I Hate Compression!

[Cuzzie]

Lots of sage things written above by people far better than I.

Compression used correctly is there to preserve elements to let them stand out in a wonderfully folded mix pancake of song love.

Compression on drums really changes songs for example - you can list everything and that is live and recorded.

 

 

check this guy - just one of a myriad of videos

 

my fave band released their first album in 14 years, you can bet their is compression going on, loads of overtones etc.

my fave hit is at 1.49 where the Tom hit is obviously compressed appropriately to allow it to ring out.

 

Ultimately you will make your own mind up, but if there are enough examples out there of compression done well not to lose overtones, surely it’s not compression, it’s ‘THAT’ compression you heard which was naff

 

[Baloney Balderdash]

I use a very subtle compression to actually slightly enhance the attack and actually also overall tone and playing slightly as well.

 

With a sufficiently long attack time this is what a compressor will do, let the transient through fully intact, then slightly decrease the level of the signal after the initial attack, enhancing the attack, rather than muffling it, and if the release time is set just right as well overall make the signal more equal in level as it fades, that is make for a more smoothly/gradually fading consistent sustain, and rather actually enhancing your tone and playing dynamics than limiting them.

 

I don't really like compression either outside of being very subtly applied, the slight compression you get from overdriving your signal, and then in context of recording/mixing post production to make it sit better in the mix.

 

The trick is not to overuse it, unless you want an obvious effect of course, and just use it to slightly enhance your playing and tone, rather than limiting it, by dialing in a relatively low compression rate, something like just 2:1 to 3:1, and with the threshold, attack and release set just right, that is respectively: relatively high/ relatively slow, something like 20 to 50 ms or so/relatively fast, something like 50 to 100 ms or so.

 

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by Baloney Balderdash

[rmorris]

What Jjimfist said. Compression can be used creatively to emphasise and better define note attack. Eg "eighth note pumping".

[rmorris]

On 21/09/2022 at 12:40, dclaassen said:

Not sure using compression, which changes the wave form and suppresses both transients and overtones is the same as riding the fader.

 

It is the same. Just using a different detector (ear vs electronic level detector) and attenuator (fader vs VCA / FET / LDR) . Technically it is feedback compression. As opposed to feedforward. Nothing to do with "guitar" feedback or howlround !

[dclaassen]

6 hours ago, rmorris said:

 

It is the same. Just using a different detector (ear vs electronic level detector) and attenuator (fader vs VCA / FET / LDR) . Technically it is feedback compression. As opposed to feedforward. Nothing to do with "guitar" feedback or howlround !

Sorry, but I don’t agree. If you consider a sound energy wave, when you move the fader, that lowers the amplitude, but the sound itself is mostly unchanged. Compression take off the tops and bottoms of the waveform. Two different things, imo

[Osiris]

Can I respectfully ask you to read this - it's a different link to the one I posted before but from the same website, and written, as before, by an authority on the subject of compression. The first main paragraph is the main point of interest. 

 

http://www.ovnilab.com/articles/howto.shtml

 

The first main paragraph is the main point of interest;

 

"A compressor is just an automatic volume control. At a basic level, it reacts to volume spikes from your music, and turns down the volume a bit as your input levels go up. That's really all there is to it."

 

[Baloney Balderdash]

12 hours ago, Osiris said:

Can I respectfully ask you to read this - it's a different link to the one I posted before but from the same website, and written, as before, by an authority on the subject of compression. The first main paragraph is the main point of interest. 

 

http://www.ovnilab.com/articles/howto.shtml

 

The first main paragraph is the main point of interest;

 

"A compressor is just an automatic volume control. At a basic level, it reacts to volume spikes from your music, and turns down the volume a bit as your input levels go up. That's really all there is to it."

 

At a very general basic, really simplified (and I don't think very helpful), level, yes, however different compressors in reality will react slightly different to different frequencies, might color your tone, and more advanced multi band compressors, or even just a compressor featuring some kind of pre compression EQ section, might be used as a tone shaping device as well, then comes the fact, and this even on a relatively basic level, that a compressor can be used to suppress or enhance the attack, or help increase of decrease the sustain, of your signal as well, depending on the settings of the various basic compression parameters. 

 

He also refuses to give the, in my personal opinion, excellent TC Electronic SpectraComp and Hyper Gravity compressors a proper review, I think basically, summed up, based on the fact that he, ironically, think TC Electronic are to not be viewed a serious/professional company, as if choosing not to give a pedal a review, but still choosing to list it just to declare you are not going to review it because you are butt hurt is acting professionally or can be viewed as a serious review.  

 

That said and otherwise, despite not agreeing with all his reviews (simply not humanly possible to stay 100% objective, so hard to blame him for that), I do actually think that homepage, Ovnilab, is a great resource for getting an overview of the different available compressors on the market's capabilities, pros and cons.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by Baloney Balderdash

[Cuzzie]

I think he just got bored or doing compressor reviews or reached his wits end esp as most people have no idea about it, and because they cannot fathom it shout it down as it’s easier to do that instead of learn a bit about it and apply it, despite huge evidence placed in front of them

[Owen]

I have never liked it. Or in reality never managed to make it work for me. But then I bought a Spectracomp where someone else had done all that pesky programming. So I am fine with it. 

 

I also recorded some stuff and my bass and preamp sounded fabulous in the rough mix. Just like I dreamed it would. Then I was handed the final mix and it sounded like a bass. Not in a bad way, but not in the way I was hearing it in my head. This could have been EQ, but there was a healthy dose of control going on. I do not love compression, but I guess it has to be there. 

[ezbass]

9 minutes ago, Owen said:

I have never liked it. Or in reality never managed to make it work for me. But then I bought a Spectracomp where someone else had done all that pesky programming. So I am fine with it. 

 

I think this is key. I had a comp years and years ago, but moved it on because it didn’t do anything I particularly liked. It wasn’t until I applied particular settings to a recording (outlined in one of my earlier posts) that I heard something really useful and wanted to replicate that in my live sound, which I was fortunate enough to manage.

 

12 minutes ago, Owen said:

I also recorded some stuff and my bass and preamp sounded fabulous in the rough mix. Just like I dreamed it would. Then I was handed the final mix and it sounded like a bass. Not in a bad way, but not in the way I was hearing it in my head. This could have been EQ, but there was a healthy dose of control going on. I do not love compression, but I guess it has to be there. 

Oh, I feel that pain. I did a recording of two tracks with a Ric 4003s and in the rough mix it sounded great, gnarly and definitely a Ric. However, when the final mix was handed down, it was just a generic bass sound, all the character had been removed. This wasn’t by compression, but by EQ, all that nice gnarly midrange had been scooped out. I was not happy and it still stings today. Ironically, the producer/engineer is a bass player, go figure.

[Owen]

2 minutes ago, ezbass said:

I think this is key. I had a comp years and years ago, but moved it on because it didn’t do anything I particularly liked. It wasn’t until I applied particular settings to a recording (outlined in one of my earlier posts) that I heard something really useful and wanted to replicate that in my live sound, which I was fortunate enough to manage.

 

Oh, I feel that pain. I did a recording of two tracks with a Ric 4003s and in the rough mix it sounded great, gnarly and definitely a Ric. However, when the final mix was handed down, it was just a generic bass sound, all the character had been removed. This wasn’t by compression, but by EQ, all that nice gnarly midrange had been scooped out. I was not happy and it still stings today. Ironically, the producer/engineer is a bass player, go figure.

I left it because he did frankly astonishing things with the vocal. I had been working with her for perhaps 40 years and NEVER heard her as good. Nor since, sadly.

[ezbass]

4 minutes ago, Owen said:

I left it because he did frankly astonishing things with the vocal. I had been working with her for perhaps 40 years and NEVER heard her as good. Nor since, sadly.

Yeah, I realised it wasn’t all about me and the recordings were very good indeed and if I hadn’t heard the original rough mix, I would have probably been OK with it. Still irritating, nonetheless. 

[Owen]

21 minutes ago, ezbass said:

Yeah, I realised it wasn’t all about me and the recordings were very good indeed and if I hadn’t heard the original rough mix, I would have probably been OK with it. Still irritating, nonetheless. 

Don't get me wrong, I feel your pain! It was the sound I had been wanting to get down onto "tape" for a long time.

[rmorris]

18 hours ago, dclaassen said:

Sorry, but I don’t agree. If you consider a sound energy wave, when you move the fader, that lowers the amplitude, but the sound itself is mostly unchanged. Compression take off the tops and bottoms of the waveform. Two different things, imo

 

Wrong. Compression simply lowers the amplitude of the signal. It reacts according to the level (averaged / RMS / peak depending on the unit) and not to the individual waveform. Except if you set it up badly eg fast attack/release times on a  frequency corresponding to a longer time. Typically this might occur using very fast attack / release on the low notes of a bass guitar. But that is basically a user error (unless going for special fx) and will be obvious.

A simple compressor simply detects the signal level and lowers the gain when it is above a threshold level. Typically by altering the dc control voltage into a Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA). The VCA does not discriminate wrt frequencies. It's just an amplifier with a nominally flat audio band response. You could, in concept, control a motorised pot or fader in the same way. Don't try it though ! - for various reasons it not practicable.

Compression can indeed 'dull' the sound but it's not because it specifically removes overtones. It's simply due to the energy in an audio signal being a lot more at lower frequency. So, depending on the signal and the compression parameters, the low end can dominate the operation. So you get a large low frequency event and that causes ALL frequencies to be attenuated. The low end may then still be loud enough because it was too loud without the compression but higher frequencies that were not too loud to begin with may now be too quiet to be audible in context.

Solutions to this include "Split Band" compression - anything from the Trace Elliot SMX type compressors to sophisticated Multiband Compressors (typically used in mastering) and their plug-in equivalents.

Basically they allow the bottom end and top end to be compressed differently (or not at all). So a bottom end thump doesn't wipe out the highs.

 

[Grimalkin]

In over 30 odd years of playing as a job, I've found it's better to work on your right hand dynamics and touch than rely on the little boxes.

[rmorris]

On 21/09/2022 at 09:36, dclaassen said:

I watched a Youtube with a guy playing a Martin D-45. First, without compression...it sounded amazing..just what you want from that wonderful guitar. He applied compression, and suddenly, it sounded like any generic acoustic guitar...it that what we are after??

 

 

The guitar thing there is interesting. It's quite common for engineers / producers to note that what sounds great on acoustic when being tracked often has to be severely controlled by eq/dynamics etc in mixing to fit in with the recording.

The last time I saw this it was indeed a Martin acoustic that was used as an example. IIRC Yamaha acoustics were well regarded for being 'recordable' and fitting into a mix.

[fretmeister]

19 hours ago, dclaassen said:

Sorry, but I don’t agree. If you consider a sound energy wave, when you move the fader, that lowers the amplitude, but the sound itself is mostly unchanged. Compression take off the tops and bottoms of the waveform. Two different things, imo

 

 

That's just wrong.

 

Compression doesn't remove anything from the top and bottom at all. High and Low Pass filters do that.

 

Compression just moves all the information into a smaller dynamic range. It doesn't slice anything off. It just squashes it. All the information is still there, including the overtones you seem to be obsessed with.

 

In fact - overtones that are naturally quiet so would be at the very bottom of the wave have their volumes INCREASED with compression to get them into the compressed dynamic range that has been set.

 

 

[BigRedX]

For those of you complaining that you didn't like your recorded bass sound, were you simply sessions musicians providing a bass part for someone else's musical vision, or a creative part of the band.

 

If it's the former then you need to suck it up. If you are there simply to play a bass line for someone else, then you don't really get a say.

 

On the other hand if your contribution is part of the band's overall creative process, then did you attend the mix session(s)? If you did, did the bass sound OK while the mix was being done? If you didn't, then not why not? Personally I would never allow anyone other than my bandmates and the mix engineer to hear anything I wasn't 100% happy with. Any mix that isn't done with me personally in attendance, is done on the understanding that the mix engineer will continue to work on the track at the studio's expense until I (and the rest of the band) am 100% happy with the result.

[rmorris]

7 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

 

 

That's just wrong.

 

Compression doesn't remove anything from the top and bottom at all. High and Low Pass filters do that.

 

Compression just moves all the information into a smaller dynamic range. It doesn't slice anything off. It just squashes it. All the information is still there, including the overtones you seem to be obsessed with.

 

In fact - overtones that are naturally quiet so would be at the very bottom of the wave have their volumes INCREASED with compression to get them into the compressed dynamic range that has been set.

 

 

 

I read the comment as claiming that the compression would 'remove' the top/bottom of the waveform itself (as opposed to restricting the frequency range at either end).

ie a degree of clipping. That would, of course, very much increase high frequency content . Including frequencies not in the original signal.

But yeah - in simple terms it just lowers the louder bits then turns everything up as required.

[rmorris]

30 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

In over 30 odd years of playing as a job, I've found it's better to work on your right hand dynamics and touch than rely on the little boxes.

Yes. I don't think anyone here is advocating dynamics processing as a substitute for technique.

The issue is what compression does to the sound in terms of harmonic balance etc.

[Osiris]

48 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

In over 30 odd years of playing as a job, I've found it's better to work on your right hand dynamics and touch than rely on the little boxes.

 

Making sure your technique is consistent as is humanly possible is fine, but how do you deal with playing the same note in different parts of the neck? For example, if you were to play a G on the 15th fret of the E string, it will have sound more dense and weighty than playing an open G string. Same note, same pitch but one contains much more energy than the other. How do you control that? Play the 15th fret G quieter? In which case it could get lost. Play the open string harder or maybe pluck it further up the neck? 

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, Grimalkin said:

In over 30 odd years of playing as a job, I've found it's better to work on your right hand dynamics and touch than rely on the little boxes.

Must admit I’m kind of in the same mindset. Given I never really know what gear I’ll be playing through I prefer to know how my bass reacts to me. I’ve also found that having a set of flats on a bass at home for practice really helps me to be much more precise with my fretting hand.

[Grimalkin]

14 minutes ago, Osiris said:

 

Making sure your technique is consistent as is humanly possible is fine, but how do you deal with playing the same note in different parts of the neck? For example, if you were to play a G on the 15th fret of the E string, it will have sound more dense and weighty than playing an open G string. Same note, same pitch but one contains much more energy than the other. How do you control that? Play the 15th fret G quieter? In which case it could get lost. Play the open string harder or maybe pluck it further up the neck? 

 

I'd choose a different position. G on the 15th works in soloing, because you're not there for long, but as a vamp? No, I'd choose a different position and avoid the overtones.

[Osiris]

7 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

 

I'd choose a different position. G on the 15th works in soloing, because you're not there for long, but as a vamp? No, I'd choose a different position and avoid the overtones.

 

But if you were to use a compressor it would remove those overtones... 🤣🤣🤣

[Grimalkin]

8.46 - 9.00.

 

I'm not the first person to think there was something up with the playback @ 8.52. That's dynamic control: