Compression, why bother?

Why compress everything? You can just use the volume knob. I know vocals sound a little better in a song with compression quite often, but I am surprised by how many people just throw a compression fire blanket over a track. You want the track to be like a fire! Music's gotta be smokin'!

 

What do you use compressors to do? Why? Is it worth it? Well, I am curious to know what people here think about the overuse of compression.

 

:jedi:

if you've ever looked at your tracks through a spectrogram you can see that levels will usually vary, depending on what you are doing.

 

if you have a break with a snare that's much louder than the kick and cymbals, you can use a compressor to lower the snare and leave the rest of the break untouched.

 

compressors are used for many different reasons. usually they are used for making a sound consistant in volume, but if you know what you're doing you can pull sounds out of a track you didn't know were there.

 

there are countless methods, you just have to know how to use it. don't write it off as some useless volume knob.

 

everything has it's purpose. if it seems useless, it's because you don't know what you're doing, and i mean that on a grand scale.

 

yes, overuse of compression can lead to shitty sound quality, but like i said, it all depends on what you're going for. one mans noise is anothers bliss, so to speak

lol.

Luke speaks the truth.

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if you've ever looked at your tracks through a spectrogram you can see that levels will usually vary, depending on what you are doing.

I have enjoyed viewing sound through a spectrogram, spectrum analyser and oscilloscope. Yeah some sounds are louder than others. Luke, the break snare compression is perfectly valid and reasonable.

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compressors are used for many different reasons. usually they are used for making a sound consistant in volume, but if you know what you're doing you can pull sounds out of a track you didn't know were there.

 

 

Well, I though compressors were merely used for toilet cleaning. Glad to know they're used for many different reasons, you must know what you're doing. I don't understand what you mean by pulling sounds of a track that you didn't know were there. Could you go into that a little more please. I would like to learn about that magic.

 

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there are countless methods, you just have to know how to use it. don't write it off as some useless volume knob.

 

everything has it's purpose. if it seems useless, it's because you don't know what you're doing, and i mean that on a grand scale.

Who wrote off compression as a useless volume knob? Not me. I'm merely wondering why people compress every fucking thing in the track making every fuck thing sound like a flubby arse. Used toilet paper has it's purpose. You are very arrogant and you smell of poo and pee to say it's because you don't know what you're doing, and i mean that on a grand scale...... heh, mad man i cant believe you say something like that to someone just asking about compression..... mm oh well im sure youre a cool guy normally

 

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yes, overuse of compression can lead to shitty sound quality, but like i said, it all depends on what you're going for. one mans noise is anothers bliss, so to speak

 

I'm glad you agree with me here; overuse of compression leads to a shitty recording. Sure, one man's noise is anothers bliss and in music that is wonderful, but overly compressing that noise for no good reason most likely leads to a shitty recording.

 

When recording the 707, the 808, the 303, the sh101, the akai sampler, the arp 2600 or whatever.....why compress every fucker thing? They sound good already.

Edited February 19, 2006 by crystal

Luke isn't arrogant, he knows what he's talking about.

so why not use the question..

 

"why OVER-USE the compressor?"

 

seeing as how you clearly already know the answer to the question you initially asked.

 

i'm sure anyone her would agree that it's a mystery why so many people brickwall every channel, then brickwall the final mix.

 

a mystery.

 

no need to get all shirty dude.

didn't mean to sound arrogant.

 

i still stand by what i said, however.

 

let's be friends

 

compression is great

luke has the right idea

on a basic level, compressors simply make loud sounds quieter, thus decreasing the dynamic range and making the perceived volume louder

  loganfive said:

lol.

 

again.

the question that i'm hearing is 'why do people use compression wrong' and the answer is 'because they're stupid'. problem solved.

  art school faggot said:

the question that i'm hearing is 'why do people use compression wrong' and the answer is 'because they're stupid'. problem solved.

 

I'm interested in their reasoning because I think they're not stupid. But not Luke because I don't understand him (I love you Luke).

  crystal said:

  art school faggot said:

the question that i'm hearing is 'why do people use compression wrong' and the answer is 'because they're stupid'. problem solved.

 

I'm interested in their reasoning because I think they're not stupid. But not Luke because I don't understand him (I love you Luke).

 

 

lukes of hazard.

the reason for abussive compression is airplay. if your sound is loud it will get noticed even on a soft radio. but the stupid thing is that radios themselve already compress everything to shit, so then you'd get compression over compression. but yeah try telling the label heads that, they want to be sure.

 

now why is it being used by people who have no intention to create music for the radio? well simply put, they copy what they hear. if you have no idea what you can do with dynamic changes it's not that easy to find out.

Edited February 19, 2006 by Forlon

  crystal said:

  art school faggot said:

the question that i'm hearing is 'why do people use compression wrong' and the answer is 'because they're stupid'. problem solved.

 

I'm interested in their reasoning because I think they're not stupid. But not Luke because I don't understand him (I love you Luke).

it's very easy to misuse unless you know what you're doing. i made a couple albums not using it at all. at the time, i thought they sounded great, but listening back, they sound like shit. then i made one and ended up brickwalling everything. which also does not sound so great.

 

some people use it wrong because they don't know what they're doing, some people use it 'wrong' because they're looking for a sound that you may not like and also what forlon said.

Compression is a complex art. I'm not pretending that what I'm about to say is completely to-the-button physically accurate, but t works for me and i get pretty good results.

 

Compression is a double skilled beast (well, it has lots of skills, but in terms of its general use..)

 

the easiest to explain form of compression is to keep dynamic controll over a part/track etc.

 

for example - even some of the best singers can't be sure that there voice is EXACTLY the same volume throughout, and a compressor evens everything out and allows you to work with the audio track with allot more ease etc. without peaking and unessacery editing.

 

however, a single sound has many sound's 'within' it to give it its specific character etc. (apart from a sin wave, of course). so a snare drum (for example) is made up of lots of different sounds all working together. if you turn the volume up, before too long the loudest sound in the snare drum spectrum will go over the max limit - the sample will peak.

 

a compressor will try of bring all parts of audio in that sample to the same volume , evening out the spectrum of sound you have untill otherwise unheard of elemements in the sound are more apparent. the sound itself is still the same, and sound very much the same (unless you use too much), but allot more of the sounds 'within' it are of a higher volume meanng the sample is louder and more balanced.

 

in this way you can increase the volume of a sound without actually getting anywhere nearer to the dreaded 'peaking' point. the sound is fuller and more 'heavy' because all elements of its sound are being drawn together, as opposed to the same sound but pushing the speaker harder (which is what increasing the volume does).

 

With carefull tweaking you can get a waveform and compress it and it will look almost exactly the same as the uncompressed wave, but it will sound louder and fuller. hence you can do this to many elements (especially the important ones) in you're track and the overall volume will be higher, and as importantly fuller sounding, without peaking.

 

Controlling the time over which the compressor kicks in (using attack) alows it to be used as a powerfull effect as well, aspecially important for making drum sounds punch through a mix.

 

EDIT - believe me, there is a reason why compression is considered the second most important process after eq, and there is most certainly a reason why big studios (and rich people looking for things to spend there money on) spend many many thousands of pounds on a single compressor!

Edited February 20, 2006 by welcome to the machine

  $$$Celatid said:

Luke isn't arrogant, he knows what he's talking about.

:ermm:

I don't use compressors. I use technology that compresses naturally (why tweak a million plugin params if you like the way tape saturation sounds?) and then I use a LIMITER (Waves or Soundforge Wavehammer - one day I will be able to afford a nice hardware one) on my final mixes to drag down peaks I didnt intend to have there. That's it.

yes, A-Wings brings up a great point. tape does a beautiful job of natural compression.

 

yet another simple tool that can be used in a variety of ways for amazing results

  luke said:

yes, A-Wings brings up a great point. tape does a beautiful job of natural compression.

 

yet another simple tool that can be used in a variety of ways for amazing results

 

Engineer 1: Dude why are you spending 3 days obsessively tweaking 24 instances of that $1200 tube compressor modelling plugin on that blues rock song?

 

Engineer 2: To make it sound like those old records I love from the early seventies

 

Engineer 1: Oh, how did THEY get that sound?

 

Engineer 2: They used something called "tape", but that's archaic and obsolete now

everything of mine hits tape before it hits the computer.

  Analogue Wings said:

I don't use compressors. I use technology that compresses naturally (why tweak a million plugin params if you like the way tape saturation sounds?) and then I use a LIMITER (Waves or Soundforge Wavehammer - one day I will be able to afford a nice hardware one) on my final mixes to drag down peaks I didnt intend to have there. That's it.

 

a limiter is a compressor, really

  Kcinsu said:

a limiter is a compressor, really

 

Really, but not really. They're usually implemented as compressors with extreme ratios, but the concept is much simpler/less intrusive.

  luke said:

everything of mine hits tape before it hits the computer.

 

yeah, i also use tape compression quite a lot.

 

not on everythng though.

yeah, that's the steve albini way of doing things :smiling: