parallel compression in cubase vst 5.1 or wavelab 4?

[eugene]

in the bob katz book, Mastering Audio, he talks about Parallel Compression on page 133. he says that some dudes have done this with success in pro fools, digital preformer, and sadie...

has anyone had any luck with this in cubase 5.1 or wavelab 4? thanks in advance.

[greendoor]

By parallel compression, do you mean - for example - mixing in a very compressed vocal channel with the non-compressed vocal channel? There are some good compression plugins that actually allow you to do that within the plugin - which makes it so much easier. Even CamelPhatFree lets you do that, and is a good example of the technique.

If you want to do it manually - you have to be very wary of phase shifts that could give nasty comb filter effects. I use Cubase SX3 which has full latency compensation - i'm a little unsure about your software. If necessary you might need to add a small delay to fix any phase offset. Simply cloning the audio track and smashing one with a compressor should allow you to experiment with this trick.

[greendoor]

For mastering, some of the Voxengo compressors have wet and dry levels - that's the same thing.

[TimKnopf]

Parallel compresseion can be very great - not only for mastering. I do it a lot, not in Cubase, but in Logic, what should be very similar to Cubase.

E.g.drums can get very "fat", without too much pumping, when you compress their sum parallel. Here's the way I do it:
- I route the drums to a bus (to have them on one strip), say bus A
- send from this bus to a bus B
- plug what compressor you like into bus B
- tweak it very hard
- if necessary, plug a simple delay plugin to bus A and adjust it, until no phasing is heard anymore.

You have of course to set the right level of bus a, and if you done all right, you will hear wonderful dense, but not overcompressed drums...

For inspiration: you can do a lot more in the parallel bus. I made great drum loops with several distortion or modulation plugins in addition to a compressor.

And of course, you can use this technique also for vocals, guitars, ...

[eugene]

thanks guys. if you have any other ideas, let me know. ill try them when i get back from New Order.

[dimitar]

There are some good compression plugins that actually allow you to do that within the plugin - which makes it so much easier.

Pls givme some examples?

Thanks!

[greendoor]

I did - read my posts more carefully.

E.g. CamelPhatFree or SuperCamelPhat, Voxengo Soniformer or Polysquasher

Demand wet & dry levels (or balance) in your VST compressors! Developers take note.

[Warmonger]

The easiest way I know of is to simply use eXT as an insert, and then hook up compressors and mix as desired.

[Rune L-H]

Demand wet & dry levels (or balance) in your VST compressors! Developers take note.

Compadre beatpuncher also has wet/dry balance for parallel compression.

http://www.otiumfx.com/compadre.php

Best regards,
Rune

[greendoor]

Nice!