Roger2611 Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 I think it really depends on what you are playing on a song by song basis, in Yodaclub where I am using a Precision or a USA Stingray Sub straight into a Mark Bass LM3 I found the MXR compressor strangled all of the expression and feeling out of my playing, both me and the rest of the band hated it so it was sold...In the rock band Saving Amy, again a Precision into the LM3 I use a Boss GT6 effects pedal and find I use compression on most songs as the bass seems to have more punch with it in place...whether that is down to there being two guitars to contend with or just the style of music, I am not sure...so same set up, two different bands compression works for one and not the other. I don't use compression when actually recording the bass as I can't see a need for it at that stage however it will be added at the mixing mastering stage and for that I use a "TRacks" software compressor which is brilliant and gets used for drums, guitars and mastering....I have a nicer software vocal channel strip for the vocals. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 (edited) 7 hours ago, 51m0n said: Infamy infamy, they've all got it in for me... Not wanting at all to have it in for you, but did you not post recently on another thread that you had decided to stop using pedal board compressors? If I read that correctly (I may not have!) does that mean you're not bothering with compression in your signal chain at all before your cab, and gonna leave it all for the sound engineers to sort via the DI out? PS loved your 2011 "Compression 101" post btw which was linked to above. Great introduction to the subject! Could do with some more up to date compressor recommendations on there, but I guess that is what this thread is for! Edited June 17, 2019 by Al Krow 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 On 16/06/2019 at 09:00, xgsjx said: I use one when recording, but not live. If you're looking at getting a compressor, try & get one with a meter, it makes life sooo much easier. +1^^ to all of that. Makes complete sense to me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 Going into a TC450 so the input has a spectracomp in it. Pretty well always on. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 (edited) On 27/02/2019 at 10:47, 51m0n said: ... Now, for the first time in 25 years of playing I am considering not using a compressor because I might not need one all the time to get the sound I want and the playing feel I want. First time. Ever. It's not that the Trickfish compresses (at all) it's just such a truly phenomenal tone that I may well get away without the compressor at last. Found it Yeah totally agree: get yourself a decent, bass, amp and cab to help you deliver a great tone (of course, goes without saying that you'll also need to play well!) and you may well not need a comp to make up for 'perceived' deficiencies in your live sound. You'll be able to take the stabilisers off your bike and roam free. (Reaches for tin hat and runs for cover...😁) Edited June 17, 2019 by Al Krow 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 The two best compressors I've ever had were the one in my old Focusrite Trakmaster preamp, and the dual-band Trace one in the GP12SMX preamp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stub Mandrel Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 I used to have an Arion one, many years ago (still have the cardboard box it was in! - Now full of fishing lures and I haven't fished for over 20 years!) Bought a TC Forcefield - it was inexpensive but as well as compressing it sprinkled fairy dust all over the sound of the Peavey I was playing through a cheap amp in the shop. The tone improvement isn't as marked with my own gear, but it still works as a sort of 'better knob'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 I don’t use one either, but I do use a limiter, very sparingly, to give me a clear ‘bass line’ which I can lean on when digging in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 8 hours ago, ped said: I don’t use one either, but I do use a limiter, very sparingly, to give me a clear ‘bass line’ which I can lean on when digging in. If I recall correctly, ped, you use a Boss LM3? How do you have that set up in terms of threshold and compression so that it's used sparingly? I get that you will have a completely uncompressed signal below the 'threshold' dB level. If, like me, you and your band (and audiences!) no doubt appreciate the ability to add light and shade to set numbers via changes in the volume to take things right down / build etc. Ideally it would be great to have the freedom to deliver this volume contrast easily, whilst not having to 'fight' compression of the bass signal, but at the same time protecting against unwanted accidental volume spikes. Is that something you can easily achieve on your limiter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 16 minutes ago, Al Krow said: If I recall correctly, ped, you use a Boss LM3? How do you have that set up in terms of threshold and compression so that it's used sparingly? I get that you will have a completely uncompressed signal below the 'threshold' dB level. If, like me, you and your band (and audiences!) no doubt appreciate the ability to add light and shade to set numbers via changes in the volume to take things right down / build etc. Ideally it would be great to have the freedom to deliver this volume contrast easily, whilst not having to 'fight' compression of the bass signal, but at the same time protecting against unwanted accidental volume spikes. Is that something you can easily achieve on your limiter? Yeah I used to, but now I use a model of it (well, I think it's the LMB3, It's on my Roland VB99 and they call it 'Limiter' so probably is). Yes i set the threshold quite high then have the ration 1:infinity. You get a lot more besides that on the unit too, so I adjust the ratio, attack etc for each instrument I have. All the different comps in it sound different but if I set them up the same as the LMB they do the same job because they all have an adjustable ratio up to infinity. On some basses I set the ratio a bit lower, because the bass in question sounds quite even and compressed anyway so there's no need for such a hard 'shelf' however on for example a P with flats I like the limiter keeping me in lane so to speak and giving me that solid fundamental cutoff before you enter muddy 'woof' territory 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 2 hours ago, Al Krow said: If I recall correctly, ped, you use a Boss LM3? How do you have that set up in terms of threshold and compression so that it's used sparingly? I get that you will have a completely uncompressed signal below the 'threshold' dB level. If, like me, you and your band (and audiences!) no doubt appreciate the ability to add light and shade to set numbers via changes in the volume to take things right down / build etc. Ideally it would be great to have the freedom to deliver this volume contrast easily, whilst not having to 'fight' compression of the bass signal, but at the same time protecting against unwanted accidental volume spikes. Is that something you can easily achieve on your limiter? That is exactly what a limiter is for matey 😀 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 3 minutes ago, 51m0n said: That is exactly what a limiter is for matey 😀 Well yes, I get that, but my point is can a limiter distinguish between deliberately and accidentally playing loud? I'm struggling to see how it manages to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 2 minutes ago, Al Krow said: Well yes, I get that, but my point is can a limiter distinguish between deliberately and accidentally playing loud? I'm struggling to see how it manages to do that. It can’t - but if you know where it kicks in you can ‘lean’ on it if you so choose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 Ok so loud isn't that simple. If you are using a less forgiving preamp then having a limiter shave the loudest transients off the top can really help, also if FX go bonkers it can save your driver's.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 On 17/06/2019 at 17:08, Al Krow said: Not wanting at all to have it in for you, but did you not post recently on another thread that you had decided to stop using pedal board compressors? If I read that correctly (I may not have!) does that mean you're not bothering with compression in your signal chain at all before your cab, and gonna leave it all for the sound engineers to sort via the DI out? PS loved your 2011 "Compression 101" post btw which was linked to above. Great introduction to the subject! Could do with some more up to date compressor recommendations on there, but I guess that is what this thread is for! I said I'd try the Trickfish without my rack compressor. That head was a disaster for me in the end. Now using an EA iAmp Classic. Fab head, huge power. Used it in anger the other day, love it. But you know what it needs? A little bit of transient shaping to bring out the attack of each note just a hair.... Compressor will be back in da rack bro, you know it makes sense 🤩 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leschirons Posted June 18, 2019 Share Posted June 18, 2019 If you really want to get noticed, try the Jetco 50. Not as expensive as you may think and certainly makes a difference on stage. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 19, 2019 Share Posted June 19, 2019 22 hours ago, ped said: It can’t - but if you know where it kicks in you can ‘lean’ on it if you so choose. 'Lean' on it = put it in clean by-pass mode for the duration of any sections where you deliberately want to play loud and then re-engage to deal with spikes for the rest? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ped Posted June 19, 2019 Share Posted June 19, 2019 1 hour ago, Al Krow said: 'Lean' on it = put it in clean by-pass mode for the duration of any sections where you deliberately want to play loud and then re-engage to deal with spikes for the rest? No, it’s always on - ‘lean on it’ means play hard so the limiter kicks in, giving a nice clank. The threshold is quite high so it cuts in just where I want it to. Even then, you can’t ‘hear’ it as such, you just don’t hear a woolly distorted mess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted June 19, 2019 Share Posted June 19, 2019 So, as an aside, is there a reasonably priced dual channel (ie, independently compressing) compressor around? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgsjx Posted June 19, 2019 Share Posted June 19, 2019 On 18/06/2019 at 20:30, leschirons said: If you really want to get noticed, try the Jetco 50. Not as expensive as you may think and certainly makes a difference on stage. I just got one of these. Much less overspray. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted June 20, 2019 Share Posted June 20, 2019 16 hours ago, Al Krow said: 'Lean' on it = put it in clean by-pass mode for the duration of any sections where you deliberately want to play loud and then re-engage to deal with spikes for the rest? Mate you are missing the points of a limiter vs a compressor, I am not entirely sure this is because you don't 'get it' or because you are being deliberately obtuse I'll assume you don't get it and move on with:- Limiters vs Compressor 101 Or - why you might need BOTH a limiter and a compressor (oh crikey!) So, there are several very real differences between a device designed to primarily limit a signal and a device designed to compress a signal. They are:- Limiters are capable of far faster attack times than compressors (nano seconds) Limiters are never 'soft knee' compressors Limiters are capable of far higher ratios than compressors Limiters tend to measure instantaneous level rather than an aggregation of level over time (often RMS based) in order to achieve protection grade compression Limiters rarely have a make up gain, they are not about making things seem louder on average, they are about prevention of dangerous level spikes Dedicated limiters are almost always VCA or FET based, since these are capable of the fastest reaction to overloads Limiters set too heavy are really really obvious, and 'feel' terrible! They are things of subtlety only when used as nature intended There are similarities too:- Dedicated limiters have most of the same array of controls, threshold, attack, ratio, release Some limiters are pretty transparent, some are not, if you push any limiter too hard the artifacts become increasingly obvious, badly so Because limiters are so obvious people sometimes use them in the place of a compressor for the effect they produce, this is not necessarily a bad thing Little is better than lots almost always, unless you know what you are doing, like jazz you cant break rules if you don't know them, but if you don't try breaking them (with the knowledge of the potential issues) you never achieve anything new either Like a compressor a limiter in uneducated hands is almost always going to ruin everything.... So why would you need both a limiter and a compressor at the same time? Firstly you must really 'get' all the variables you have at your disposal when compressing. Secondly you must understand the nuances of many popular ways to use a compressor. This will lead you to understand why a limiter can also help a lot without actually causing any issues, or just ruin everything in the wrong hands. So we have threshold, attack, ratio, release and make up gain on a compressor. Setting a good obvious ratio (say 4:1) and a threshold where this is hit on almost all your notes (going for a Sledgehammer sort of effect type of sound) yeah your dynamics will be affected to an extent but you get a killer super fat tone right! Well, not necessarily, a big part of that tone is the pick attack at the start of the note, that transient spike is super cool and adds untold definition and brightness to an otherwise dark tone. The answer is to roll your attack back to at least 60ms, bingo super heavy tone, mega transient, brilliant! Nope not so fast cowboy, the compressor is catching everything after 80ms, it is crushing it to 1/4 its original volume, your make up gain then times your volume by about 4 to bring that level back up, but here's the nuance, that make up gain is not applied only when the compressor is actually compressing, it is just a general lift applied to the entire signal. So your transient is now massively uncurtailed next to the rest of the signal, it is going to hit your amp way harder than before and may even clip your preamp. You may not even hear it other than more brightness because a clipping transient tends to just sound a bit harsh or in some setting better than a not clipped transient, but that level is there and its going to end up hitting your drivers in a moment - uh oh! How do you solve for this? What you need is a really fast compressor that just prevents that transient from ever quite getting so loud as to cause an issue, but doesn't change the rest of the signal at all. A limiter does this, remember we have a fricking massive spike at the front of this signal now that we are just trying to take the edge off on the most exuberant notes, we need to measure this spike in terms of nano seconds to do this effectively so a standard compressor cant do it, it measures average level over the last n ms for a start! A real limiter will let you dial in a threshold that damps down that spike as it happens without you hearing that that is the case (super short signal bursts remember) typically the threshold will be at least 6dB higher than the threshold on the compressor, often more. The attack needs to be as close to instant as possible, the release can be quite short though, say 10ms to cover for the entire transient once the level dips below the threshold. The ratio must be at least 10:1, real limiters are more like 20:1. No make up gain at all, this is a wall not step ladder! The result is even more consistent level, the ability to get more level without damaging anything and done well, even more transparency. A limiter in this traditional setting should be after all the compression that is going on. If you are using it as a speaker protector put it after all the other fx, last in your chain before the amp and unless something is going wrong with feedback or a filter sweep or a jack being unplugged you will never see it light up at all, but if any of these things occur your drivers will be safer. So a limiter used in a traditional way does not ever truly effect the sound other than to prevent clipping/dangerous driver excursion. It doesn't matter if you dig in the part the limiter changes, if all you gain staging is set correctly, is so tiny that you are pretty unlikely to hear it, instead you wont hear your drivers melting, or your tweeters pop or some such, or even have your amps protection circuitry turn on. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itu Posted June 20, 2019 Share Posted June 20, 2019 There was a question that are there multiband compressors: yes, at least tce Hypergravity and Spectracomp, an age-old DOD with two bands (definitely NOT transparent but if you are after colored compression...) and so on. ovnilab has an extensive list of units and features as well as comments. I referred to SOS earlier and tried to find articles for us bassists. Enjoy: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/engineering-bass-guitars-live https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-can-i-get-more-effective-synth-bass-my-mixes Mixing: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-rescue-tom-marcovitch https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mixing-bass https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/better-bass https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/bass-guitars-mix Compression: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/compression-made-easy-audio-files https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/multi-band-compression https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-april-2003 (take a look at the 8th question about the order of the equalization and the compression) Speakers: https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-are-closed-box-speakers-better-than-ported-ones 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al Krow Posted June 20, 2019 Share Posted June 20, 2019 @51m0n thanks very much for taking the time to put my mind straight on the subject of transients. I've shared your comments below for the wider forum as it was such a helpful pm and I am sure will be of interest / benefit to many others! Transients and compression Transients are one of the keys to understanding compression and how compressors tick, true. The threshold is always crossed by the transient, that is the trigger, it is always the loudest part of the signal (with bass), only instruments that swell volume can achieve crossing a threshold with the body of a note rather than a transient: certain ways of bowing a note with violin family instruments, e-bows, volume pedals, keyboard pads and a whole raft of other sources do behave differently, but general bass playing, it’s the transient that engages the compressor. There is no 'note' or pitch info in the transient, it is percussive noise, but it has more or less higher frequency content, the nature of human perception of sound means that a high frequency heavy transient will give the impression of a sound having a generally brighter timbre throughout the note duration, even though that transient is just a few milli-seconds (ms) ?in duration. Anything that allows you to hear the transient 'better' will result in the timbre of your instrument sounding brighter generally - tweeters do this, they tend to reproduce transients better than full size drivers, as well as dealing with the high frequency energy of the transient particularly well, brightening things up a great deal. Ergo anything that dampens the energy in that transient will also darken the perceived signal timbre. Anything that increases the transient energy will effectively brighten the perceived timbre of the entire note. It’s subtle but very real. Some sound engineers swear they use compression to help EQ signal as much as an EQ. I agree with them. This is important because compressors and limiters can hugely change the relationship of the volume of the transient compared to the volume of the main body of the note materially impacting the difference in level between the two. Hence, they can definitely impart or remove brightness, which they do as a direct function of the attack time setting. They modify this relationship depending upon the type of compressor / limiter and the settings you have and the input signal. This is what a compressor really does, the make-up gain does the rest; people label this with many simpler things e.g. “compressors make your quiet signal loud, your loud signal quiet, your dynamics more squashed etc” all of them an over simplification, which is where the problems really arise. A transient is typically less than 100ms long, it can be much shorter, in order to not trash the brightness in your tone you need to get your compressor out of the way of your transient. In order to not make your tone too harsh when using higher compression ratios you need to still keep control of that transient, and that is why attack time is so vital, and a limiter can seriously help from a timbral perspective as well. The final super-important nuance is that no two types/models/brands of compressor achieve full compression up to the set ratio after the threshold is crossed in the same way, the compression is almost never turned on linearly, or 'immediately' it takes time to ramp up, and it is rarely linear. The same with the release. The very sound of optical compressors is the relative slowness of the way they turn the compression on and off, coupled with the very curved nature of the optical circuitry, the light starts going out very quickly but as it dims it slows down in its dimming. This has a massive impact on the sound of the compressor. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted June 20, 2019 Share Posted June 20, 2019 2 hours ago, itu said: There was a question that are there multiband compressors: yes, at least tce Hypergravity and ... https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-april-2003 (take a look at the 8th question about the order of the equalization and the compression) Or before and after. This is one of my favourite examples of this by George Massenburg, its a long watch for a single 8 bar phrase. Welcome bass peoples to the life of a mix engineer.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skol303 Posted June 20, 2019 Share Posted June 20, 2019 *Holds breath* *Opens thread* *Notices that Si is already here* “And… RELAX!” 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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