apparent volume in a mix of different techniques (ie make it so that tapping is as loud as fingerstyle in the mix) [*]Help win the 'volume war' in a mix between bass/kick/snare - often by keeping the bass louder after the initial transient, such that it can be heard without fighting the kick and snare in the same way, that is to say the energy of the bass remains after the energy of the other instrumetns has disappeared [*]Smooth the attack (initial transient) of your bass sound - for that deep rich smooth full punchy but not aggressive bass sound [*]Boost the attack (initial transient) of your bass sound - make your bass sound ultra aggressive and edgy [*]Make the bass sound darker [*]Make the bass sound brighter [*]Increase the level of a sustained note [*]Decrease the level of a sustained note [*]Help protect your speakers/amp [*]Deliver a more consistent level to your fx - this is particularly useful for fx that track your pitch [*]Improve the way your dynamics are appreciated by the audience - no really, the clues to the dynamics of your playing are as much the difference in the harmonic nature of the initial transient vs the sustain phase. When you pluck hard the initial transient is very bright, when you pluck softly it is very dark. If when you pluck softly you disappear in the mix you just arent heard. If you pluck softly but are heard people will hear you plucking softly. Compressors help you be heard even when you play softly, they dont stop you playing softly or being heard to play softly (psychoacoustics are a hell of a headful) [*]Give you the feel of a warm tube amp when playing a solid state rig - by dialing in compression similar to that of a tube amp it is possible to make the expereince of a solid state amp feel close to that of a clean tube amp - some people love this [*]Make your fretless sound like the biggest bass on earth - if you play like Tony LEvin, then maybe.... [*]Make your slap sound totally rad - errrr, not so much.... [/list] You may also enjoy [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/167088-best-compressor/page__view__findpost__p__1539908"]this post[/url]... A compressor is a tool for controlling the envelope of your instrument as much as the dynamics.

I've not heard it, so any comments are based upon blurb and reviews. The metering is clearly above standard for a pedal, big tick there! The lowest ratio is 4:1 though, and that is way too high for me, I spend alot of time using very gentle comrpession ratios with a very low threshold to helpo disparate techniques sit well together and for maximum transaparency, so big cross from me there... Unless its a true FET design any claims that its based upon the UREI 1176 should be taken with a healthy pinch of salt, although the attack times are really fast (possibly too fast for my liking) too, making it very much a compressor on the limiter side of things (which is consistent with an 1176), and the demos I have heard sound very dark which would align with the fast attack, but not with the UREI comparison. This may suit you down to the ground, the metering seems a cut above etc, but the attack and ratio controls dont offer much in the way of possibilites for extremely transparent compression I think.... All without having had a play on one so I could be talking total do do.... I think Bongomanias[url="http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/mxrbass.shtml"] review is well worth a read[/url]

If I had to buy a pedal I would be struggling to decide between several. The MB Compressore, its a 'real' tube compressor, in that it actually is a vari-mu circuit, rather than say an optical comp with a tube preamp. It isnt overly noisy and has enough controls to fine tune the action to match your playing well. And it sounds great. The Joe Meek FloorQ, I love Joe Meek compressors, they are fat juicy optical compressors that just sound fantastic to me, I've used this compressor in rack form (in the TwinQ) enough in the studio to know it would be fine for me if a pedal was the way I had to go. I would certainly put the FEA labs optiFET on this list of well worth a try too. All of these offer bags of controls and nearly nothing in the way of metering, so you are going to struggle to figure out what they are doing, and how much they are doing it.

I've not used a 3632, I would expect it to be on the noisey side for a studio device, although probably ok for live. If its anything like a 3630 though it will be a perfectly good way to learn how to set up a compressor, it will have all the important controls, reasonalby good metering (ie way better than a pedal!) and a limiter to catch those mega spikes when you open the attack up and whack the knackers out of it. As a cheap device to really learn with I think you could do a lot worse. And thanks for the props chaps!

Punk was utterly essential!

Oh man, terrible news about the gear, amazing recovery wrt the performance, troopers one and all, well done!

[quote name='leftyhook' timestamp='1328822925' post='1533401'] Does one require a degree to understand the working of compressors? whenever I have tried one live, the sound just disappears when the band kicks in! Not a clue have I. [/quote] You need to understand the functions of the device, how they interelate, and have a rough idea of what you want to do and how to go about it. Kind of like driving a car. You dont need a degree. I've said it before, and I stand by it, anyone wanting to try and figure out how to get the best out of a compressor needs to get one with good metering, so a meter for gain reduction, input and output would be best (5 LEDS each would be super duper), a clip light and limiter engage light are also useful. That amount of metering pretty much rules out pedal compressors. Dont get me wrong there are some great pedal comps about (MB Compressore, Joe Meek FloorQ, and a few others) one or two even make a stab at emulating the fantastic LA-2A kind of circuit, but if they dont have metering you cant tell what they are doing without a huge amount of experience, you certainly cant hear it until its too late and doing too much. DBX160A, Focusrite compounder, Mindprint T-comp, Rane DC24, Aphex 661 all offer all the controls, decent metering and decent signal to noise at reasonable prices. If you get the chance to pick one up cheap on ebay take it, you prabably wint be disappointed. If you want less controls and are serious (really serious) then UREI 1176 or a Teletronix La-2a are the end of the argument, full stop, done and dusted, they are [i]the[/i] best, if you ask 25 top studio engineers what two compressors they couldnt live without 25 of them would say an 1176 and an La-2a. You better have very very deep pockets though. The two complement each other, the 1176 is a FET design and incredibly fast (its attack goes as slow as 20ms, which is where most compressors start, down to a couple of hundred microseconds), so its amazing at catching the transients, and is quite bright tonally even with that ultra fast attack. The La-2a is an optical tube compressor using an electro luminescent panel rather than an LED or bulb, it is a prgram dependant design with an attack around 10 ms and a complex release around which gets to 50% in around 60ms and then takes between a half and 5 seconds to completely release. Nothing else really has the same curve. In contrast to the 1176 it really warms things up. The two together are often used on vocals for dealing with different parts of the envelope of the sound. So what the devil do the controls do and wher edo you start? I posted [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/30431-is-a-compressor-of-any-real-value-in-fast-rock-music/page__view__findpost__p__1148269"]this originally about a year ago[/url] so its probably time to dust it off:- [i]Compressor basics:- Ratio and Threshold TOGETHER determine the amount of compression. A low ratio and a very low threshold results in the same amount of compression as a higher ratio and higher threshold, but it will often be less overtly audible. Aim to get a solid 3dB of compression going on to begin with (you may not even really hear this) Make up gain, use this to bring your compression level up to unity with no compression, switch the compressor in and out whilst you adjyst. Any time you change the ratio and threshold you need to fiddle with this. Attack determines how much of the initial transient comes through by delaying the compression - start off with it pretty open (at least halfway up the dial) whilst playing with the threshold ratio combo, then close it down until you hear it choppni ght eattack of thenote down. Now we have a stylistic/taste decision - if you want to be super smooth set it really short (note that too short may bring in some nasty distortion artifacts), if you want to be super aggressive open it up, BUT if you open up the attack with a big bunch of compression the make up gain is going to send the transient through the roof, watch your output level! This is why we need a limiter to control the attack too.... Release, determines how fast the compressor disengages. In order to allow the attack of the next note through the compressor must have disengaged, if you play fast and want a big attack then you need it to disengage quickly. Watch for pumping or distortion artifact sif it si too fast. If it is too slow you wont hear the attack on the next note. Start of with a couple of hundred ms and play with it from there. Knee - a soft knee compressor comes up to the ratio you set over a couple or 3dB below the threshold level, they sound far less obvious than a hard knee compressor, which may, or may not, be what you want. Practice setting all kinds of different sounds and learn what they controls do, run music through it not just bass and set up the controls on full mixes, just to learn what it does better. Train your ears to hear the compressor and setting it up becomes trivial, and then you get heard, win the best gigs, and all the lovely ladies will want to get to know you.... Simples![/i] The other year at the SE Bass Bash URB was hitting a solid constant 6dB of compression on my rig whilst playing his bass, and couldnt even tell the comrpessor was on, he couldnt feel it 'sucking' dynamics, he could play with all his usual feel and with ease, the sound was just punchier and more consistent. In a mix 6dB of gain reduction on a bass signal is isgnificant, definitely the difference between sitting right in the mix all the time and not being heard for instance. That should be enough to get you going...

Sorry that was directed straight at Monckyman, I was interested in exactly how he uses the two mics he mentions to mic a rig. Specifics such as distnce from mic to cone, angle of mic to cone, which part of the cone the mic will point at, how far from the center of the cone the mic is. The real nitty gritty. It is relevant, promise!

How do you go about setting up a mic on a bass cab and kick drum? Just wondering (seriously)...

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1329200952' post='1538584'] I occasionally try some compression/limiting but not routinely (my recordings are never properly mastered either, just mixed down to mp3), Even though I know what it does, I can't really hear it. I mix through headphones mostly; maybe that's an issue too! [/quote] 'Hearing' compression is a skill like hearing intervals (but different ) You dont need, and I wouldnt encourage you, to track with compression, since you dont find it easy to hear and aren't sure what you would want it to do (yet!). Its well worth your while though, taking a recorded track of bass and with any of a number of the long discussions on compression on here fire up a compressor (it simply has to be a vst with all the controls and great metering, none of those two knob jobbies are going to teach you enough about the tool) and play with the threshold, ratio, make up gain, attack and release parameters to get a better feel for what it is actually capable of and what the side effects are with different settings. Solo'ed you will really struggle to notice much going on, but in a mix you will find it far easier to hear the difference to the notes (more attack, longer sustain , more punch, evened out levels, smoothed attack, increased noise etc etc) that can be achieved with different settings. Although compression isnt essential to recording and mixing bass, its about as close to it as you can get, alongside its natural bedfellow eq. Until you can really grasp the functions of both tools within a mix you wont be able to get clarity and seperation in your mixes and will continue to be unhappy about the quality of your recorded sound. Mastering is a completely different subject and is not really relevant at all to this. Leave that for another (even more longwinded) discussion!

He's turning the volume down to 0, strumming a harmonic chord, then swelling the volume up, this is driving a long delay/reverb effect so you dont hear the tone disappear as he drops the volume each time. Clever and deeply powerful sound, makes the hairs on my neck stand up on end!

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